OLPC Overview

Introduction

Universal Communications proposes to use the XO laptop (and perhaps some other devices) designed by OLPC in support of non-OLPC activities such as distance education for literacy workers and teachers in countries where off-grid power has to be used. To clarify the distinction we usually refer to the XO laptop rather than to OLPC. This section concerns other aspects of the OLPC project and how it relates to UC.

Core Principles

The five core principles of OLPC are: Child ownership, Low Ages, Saturation, Connection and Free and Open Source. The UC phases for One Laptop Per School (OLPS) and One Laptop Per Teacher (OLPT) do not fully comply with these principles but are intended to accelerate the future deployment of One Laptop Per Child in accordance with those principles by eliminating obstacles and preparing the way. avoiding diversions such as ineffective computer classrooms.

The XO laptop design supports those principles partly through low cost but mainly through being designed to take home from school with charged batteries lasting long enough for children to play and learn outside school as well as in school, in collaboration with other children.

Both the low cost and especially the careful design to extend battery life make the XO attractive for use by adults (eg teachers) as well as children. In this context the physical robustness and connectivity of the XO design is of secondary importance and the child size keyboard and screen has a negative impact (unavoidable to achieve lowest possible cost and battery consumption).

Child Ownership

Personal ownership is supported by OLPT so that teachers can take their laptops home from school. OLPS is merely an intermediate step towards OLPT so as to establish sufficient connectivity to justify deployment of OLPT. One Laptop Per School is of very limited benefit for distance education of teachers just as class labs of computers are of limited benefit for children. OLPS is proposed together with One Cardpod Per Teacher so that teachers get the benefit of unlimited personal use of audio materials for distance education and the email/podcasting network support provided by the school laptop and continue to use Cardpods for audio materials later when OLPT is deployed so as to use the least possible battery power. (Using a computer just to play audio is a waste of battery power).

Low Ages

This principle is not supported either by OLPS or OLPT. A small additional cost for adult sized USB keyboards will probably be desirable. The screen is sufficient for adult use, as demonstrated by the growing popularity of cheap "netbooks" with similar sized screens. The high resolution makes it acceptable when viewed from closer to the eyes, which is feasible using a separate keyboard. Teachers will need to be familiar with child sized laptops when OLPC is eventually deployed. OLPT ensures that happens first.

Saturation

Saturation is critical for OLPC even if only achieved within a region. Otherwise Child Ownership by a section of children will increase inequalities and conflicts and a critical mass of children able to collaborate through the mesh network connection will not be achieved. Another aspect of saturation is that large numbers justifies the central resources needed to provide suitable content whereas gradually increasing deployment results in central resources not being more effectively used for other purposes such as print materials. Similar principles apply to OLPS and OLPT.

Saturation geographic coverage of all schools with OLPS justifies the central resources required to produce audio materials for distribution via OLPS to Cardpods for all teachers, and also justifies the establishment of email based distance education tutorial assistance (supported primarily by audio and print materials until OLPT). In addition OLPS saturation supports educational Management Information Systems for enrolment, school budgets etc and may provide the beginning of "ICT kiosk" services to the local community (especially through email based web queries).

Saturation coverage of all teachers with OLPT justifies the central resources required to produce computer based teacher training materials and may enable eliminating costs of printed materials and reduce costs of establishing comprehensive school libraries in anticipation of OLPC. In addition OLPT should enable the full provision of "ICT kiosk" services to the local community.

Connection

The (802.11s) WiFi mesh networking provided by the XO is of little relevance to OLPS and would probably be turned off to conserve power. When the OLPT stage is reached it provides a secondary benefit of simplified sharing of a school library for distance education of all teachers and familiarizes teachers with the nature and potential of collaboration in preparation for OLPC.

Full Internet connectivity for each school is an important aspect of OLPC relied on in both pilot deployments and mass rollouts. It has major benefits both educationally and for simplifying deployment support. When several hundred XO laptops are deployed at a school the significant additional cost of internet connectivity is a relatively small proportion of the total cost.

A major problem for both OLPS and OLPT is that the cost of internet connectivity could be prohibitive (exceeding the cost of the XO laptops for the teachers). Solving that problem by means of postal email based Delay and Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) is a central aspect of OLPS in order to support One Cardpod Per Teacher and justify OLPT. Success in inceasing the frequency and reducing the delay of physical exchange of DVDs or flashcards to and from schools can ensure that the OLPC library for each school is automatically updated without using more expensive internet bandwidth. This can significantly reduce the cost of future OLPC deployments by reserving internet bandwidth for interactive communications and may also enable earlier extension to smaller schools in more remote areas and individual or small groups of school children for whom no local school is available.

Free and Open Source

Both OLPS and OLPT rely on FOSS for the same reasons that OLPC does and in particular leverage the considerable work done by OLPC itself to make the XO suitable for mass rollouts.

Sugar

The Sugar environment, now supported by Sugar Labs is specifically designed for young children to benefit from the constructivist educational philosophy of OLPC through collaboration with others in activities via mesh connectivity in a saturation deployment. Many aspects of Sugar are now being included in mainstream linux distributions. This environment should be available to teachers so that they can prepare for OLPC. In addition it appears quite suitable for access to collections

of adult distance education materials distributed through the mechanisms of OLPC activity bundles and the OLPC Library as well as for preparation and review of such collections prepared for children.

 

In addition adults may prefer a more conentional desktop interface. This is available through Fedora 10 XO

. Support for this requires a 4GB SD flash card. XOs for OLPS and/or OLPT should probably be provided with 16GB flash cards (this is currently the "sweet spot" for lowest cost per GB at something like $2 per GB in large quantities).

 

The next release of the XO software (9.1) is expected to rebase on Fedora 10 and include a general capability to simply install and use Fedora application packages using yum. That should enable pretty well everything needed. The Fedora Appliance Tools may be relevant. See also Evolution - software updates.

To take advantage of available software a set of international mirrors should be maintained containing suitable package updates released by OLPC, Fedora etc. A national project should be able to base itself on this, feeding any improvements (including localization) all the way upstream to the original projects. The entire national repository could be maintained locally on rewritable DVD updated regularly via postal email DTN bundles. An important tool is mrepo.

Peripherals

Several peripheral devices are likely to be useful with OLPS and OLPT including keyboards, mice, DVD recorders and external hard disk drives. Some may be available through OLPCchannels.

Powered USB hubs with separate power supplies may be necessary for such devices as HDD and DVD as they require more than the absolute maximum of 7.5W which the modified XO USB ports can deliver (unmodified is 5W - suitable for keyboard, mouse etc).

Multi-Battery Charger

The Multi-Battery Charger

will be needed for OLPC deployments and an initial one per school could be suitable for OLPT. Teachers may benefit from more than one battery pack each for maximum use.