Gradually the school regain its normal rhythm to Nosy Komba. A new teacher Raisa Mirana replaced. This is our champion Lalatiana that loads from the beginning of the training in the use of the XO.

Courses with the XO has also picked up for children. In November, six two-hour sessions have occurred with the different classes in the school.

For the smallest of CP1 and CP2 (a sixty children) who discover the XO, it is to learn the operation of the machine and the various basic operations (open, turn, turn).

For means of EC (twenty), learning to write with Write, elementary mathematics with Memory and discovery of sounds with TamTam Mini. Children also take pictures with the Record activity.

For larger activity Writing is acquired and used to write texts in French and Malagasy. They also carry small stories with Save the activity.

Influenza A, influenza called "Forte" in Madagascar in memory of the Spanish flu, also affects Nosy Komba. She has not spared Lalatiana that was absent a week and soon returned to replace the Mirana, ill turn. Many children are also affected and do not go to school. Needless to say, the issue of vaccination does not arise there!

Thank you to Jean, who has just returned from Nosy Komba and makes us share the photos that illustrate this re-entry ticket.

The office suite OOo4Kids , specially designed for children ages 7 to 12, is now available (see the announcement " OOo4Kids.activity.xo is available! ") for the educational platform Sugar and the XO.

OOo4Kids Sugar platform on the XO

Compatible with OpenOffice and, consequently, with the format of the Microsoft Office suite, it offers students and college students a powerful tool for their needs and get rid of the cumbersome office suites which it is based.

Windows Installation Wizard (via the Wine emulator under Mandriva)

A viable alternative for homework

"It has everything a great" one might say OOo4Kids! Tools for formatting text and pages, multilingual correction tools, easily accessible.

Correction and formatting

The formatting of documents is easy and meets most requirements.

Formatting (OOo4Kids Writer - XO / Sugar)

Documents created by the students benefit from advanced features such as spell checking / grammar integrated.

Correction (OOo4Kids Writer - XO / Sugar)

A wide range of documents

Different types of documents can be created by students: Writer with texts, graphics with Draw, Impress presentations, spreadsheets with Calc.

Creation of various documents (via Wine Windows emulation)

Teachers can annotate and correct the work or duties performed by their students in the classroom or at home.

Annotation of the teacher on duty (OOo4Kids Writer - XO / Sugar)

A library of valuable components, including graphics, helps illustrate course materials or presentations.

OOo4Kids Draw (gNewSense / Debian on Mips netbook "Yeeloong" of Lemote)

Document templates, originally designed for OpenOffice, are also used.

Library of templates

As here, the spreadsheet "Calc":

Using a model in OOo4Kids Calc (Mandriva on Mips netbook of Emtec Gdium)

Similarly, assistants facilitate the work of students, allowing them to concentrate on the task assigned by the teacher.

Impress Presentation Wizard (Debian x86)

Various predefined layouts are available.

Library layouts Impress (Debian x86)

A comprehensive online help these valuable assistants to accompany the teacher in carrying out educational materials.

Online Help OOo4Kids

The choice of the opening

True to the open source approach, respecting the principles of freedom of teachers, following OOo4Kids is part of a coherent sense of openness.

The opening of formats

A teacher asks her students to perform work or pay his respects "on computer" can now take advantage of the many filters and conversion of documents is no longer a prisoner of any proprietary format.

Many backup formats (OOo4Kids Writer - XO / Sugar)

The multiplicity of platforms

OO4Kids be used on many systems, including (among the tested configurations):

• different architectures (x86 and MIPS),
• multiple operating systems: Mac OSX (not tested here) Debian, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, Windows (the latter performed here in emulation via Wine)
• different hardware platforms (laptop, netbook, XO).

An environment that adapts to the user level

OOo4Kids interface, designed from the ground for novice users, adapts to their level of expertise through a customization feature, accessible in the Options. Thus, the user can choose the level of use that suits him (option "Level") or "Newbie", "Medium" or "Expert". Depending on the level chosen, certain functions will be visible or hidden in menus and dialog boxes.

Level selection The user has (OOo4Kids, Ubuntu)

The opening of the project

The project is a community project OOo4Kids original, which fills a gap in the range of tools aimed at children of primary and early years of college. Carried by a small team of developers and teachers, it is designed by teachers for these students, and, by extension, to their teachers. The project is particularly visible on the wiki OOo4Kids .

Join them and support them ...

Wiki OOo4Kids

On Wednesday, September 16 OLPC France was invited to the conference presenting the OLPC Day at the University of Poitiers. It was through the European Summer Campus 2009 organized by the Department (IME Media Engineering for Education) Faculty of Humanities and Languages. This year the theme of this week's conference was "The phones at school: the ubiquitous revolution? "

The conference was to be ensured by Bastien but he had to apologize because of a last minute difficulty. Following a call on the list OLPC France, Erwan inherited this presentation but with only a few hours to prepare and take his car. Fortunately, Severin Lemaignan, among others, was very quick to tell the media in a presentation he had already put online .

