One Laptop Per Child: Laptops designed for learning
Description: The One Laptop Per Child (http://laptop.org) project’s goal is “To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.” To that end, the XO laptop is a machine created explicitly for children and learning. Karin Dalziel will demo the XO laptop, give a tour of the operating system, called “Sugar,” and explain how features of the laptop are custom made for education.
Presented at the Nebraska Library Commission, February 1, 2008.
History
Beginnings
see timeline: http://laptop.org/vision/progress/
January 2005:
“Negroponte sketches out his idea for a $100 laptop for the poor children of the world in an e-mail to his old friend, Hector Ruiz, CEO of AMD. Six hours later, Ruiz replies: “Count us in, and we would be delighted to take a lead role here.” Within weeks, News Corp. and Google also join as founding members of the newly formed program, One Laptop per Child.”
“Later in the month, Negroponte presents the idea for the $100 laptop at the in Davos, Switzerland, where the political, economic, and cultural elite of the world gather each year. Although he has nothing to show his audience but a simple mock-up with no functioning parts, the machine makes a big splash. John Markoff writing for The New York Times, calls Negroponte “the Johnny Appleseed of the digital era.”
February of 2007:
B2-Test (Beta 2) machines deployed to children in launch countries. This begins a continuing cycle wherein computers are put into the hands of children ad teachers, feedback is gathered, and changes are made due to the feedback.
November/December 2007:
Mass production begins, G1G1 begins, children begin learning with the laptop. First large orders are filled.
Mission
“We believe the emerging world must leverage this resource by tapping into the children’s innate capacities to learn, share, and create on their own. Our answer to that challenge is the XO laptop, a children’s machine designed for ‘learning learning.’”
“OLPC is not, at heart, a technology program, nor is the XO a product in any conventional sense of the word.”
One in three children in the developing world don’t complete the 5th grade. Teachers are scarce, books are scarce. The One Laptop Per Child organization exists to address these problems, by delivering a device to children that can tap into already existing information. The laptop can be reprogrammed, re-purposed, and is a vehicle for discovery and creativity.
G1G1 (Give One Get One)
G1G1 ran from November 12, 2007 to December 31, 2007. OLPC sold 162,000 (making $3,2400,000) XO laptops to buyers in North America. OLPC is now considering deployment in other countries.
There have been problems. OLPC was set up as a non profit organization designed to sell large quantities of laptops to governments. The G1G1 program has proven problematic in terms of logistics, shipping, customer support, etc. These issues are still being worked out, over two months later.
Hardware
Specs
see the specs page on OLPC’s website for complete, uber geeky specs.
Size: 9.5” x 9” x 1.26”
Screen: Resolution is 1200× 900 (200 DPI), and size is 6” x 4.4”
By comparison, the Eeepc (another low power, low cost computer) has a screen with a resolution of 800×480 pixels.
Screen has a black and white mode, which uses less power and can be seen in bright sunlight, and can be turned around for e-book reading.
Weight: about 3.2 pounds
Memory: 256 mb of ram
Space: 1GB internal flash memory. Expandable via SD card slot, or USB ports.
Peripherals: Camera (640×480 still, will do video too), Microphone + mic jack, speakers + headphone jack, keyboard, wireless networking - wifi+mesh. Also included are stylus sensitive areas to the right and left of the touchpad, but no software uses these yet.
Power/battery: fully enclosed, more stable than regular laptop batteries, lasts about 4 hours, uses much less power. Power management features have not been built into the current system release, but will be included in automatic updates in the future.
Green: The laptop is one of the most environmentally friendly ever made. It has a low ecological footprint, parts are made to be reused, and it contains less hazardous materials.
Mesh: The Laptop has wifi built in, and a wireless mesh that allows the computer to talk to other XO’s.
Body design
The design of the laptop is very innovative, and has been considered from the ground up. The laptop is made to be rough and rugged, not only because they are meant to be placed in third world countries, but also because they are to be placed in the hands of children, who are not known to be gentle with computer equipment.
To that end, the laptop closes up and seals out dust, dirt and water. Ridges around the body keep out much debris, and the wifi antenna fold down to protect the USB, audio, and mic jacks. The keyboard is completely sealed with a soft rubbery overlay so no dirt can get between the keys.
The XO laptop is made to withstand much more abuse than a normal laptop. It can withstand a drop of 5 feet (though I have not tested this on my machines) more humidity and heat, and a good deal of jostling. The body is covered with a texture that makes it more grippable, and there is a built in handle for carrying. Each XO laptop has a unique color combination on the cover - there are over 400 color combinations available, so children will be able to tell their laptops apart.
The XO screen is designed to flip around and be used as an e-book reader, even in bright sunlight. The joint for the pivot is built especially strong, and by placing the motherboard behind the monitor, less cables have to run through the vulnerable pivot point. The laptop is made to be easily disassembled and repaired, and uses standard screws and other components.
Software
Sugar
The operating system is based on Fedora 6, a linux distribution. Linux is a stable operating system, and Fedora is one of the more established distributions.
