OLPC France is this year a draft study on the ownership of XO by teachers, it will result in deployment of XOs to a school in Saint-Denis (93). In this post, Sandra us this wonderful project. We will certainly keep you informed of next steps.

Different evaluations of OLPC programs around the world (cf. Nugroho & Lonsdale, 2010 ) showed that the impact of the use of XO learning depends largely on how it is used in the classroom and how teachers incorporate it into their practice. However, they often find it difficult to integrate ( Barrera-Osorio and Linden, 2009 ) and adopt a constructivist pedagogy.
Also, it is crucial to better know how teachers take ownership of this device, analyzing the resources they offer, but also the obstacles they face, in order to develop a methodology to support teachers in this process.
That's why we make this year a study to test a method of teaching and study how this technical device is adopted by teachers. We will focus particularly on how the introduction of the device transforms the business of the teacher and students, how its use evolves over time, or how the teacher becomes creative by changing the device and situations learning.

The proposed methodology, the project inspired POGO , is to build ahead of a deployment activity model of teachers in a baseline before presenting the computer and its potential. Scenarios using the computer will then be built based on the model of the proposed activity.
This study will take place in a school Robespierre Saint-Denis (93) with a group of five teachers from cycle 3 (CE2, CM1 and CM2).

From January to March, meetings will be held to build the model of the activity of teachers and usage scenarios. From March to June the XO computer will be used in class, thirty XOs will therefore be made to that effect. Observations will be conducted by two students achieving a Masters in Education Research at the PCU .

Françoise Decortis, Professor of Ergonomics,
Team design, creativity, skills and practices, Paragraph laboratory, University of Paris 8
Sandra Nogry, Lecturer in Psychology of Learning
Team Understanding, Reasoning and Knowledge Acquisition, Laboratory Section, UC

The XO 1.75 is the latest computers from the OLPC foundation. OLPC France is fortunate to have a preview for a few weeks, a beta of 2 models of this machine. Detailed review of the machine and the changes it brings.

On the XO form is identical to the 1.75 XO XO 1.0 and 1.5 that succeeded it: it's always the little green computer launched in 2007. It thus inherits the same hull as his elders and he incorporates the main elements: same screen dual mode (PixelQi), even rubber keyboard, TouchPad same as the XO 1.5 and even ports (3 USB, 1 headphone, 1 microphone and 1 SD slot).

In fact it is in its internal components including motherboard that XO 1.75 makes its revolution. The XO 1.0 had an AMD processor, the XO 1.5 had a VIA processor. While two were based on an x86 architecture is that found on our PC or Mac. The XO 1.75 it is based on a Marvell processor with ARM architecture is the architecture that supports most of our smartphones and tablets. Advantage of this type of processor: it is cheaper than x86 and they consume much less energy (hence their use on thin clients). Two very important benefits for the XO.

Energy side, while it is too early to have a benchmark full consumption of 1.75 XO. He promises to consume even less than his elders (for the record that are already among the most efficient computer market), we have for example recently saw a 1.75 XO feeding directly (without battery) on a solar panel.

A clock equal power, the ARM processor is also much swifter than equivalent x86 processor. We have performed a comparative test of the starting time of 3 machines: 1.75 XO, XO XO 1.5 and 1.0. The XO 1.75 arrives undisputed leader. Speed ​​also notes that the implementation of various activities and or shutdown.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnt5rw

Another feature of XO XO 1.75 compared to 1.0, memory storage is provided by the MMC instead of strips welded to the motherboard. The advantage is that its size (from 4GB to 8GB) can be chosen to the command without changing the architecture of the motherboard. The other advantage is that this type of memory is less subject to variations in market prices of flash memory (a very important point as well). On model B1 we have that memory MMC can also be completed via an internal SD card (plus an external SD card on port).

Finally the XO 1.75 features a new component found in some standard on smartphones today: a 3-axis accelerometer. That is to say, a component that detects the orientation of the machine, but a simple gadget that allows already to consider recreational uses in activities. Here a small example game developed with Etoys.

