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

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

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

And here is the tablet OLPC XO 3.0 to $ 100

... And 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: print, video, and pictures )

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

To be continued so, especially on the blog armdevices.com , where there is a safe bet that
we will have the premiere of a video showing the new XO.

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

This article presented a drawing of the Dynabook situation:

Drawing of the Dynabook (1972)

... And a sketch:

Dynabook

Finally, a prototype was built 20 years later:

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

What a long way ...

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. Entries are open. For more information on 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

In addition, a first image of Sugar has been created for this occation. It is presented and commented in Spanish:

Presentacion Sugar by codewiz

Source: Sugar introduction (in genetics, from Peru)

An ISO image is available here .

Photos of the event are available here .

Recent events of the project One Laptop Per Child in the Southern Cone (Uruguay, Argentina) and Uruguay in particular, is rich, including the publication of two books and a video documentary recounting the experiences of the implementation 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 Plan for 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 (eds.), 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 Latino Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), has just published a study on the project CEIBAL of Uruguay:
Laptop, andamiaje especial para la Educación. Guía práctica Computadores móviles en el Currículo [The laptop, shoring for special education. Practical guide to laptops in the curriculum]. Montevideo, 2011: UNESCO / CREATIC / CEIBAL Plan. 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 guidance for educators in their use of ICT. The authors draw on examples using portable computers and their learning environment XO OLPC Foundation. Each of the eight units of the book pursues a central question, which is the common thread of learning.

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

The thematic "Micro: an axis of the curriculum" spends three to eight units to deepen the question of the objectives of the 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 the special educational needs

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

Documentary "A Laptop Per Child - Uruguay"

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 were part of the tremendous work of the hands- on adaptation of a small telescope for 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 the design of 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-on 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 following the presentation touched on just how 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 the new model to determine the XO. If you need glasses of this type (for less than $ 65 + shipping), please contact us .

These five glasses were given 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 the top, and Laura Reynal, a member of OLPC France, who will present the other eye to the association.

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

The statement "OLPC Day" (October 22) and the telescope's hands on the XO

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

http://www.dailymotion.com/videoxm2s3v

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

Watch this space!

The new XO 1.75, the latest version of the computer XO OLPC Foundation is output. You can make a more precise idea of this video (source armdevices.net ):

This new computer 1.75 XO features, like its predecessors (XO XO-1 and 1.5) of a GNU / Linux distribution based on Fedora , it uses the Learning Platform Sugar - and its many activities - and the desktop environment GNOME .
Hardware side, it uses a chip ARM Marvell's foundry, which can further reduce power consumption and increase, consequently, its autonomy. An asset to OLPC deployments in schools in developing countries.

Sugar is the educational platform developed by the community free Sugar Labs . This platform, available through many GNU / Linux distributions, is mainly developed in the programming language Python , known to be easily handled by beginners. Sugar is also disposnible form of bootable USB key, this version being called Sugar on a stick .

Sugar uses the distributed version control git . This system facilitates the collaboration of developers. GOURC is free software to view this collaboration: GOURC created a short film where you see people change the code, add files to directories, change the overall structure of the project, etc. .

We wanted to see what it was like the development of a particular activity, the activity Writing :

We also wanted to see what looked like the development of core modules, the basic elements of Sugar (sugar, sugar-base sugar-datastore, sugar-toolkit, sugar-presence-service sugar-artwork), so we have recovered the git repository of Marco Pesenti Gritti that merges these elements and produced this short film:

Casually, trying to understand these two short films, is to try to understand the history of Sugar and the platform. The first film shows for example how the arrival of Aleksey Lim at once stimulates the development of the activity. It also shows the involvement of Sammy, "the chief translator officer" of OLPC France It shows especially the ubiquity of Tomeu .

The second video shows the successive restructuring, all the way to greater simplification.

Overall, all this means that Sugar is a project alive. Enjoy!

Links to the source files / link to the source files:

• OLPC / Sugar Write activity GOURC raw output
• OLPC / Sugar Write activity GOURC visualization
• Sugar core modules output raw GOURC
• Sugar core modules GOURC visualization

Digital publishing is becoming a central theme and focal point for several industries. This finding results from a consistent body of evidence: the enrichment of the supply of electronic books, the emergence of computer-type digital tablet, the maturation of educational computing projects, particularly in developing countries .

The relevance of the questions that are raised by these developments is illustrated in the immediate present, for the following events:

A study day

The third BookCamp , a day of workshops devoted to digital books, will be held in Paris, September 25, 2010, the premises of the canteen .

"The idea of ​​this day is to offer half-day experiments and thoughts about the book and digital. A series of "hands on" to better share the impact of digital innovation in the book chain. An opportunity to meet and exchange among librarians, booksellers, publishers, authors, critics and readers with the slogan, "all participants". "

A manual for producing digital books

Written by James Simmons, the manual " Reading and Leading with Sugar "(version PDF draft) aims to democratize the production and reading e-books, including the Sugar learning platform of Sugar Labs , in the context of extension of the OLPC educational project, in which more than one million children in developing countries now have access.

Digital publishing in the South

An invitation to tender (in French and English ) coordinated by the International Alliance of independent publishers on the attainment of a study on digital publishing in the countries of the "South" has been opened. Project proposals are to be submitted to the organizer for August 29, 2010, the selection committee will deliver its opinion on 20 September 2010.

Clearly, the synergies of this theme of digital books with digital library projects communities Sugar / OLPC around the world, and in particular with the digital library projects that OLPC France is involved (such as our partnership with the Malagasy editor Prédiff, which resulted in the first book in digital Malagasy youth ), are obvious.

This theme is indeed seen in the context of the upcoming release of the tablet XO 3 , for which he will find content to offer OLPC deployments, especially in the Francophone world, Africa, the Caribbean, the space Indian Ocean and elsewhere.