This is a report of Erwan:

There were about 50 to 60 listeners.

• Students, including many Hispanics as part of the Erasmus project.
• Academics and teachers.
• Africans trying to gauge the interest of OLPC for learning projects in their countries / governments.

I brought my 3 XO obtained through the G1G1 that I circulated so that people can touch them. Good idea because only Philippe Larcher and was another big success as usual.

After the introduction of David Pucheu, I made the first presentation.

I explained that:

• Bastien apologized for his unavailability last minute.

• I thanked Severin Lemaignan giving me a ready-made PDF.

• I've been following the OLPC project on a blog on the east coast of the United States and have not necessarily the critical distance that seemed to await David Pucheu.

I then quickly moved on constructivism that I do not know. This seems to be the interest of Severin. Almost all the quotes come from its support of team members Seymour Papert.

I added my own twist on the appearance of screens cheap, not gourmet, readable in ambient light and the mesh network designed so that students access by hop over to mirror web server of the school. I talked about and SugarLabs PixelQI.

Then I got a barrage of questions from 10 to 15:

• Why not manufacture in the country of deployment?
• Is it possible to create localized content?
• What does it cost?
• It does you left it too expensive for my country?
• Are there safeguards to block Internet content?
• What are the lessons learned?
• ...

Much of these issues were better answers by various stakeholders in the rest of the day.

My presentation computer was seen as highly complementary to those that followed and I was very interested. She at least had the merit of conveying the excitement surrounding the OLPC project.

The organizers seemed very pleased with the discussion generated during this day.

The videos of the day are available on webTV, University of Poitiers .

• Presentation of OLPC - Erwan Hamon.
• One Laptop Per Child - World Digital Solidarity Agency - Destiny Tchehouali.
• Example of use of OLPC in Vienna - Philippe Larcher, a school teacher.
• OLPC presentation of local programs in Africa (Burkina Faso and Mali) - In videoconferencing, Benjamin Sia was betrayed by the technique but Salimata Fandjalan very well able to convey his enthusiasm.
• The circulation of representations of the OLPC project in Peru - William Isaac, account of a field study on the perception of advanced XO by teachers and parents by region and mode of a Deployment.
• Analysis of OLPC deployment: Viewpoints - Bruno Devauchelle, Thierry Pasquier Pucheu and David made the synthesis of the day with some constructive criticism and other provocations that seemed to continue the discussion.

Support for conference Erwan.

The association OLPC France will be present at Educatec-Educatice , 18, ​​19 and 20 November. We are greeted on the stand of SCEREN, among other projects related to free software - see the interview with Jean-Pierre Archambault on the excellent Framablog . Also an opportunity to (re) discover Sugar , the learning platform free, works on the XO as on other computers (netbooks and smartbooks ...)

Do not miss the presentation of the project Nosy Komba , 25 November at 19.00 in the ESG (Paris). A great opportunity to meet volunteers from the association "G Heart" with that OLPC France has worked for the deployment of 100 computers in Madagascar, project qu'OLPC France continues to support all year.

Hope to meet you!

In recent days the press and mailing lists around the OLPC project (including that of OLPC France ) echo the recent interview with Nicholas Negroponte on xeconomy.com .

I must say that it is not less than three versions of XO therein mentioned! It therefore seemed necessary to make a little explanation text and specify what those different versions of the XO that hide very different realities.

It should be noted first that this article is that our analysis, and it does not correspond to a "roadmap" of the official OLPC foundation.

A small diagram will help clarify the issue already (click to view details):
(Note: This article and the following diagram is updated regularly with the newest of the foundation)

Existing machines

Two versions of the XO currently exist: the XO-1 and XO-1.5.

The XO-1 is the first machine series which was produced by the foundation. This is the machine that you know and all that was produced almost 2 million copies.

The XO-1 is equipped with an AMD Geode processor at 400Mhz, 256MB RAM, 1GB of flash memory, a dual screen mode and WiFi mesh (see the features detailed here ).

The XO-1 was announced in November 2005 at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis. It was during this time he had his little crank

Before it is available in its final version, the XO-1 was preceded by five pre-series models (1 Alpha and Beta 4 versions):

• A in April 2006
• B1 in November 2006,
• B2 in February 2007,
• B3 in May 2007,
• B4 in June 2007.

Three updates have minor technical took place:

• C1 in August 2007,
• C2 in November 2007,
• CL1A in June 2009

The XO-1.5 is a technical evolution of the XO-1 from which it takes the design completely.

The XO-1.5 is equipped with a VIA C7-M 1GHz, 1GB RAM, 4GB Flash, the same dual-mode screen that the XO-1 and WiFi. Its detailed specifications are available here .