On the software side, use an ARM processor has one drawback: the binary code generated on an x86 processor is not binary compatible with an ARM processor. Fortunately, Sugar, the operating system which powers the XO is based on a GNU Linux Fedora. However, Fedora has been focused not only on x86 but also on ARM processors. Thus, the latest version of Sugar for the XO (11.3.0) which is based on Fedora 14 is fully functional on the XO 1.75, although some settings, being resolved, are still required (driver support specific XO ).

Regarding the different activities developed for previous versions of the XO, they run well for most of the XO 1.75. Indeed, the development language of choice for Sugar is the development language Python is an interpreted language and therefore completely independent of the binary and processor type. Only problem arise activities compiled for x86. During our tests it was the case of activity kiwiX , Oo4kids and RiverHex . Their port to the XO 1.75 will require recompilation or repackaging.

The XO 1.75 is a natural evolution of the XO, it offers a refreshing components while preparing the ground for the future XO 3.0 will inherit most of its components (including processor). In short, the new in continuity!

We have just learned with sadness the death of Jose Alanoca Laura Henry, a member of the Peruvian translation team for the project Aymara Sugar.

José Manuel had participated in the 2011 Sugar Camp Lima , co-organized by the Sugar Labs Peru and Escuelab .
He was an enthusiastic contributor to the location of the Sugar Learning Platform in Aymara .

The disappearance of José Henry is a great loss both to the Sugar community, worldwide, for the Aymara community. His work as a volunteer, was central to enable stakeholders - students, teachers and families - of the educational community Aymara, Peru, to appropriate educational tools developed by the Peruvian volunteers, particularly around teams "Somos Azucar" Escuelab.

Community OLPC France is following with interest for several years, the work around the OLPC / Sugar in Peru:

* Sugar Camp in Lima (Peru)

* Reading: the XO in schools in Peru

* Publication of " The XO computer in the classroom ", a French translation of the manual" The XO Laptop en el Aula "/" The XO Laptop in the Classroom "by Professor Salas Peruvian Sdenka Zobeida Pilcomayo.

The new version of the learning tool of the OLPC XO should be presented at the upcoming CES in Las Vegas (10-13 January 2012).

Already, information on the characteristics of the successor of previous generations ( 1 XO , XO 1.5 , 1.75 XO ) XO computer information on web.

A detailed presentation is given in French on the blog Blogeee.net:

And here is the tablet OLPC XO 3.0 to $ 100

And ... in English:

XO-1.75, XO-3, Nell? - What Will OLPC at CES 2012 Show Next Week?

A video (source: OLPC XO 3.0 tablet preview: prints, video, and pictures ):

Information on the prototype can be seen on:
XO 3 A1

To be continued, especially on the blog armdevices.com , where it is highly likely that
we may have the scoop of a video showing the new XO.

The opportunity to assess progress since the "Children's Machine" by Seymour Papert : " Mindstorms: Childrens, Computers and Powerful Ideas "(" Burst of the mind: computers and learning ") (1980) and, further still, in 1972, the Dynabook to Alan Kay , developing an idea dating back to 1968.

This paper presented a design situation Dynabook:

Drawing of the Dynabook (1972)

And a sketch ...:

Dynabook

Finally, a prototype was built 20 years later:

It shows a reconstruction of the Dynabook, whose idea was presented in the article by Alan Kay (1972): A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages

What a long way ...

Number 10 in the journal School Digital publishes a four-page article on the work we do for three years in Nosy Komba. The article (written by Bastien and reviewed by the entire association OLPC France) returns synthetically on the challenges and successes of this small deployment ... to read to learn in a few words the meaning we give to our work!

Read the article: Guerry http://lumiere.ens.fr/ ~ / a-computer-per-child-a-nosy-komba.html

Context

Danone Research and OLPC France have collaborated to develop a software educational game about nutrition. This collaboration took the form of hiring by Danone Research a student co-supervised by Danone Research and OLPC France. The course ran for six months from April to October 2011. The student was Stefanie Nobel, an engineering student at the ETH. Supervision Danone was directed by Jean-Michel Antoine, Director Nutrition Expert at Danone Research. Supervision OLPC France was directed by Lionel Laske, president of the OLPC France.