Why Linux? OLPC chose Linux to build off of because Linux is open source- and as such developers could change and add to the system to suit the project. This is something they would be unable to do with, for example, Windows. The best that can be done in Windows and Mac is to write programs that sit on top of the operating system, but that does not do anything to make the system itself, which is full of confusing icons, menus and directories, friendlier for children. Because the makers of OLPC wanted to rethink the computer for children, Linux was really the ONLY choice.
On top of Fedora Linux, OLPC built a new GUI (Graphical User Interface) from scratch in Python. They called this interface Sugar, and it is still evolving.
The interface for Sugar is, as expected, simple. No Windows (each application is full screen) no menus, no “desktop,” exactly. The system is intended for education, and as such, it invites sustained concentration on individual activities rather than switching between applications rapidly. There are very few customization options, and only one way to get at files.
Specific keys on the keyboard show users different “views”:
The Neighborhood View is where you can see other users, networks, and shared activities.
The Group View is where you can see yourself, your friends, and your shared activities.
The Home View is where you can see your applications, your clipboard, and friends you are sharing documents with.
The Activity View is where you can see the full screen activity.
Collaboration
Most activities feature sharing options at the top of the main screen, and you can choose to share with friends only or everyone in your mesh range (neighborhood). Every activity is designed with sharing in mind - in the write activity, multiple users can collaborate on a document at the same time. In the photo application, users can send snapshots to each other. Chat, of course, allows users to talk to one another.
It is possible to connect XO’s outside the same mesh so they can use collaborative tools as well. A website called xochat.org allows current XO users to chat with each other. The possibilities for education are exciting- children from all over the world can chat and work on projects together through a safe, familiar interface.
Activities
What we would normally call programs are called activities on Sugar. Activities are available from the activities wiki page - all a user has to do is browse to the page and click on the .xo file to install. Many of the activities focus on programming - the idea here is that by learning programming, children will be able to extend their laptop indefinitely. Planned for future release is a “view source” key that will let you view the source of any program. A view source option in the programs has the potential to be a very powerful tool for learning and extension - think of the fact that WWW pages really took off after mosaic included a view source key in their web browser. “One of the defining moments in the history of the World Wide Web was the decision by the Mosaic team to include a “View Source” menu option. This single addition allowed thousands of users to become web designers.” (Winter, olpcnews.com) The view source key is essential for creating a sustainable platform in which educators and students can write applications.
In addition, programs are written in a language called Python. Python is an unusual choice for a low powered laptop such as this, because unlike a language like, for instance, C++, Python is compiled as you run the program. Normally, you have to write the program, compile it, and test it. Thought this makes programming take longer, it lessened the burden on the machine running the software. However, llanguages that compile on the fly mean you can seamlessly move back any forth between writing and using programs. In addition, many say Python is one of the easier programming languages to learn. So, although Python is somewhat resource intensive, it is a good choice for sustainable code that users can learn to edit themselves.
The hope is that the success of the G1G1 program will spur many developers to pitch in and help write activitis for the XO: in fact, this is already happening.
Journal
Journal is Sugar’s file management application, and is, in fact, the only way to get to files on the XO laptop without going to the command line. In the Journal, all your documents are listed in one, long, continual list - there is no directory structure. Think of the “photostream” concept in Flickr, or the way blog posts are saved in dated “streams.”
Children can organize their materials in several ways: they can tag things for searchability, they can title the document, and they can star important documents. Everything is kept by default- children can choose to go back and delete files later. Automatic saving is at the core of the simplicity of Sugar. Children should never have to experience the awful feeling of losing two hours of work because they forgot to save- so Sugar is built to save automatically. All work is accessible through the journal unless explicitly deleted. (Though there have been a few kinks in this system, the developers are working on it.)
Fun
I am obviously not a third world child. So why did I buy my XO laptop? First and foremost, I have been excited about the project ever since I first heard of it. When the Give One Get One program was announced, I knew I wanted to buy and XO for myself and try it out. I bought it with the hope that I might be able to present on it and spread the word, and also hoped to use it as a portable conference laptop.
Since I received the laptop, though, I have been having a lot of fun with it. A lot of the pictures on Flickr depict people having fun with their laptops as well. the friendly design and dead simple operating system make it easy to pick it up and use.
I read web comics and visit website, check email, and just surf around. I have been known to pull up recipes on the XO while cooking, with little fear that I will splash something on the computer and break it.
A surprising benefit of the XO is the way it encourages me to focus on one activity at a time. When I want to sit down and just write, I find myself turning to the XO because it minimizes the distractions I face at my desktop computer. I have come to appreciate the way the XO focuses my attention.
At the same time, the XO encourages play. I can doodle with the draw application, take pictures of myself making funny faces and insert them into other applications, and make music with Tam Tam. I find myself wanting to create on the XO.
However the One Laptop Per Child project develops, I hope that product designers take notice of what can be done when you allow the user the freedom do do with their computer what they want, and the great things that can come from totally rethinking a design rather than just repurposing the same old thing. I would love to see the sugar operating system deployed as a stand alone operating system, which parents can install on old computers for their children. I hope that the ideas of one laptop per child spread, and more people get involved in the program.
A video of my presentation can be found on the Nebraska Library Commission Blog.
If you would like to comment on this presentation, please do so on my corresponding blog entry. Thanks!