The XO-1.5 was announced on the mailing list OLPC in April 2009 but we already find traces on one of the first posts of this blog in May 2008 !

The XO-1.5 went into production in May 2010. Several pre-series models have been created previously:

• A1 in May 2009,
• A2 in July 2009,
• B1 in August 2009,
• B2 in September 2009
• [UPDATE 15/11/2009] B3 in November 2009

A first test of the machine B2 was produced by OLPC France.

Three updates in the production model have occurred:

• [UPDATE 16/12/2009] C1 in December 2009
• [UPDATE 30/05/2010] C2 in January 2010
• [UPDATE 30/05/2010] C3 in May 2010

It is important to note that the XO-1.5 replaces the XO-1 whose production has ceased. In short, future deployments will therefore use the XO-1.5.

[UPDATE 20/07/2010] The XO-1.5 HS is the declination of XO-1.5 announcement for older children.

Future directions

Chronologically the next generation of XO, which was announced in May 2008 is the XO-2.

The XO-2 has a lot of attention with its innovative design of dual-screen e-book. An overview is available on the Foundation wiki . A "mock-up", ie a non-functional model, has also been seen at the economic summit in Davos in January 2009.

Since the announcement of the XO-2, several manufacturers, such as, Asus , have proposed a prototype netbook with dual screen.

Alas, in the interview xeconomy.com , Nicolas Negroponte announced that the idea of developing the XO-2 was discarded because its production cost is too high.
Instead of the XO-2, Nicolas Negroponte announced two other concepts: the XO and the XO-1.75-3.
The XO-1.75 is an evolution of XO-1/XO-1.5 but with an ARM processor instead of a processor based on x86 architecture.

One of the main advantages of this type of processor that is specifically designed for low power computers. This is what type of processor that powers the majority of the SmartPhone : Nokia, BlackBerry, Palm and even the famous iPhone .

It is also interesting to note, especially for those who still believe that Microsoft is the devil behind the OLPC, Windows 7 does not work on ARM processors and its compatibility with Windows 8 is far from assured.

Instead, Sugar based on GNU Linux is already running on ARM processors. Moreover, as it relies primarily on interpreted code (Python), it is insensitive to changes in architecture.

The XO-1.75 is quite close to the XO-1.5 and less ambitious than the XO-2, it seems reasonable to think that could emerge. The foundation actively working on the XO-1.5, however it seems hard to imagine that a prototype is available before the last quarter of 2010.
[UPDATE 21/11/2010] A first prototype A1 was launched in October 2010.
[UPDATE 02/08/2011] A second prototype A2 was launched in January 2011.
[UPDATE 31/12/2011] A third prototype A3 was launched in June 2011.
[UPDATE 31/12/2011] A machine beta B1 was launched in July 2011.
[UPDATE 31/12/2011] A pre-series version of C1 was launched in September 2011.

[UPDATE 01/21/2012] Read the test of XO 1.75 here .

The XO-3 was described succinctly by Nicholas Negroponte . It would be great as a single sheet of plastic paper, very fine, tight, with a reflective and transmissive color display without opening. It consumes just one watt and cost $ 75.

The XO-3 could be available in 2012.

Clearly, the XO-3, as was the XO-2, is only a concept, a direction studied by the foundation. So do not expect more information for now. The next step is probably a "mock-up" of the type used for the presentation photos of XO-2.

[UPDATE 23/12/2009] Images from the mock-up have been published by Yves Behar on his site .
[UPDATE 30/05/2010] The foundation announced a partnership with Marvell to produce by January 2011 a first version of a tablet that would be the basis of the XO-3.
[UPDATE 31/12/2011] A first prototype A1 (just the motherboard) was born in December 2011.

Or olpc OLPC?

Now that we have completed this overview of hardware and trails studied so far by the foundation, it is useful to understand its operation, to insist on another part of the interview with Nicholas Negroponte : the separation of the foundation in two different entities. As well commented our friend Christoph Derndorfer in OLPC News , this is an important point to understand the view that we have just presented.

The foundation has indeed split into two entities:

• The association supports olpc deployment, developments and support,
• The OLPC foundation in charge of promoting the project and performed research and development.

The XO-1, XO-1.5 and, soon, the XO-1.75 is therefore the responsibility of the association olpc which will probably be the responsibility of Chuck Kane which is the current mission.
The XO-2 and XO-3 is they spring from the foundation that Nicholas Negroponte is the visionary. The foundation then feed the association, in the same way that the engineering departments of car manufacturers supply them with "concept cars". All "concept cars" do not see the day (that's what happened to the XO-2) but it is they who instil the dynamic automotive industry.
One can only hope that the OLPC foundation will continue to inspire ideas that will realize a little dream of one computer per child.

Note that the diagram at the beginning of the article is freely available here in PDF format and we will try to update it regularly as and when announcements of the foundation.