The internship report is available here . Functional and technical presentation of the activity and took place in September 2011 during the SugarCamp # 2 hosted by OLPC France, the video is available here . Finally the sources of the application are available here .

Daniel Carasso Center of Danone

Objectives

The objectives of the program were:

• Enable children to understand the importance of nutrition on their health without using the theoretical concepts of nutrition (food category, calories, ...),
• To inspire children to diversify their diet and discover new tastes, taking pleasure in developing recipes and share them with peers,
• Allow Danone and other members of the scientific information gathering anonymous food to better understand dietary patterns of children in different countries.

Classroom in Nosy Komba

Software Guidelines

Software Guidelines were laid during a workshop led by Olivier Maurel of Danone Communities in February 2010 at L'Atelier BNP. The proceedings of this workshop is available here .

The principle for the game is to live a virtual avatar representing the child. The health status of the avatar is represented by the value of different gauges. The child can prepare recipes and feed the avatar to improve the value of the gauges. The child can also perform various physical activities to their avatar to decrease the value of the gauges. By optimizing the best absorption of nutrients and practice activities, the child can concretely materialize the importance of nutrition on the health of his avatar, and then on himself.

The diagram below describes the key components the software produced.

The following sections detail these elements.

The food base

For this program it is necessary to have the nutritional values ​​of different foods that will be used by the child. Specifically we chose to use the decomposition of each food in 22 essential components: water, total energy, Protein, Fat, Sugar, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, ... Each value is fixed for 100 g.

These values ​​must be available for raw foods (eg tomato), for processed foods (eg tomato puree) and processed foods because they contain additional additives (including sugar or salt) added at the factory .

As described below, these values ​​may be indicated by a director of software, however, the base values ​​are provided in the software. These values ​​are derived from the database of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (detail here ) that contains over 7000 foods and we have taken part in the software.

The basis of activities

Activities are the different physical activities that you can do to make your avatar. These are sports, travel, games, ... These activities lead to a tired child and therefore nutrient uptake. For simplicity, we therefore considered that an activity could be represented by the set of values ​​of the constituents of which he leads the expense (a kind of "food negative"). We calculated these values ​​for 1 minute of each activity and we have inserted in the software.

On the same principle, we assume that the disease is a specific activity which will cause more expense than normal.

The engine

The heart of the software consists of an engine that represents the effects of diet. The objective of this engine is both to provide a realistic representation of the mechanisms of digestion and absorption and spending of nutrients, while providing an algorithm simple enough to be integrated into a computer game.

Specifically the engine relies on the food base and the base of operations to calculate intake and expenditure of nutrients and enhance the status of various gauges of the avatar. The engine also relies on it for a table of daily values ​​of the various nutrients necessary for a child s.

It should be noted however that the engine required some simplifications. For the energy spent during of an effort by example, it may come either carbohydrates, either lipids. We spend 100% of the sugar when making an intensive sports activity and not usual, against 40% sugar and 60% fat when doing a sporting activity and low-intensity routine. To simplify this specific example, the engine now considered an expense and therefore not usually an expense of sugar.

Achieving revenue

One goal of the game is to raise revenue. This occurs in the two-stage game:

• selections of food ingredients the recipe,
• realization of the recipe by preparing and mixing the food.

For reasons of time, only the food selection was developed in the game today This selection is to choose on different displays (fruits and vegetables, meat, dairy products and other products) ingredients. Specifically, we select a booth and then click on the image of the selected food or using the text search engine to find it. Finally, we choose the desired amount in grams or number of "servings" that we feel the weight for each food. All foods are added to a selected list will be used for preparing the recipe.

The realization of the recipe is to combine food and utensils using different method of preparation (cutting, cooking, ...). Each step is automatically recorded on the recipe book to be shared.

The parameterization

From one country to another, there are a variety of ways to feed themselves. Since its conception, the game was expected to reflect this diversity. It is materialized by setting options of the game at different levels.

Primarily through food. The food base comes standard and can easily be adapted to provide only specific foods in countries where the game will be deployed. The composition of food in their elementary constituents can also be modified to take account of local varieties or environmental factors modifying their absorption. The interface of choice of food can also be configured so that the food visible primarily on the stands are the most common foods in the country.

Finally, just like the food, the basis of available activities (games, sports, ...) is configurable as well as the expense of nutrients they cause to reflect such climatic conditions in which they are used.

Traceability

To allow the collection of information on dietary patterns of children, each action of the game is drawn. And food intake by the avatar and the achievement of physical activities are recorded in a log file detailing the composition of elements come into play

Even if it is not yet the case in the current version of the game, the goal is to collect and forward such information for the purpose of dietary survey. One can imagine for example measuring the composition of one or more meals a set of children for several days or weeks.

Demonstration

The video below dessousprésente a sequence of full use of the game At first we chose its food (here's Beef, pasta, cheese, yogurt, peaches and a glass of water), they consume what increases the counters of the avatar.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xma66e

Then performs an activity (here a presentation for 1 h) which causes the decrease of the counters.

Conclusion

The game has been achieved, although it is only a prototype operational, we can validate the concepts that we try to demonstrate:

1. It is possible to represent and understand the concepts of nutrition on health in a fun way. With a configurable engine based on a food base and a base of operations, with some simplifications can represent the digestion, absorption and spending of nutrients by the body.
2. It is possible to trace food and children's expenses to consider an anonymous collection or a food survey.

We have not had time to stage the pleasure of discovering new tastes and sharing by implementing the functions for creating recipe. The first models that we have designed these features, however, let us think that it is quite feasible.

The result will be to transform this prototype into a full realization of both functionally and in design and ergonomics to make it attractive to children.

OLPC recently released a major update of its deployment guide - the old version is still on the wiki .

This new version shows the different stages of OLPC deployment in detail and addresses all issues that must be asked before, during and after: the establishment of infrastructure (power, network, etc..) to that team (educational, technical, etc.). through customs matters and delivery.

When SugarCamp that we organized in Paris, we have "wikifié" this deployment guide, which was just a PDF. This first step allowed us to consider the second and most important: its translation into French ... and we are pleased to announce that this guide has been fully translated, and it is finally available for download in several formats:

• The OLPC deployment guide 2011 PDF
• The OLPC deployment guide 2011 in HTML in one page
• The OLPC deployment guide 2011 in HTML format, with one page per section , and the ability to leave comments

Photo: Rubén Rodríguez, Creative Commons 3.0 reconocimiento España. Source: http://quidam.cc/fotos/24-11-2011/sugarcamp-lima

"The inventors, artists, educators and citizens" are invited to participate in the 2011 Sugar Camp Lima on 18 and 19 November in Lima, Peru. Participants will work on the "Sugar learning platform designed for the XO laptop in translating content in Quechua and Aymara during a visit to hackers. Registrations are open. To learn more about this initiative, see the personal blog of Juan Arellano [link in Spanish].

Source: Peru: 'Sugar Camp Lima' Aims to Give Children a Learning Platform in Their Native Language

Furthermore, a first image of Sugar was created for this occation. It is presented and narrated in Spanish:

Presentacion Sugar by codewiz

Source: Sugar introduction (in Spanish, from Peru)

An ISO image is available here .

The event photos are available here .

Recent news from the OLPC project in the Southern Cone countries (Uruguay, Argentina) and Uruguay in particular, is rich, including the publication of two books and a video documentary recounting the experiences of setting implementation of the Plan Ceibal in primary schools and secondary schools in Uruguay, both in general education in special education, destined for students living with various disabilities.

Social mobilization for the Plan Ceibal

The first book is a compilation of a group of 30 authors from different countries, involved in social support project "One laptop per child" in Uruguay and in the world.

This project has several objectives:

Movilización social para Ceibal. Miradas nacional e internacional al contexto of proyectos of a computador por niño [Social mobilization for the Plan Ceibal. Look at the national and international projects "One laptop per child"]. Collective Cyranec Günther (ed.), Pablo Flores. Montevideo, 2010: UNESCO. 237 p.

* Source
* Download
* Summary

ICT and special education

The OEI (Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura / Organization of Latinos Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), has just published a study on the project CEIBAL of Uruguay:
Laptop, para la Educación Especial andamiaje. Guía práctica Computadores móviles en el currículo [The laptop, shoring for special education. Practical Guide to laptops in the curriculum]. Montevideo, 2011: UNESCO / CREATICA / Plan Ceibal. 307 p. ISBN: 978-92-9089-151-2.

* Source
* Download

The authors of this guide, Roxana Elizabeth Castellano and Rafael Montoya Sánchez, interested in a project under the auspices of Unesco, giving a broad theoretical and practical orientation for educators in their use of ICT. The authors draw on examples using laptops and their learning environment XO OLPC Foundation. Each of the eight units of this book has a central question, which is the guiding principle of teaching.

The first two units, a first thematic concern: "Building capacity of teachers and students":
* Unit 1. Laptop, intelligence and brain
* Unit 2. Research experiences crystallizing

The research program "Micro: an inclusive curriculum axis" devotes three to eight units to deepen the dialogue about the goals of different areas in the curriculum.

* Unit 3. Autonomy, and social skills sensomotricité
* Unit 4. Communication and Language
* Unit 5. Mathematics
* Unit 6. Domain knowledge of the natural and social environment
* Unit 7. Field of artistic knowledge
* Unit 8. Routes based on special educational needs

Can be found in this book illustrates the use of Sugar activities in curriculum development tailored to the needs of special education.

Documentary "A Laptop Per Child - Uruguay"

The Uruguayan-Austrian director Julieta Rudich made a documentary about the program CEIBAL Uruguay. Broadcast on Austrian television channel ORT, this documentary is available in English (with a transcript available here ).

Last September we did hand the tremendous work of the hands- on adaptation of a small telescope in the XO and its use for an introduction to astronomy. In the second SugarCamp, we were honored to receive Pierre Lena, co-founder of The hands-on, came to the point with us on this project.

Pierre Lena returned to what motivated this idea, the technical aspects of designing the mini-telescope and educational activities devised around. These are detailed in a presentation of Emmanuel Di Folco available online ( here for the English version.)

This project is original in more ways than one. First, because the hands-usually favors direct contact with nature, rather than its representation by means of an instrument. Then because it is planned to follow up this project in Uruguay, and these glasses may be widely distributed.

The discussion that followed the presentation addressed precisely how the hands-on OLPC and encouraged opportunities for collaboration between teachers at the country level and that of the planet - a challenge to the hand pulp and OLPC have in common, but the two initiatives which respond in very different ways.

The hands-on us generously donated a working prototype of these glasses, which was presented to Daniel Drake as a reward for his contributions in the second SugarCamp. Alex Kleider, voluntary OLPC, then bought five more glasses and found ways to adapt the support made by the hands-on fix for this new model to XO. If you want to get glasses of this type (for less than $ 65 + shipping), please write us .

These five glasses were given away as prizes at the summit in San Francisco in late October. The lucky recipients are: Sameer Verma for his organization of the summit, Daniel Drake and Gary Martin for their contributions to the activity Sugar Moon, Kevin Gordon, SJ Klein, OLPC Foundation to thank the support given to this summit, and Laura Reynal, a member of OLPC France, who will present these other glasses to the association.

It is also at the summit that the government of California stated that October 22 would now be a "day OLPC" (OLPC day). The telescope is listed next to the statement!

The statement "OLPC Day" (October 22) and the telescope of the hands-on XO

Below is the full video of the presentation by Pierre Lena:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xm2s3v

See also the interview with Alex Kleider small summit OLPC San Francisco:

Watch this space!