XO as a Tool

First Steps
We have just distributed over 100 XOs to children in grade 4, 5 and 6. We started by exploring the mesh network, identifying one's place in the network and learning how to share activities. For us, this is one of the most fundamental lessons of using XOs; sharing the learning with your friends. We wanted to highlight this in the initial stages so sharing would become part of the students' XO culture. This week will be a week of exploring, taking photos, updating, debugging, and trying out every single activity there is. It is a necessary step, then there will be a pause and then the children will begin to really use the XO. It will no longer be a new 'toy' but something they can build things with and pull out whenever they want. It will be a tool for them to use whenever they need it. It will allow their imagination to go wild...and it might just make Maths a little more comprehensible - or relevant.

Maths and Other Activities
Scratch is a good stepping off point for engaging the students in mathematical processes. Scratch is still in a very preliminary Beta testing stage on the XO, but it can be used even at this stage. Etoys is more suited to older children: grade 6 and above. For lesson ideas, please view the Scratch Math projects on the Scratch website. The numbers button reveals a whole world of mathematics. Children should first understand x-y coordinates and how positive and negative numbers affect programming and movement.

Also, if you download Scratch on to your own laptop it comes with some basic project examples. Simple activities, like making a sprite (for example, your students' names) get bigger and smaller requires an understanding of negative and positive numbers, as does making your sprite jump up and down.

The OLPC wiki is building up a resource centre for teachers to access. There are some good learning activities @ http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Category:Learning_Activities. There is also an XO Teachers' page under way.

Lots of project guides and information for ETOYS (known as Squeak off the XOs) can be found at http://www.squeakland.org/ go to school stuff> elementary. This may be too involved for your students at this stage but it can trigger some simpler project ideas.

Nader has found a great way to use the XO; to document and record information. For example, if the students are growing seeds, this can be documented and photos taken each day. For mathematics, use Scratch, or turtle art to explore geometry. How do you make a triangle, a square, a circle? Can the children program their Sprite to write their own initials? These are some of the initial steps Roger cited at the workshop in February. The memory game is a great way for students to practice arithmetic and have fun.

XO's to the zoo

After about a month of having the XO's, that feeling of the "new toy" has worn off. With the exception of our brightest most curious kids, the children were not engaged with their laptops as they were the first couple of weeks. I am to blame because I didn't have enough time to sort out some of our bugs and I wasn't able to get up to speed with updating and getting to know the XO's and ho to best use them within our curriculum. This has been solved with a trip to the Zoo. last friday we took the kids on a field trip to the zoo and asked them to bring their XO's and were to told to record or document their experience. This was the only instructions they were given and as a group we walked around the zoo and the kids instinctively recorded the sights and sounds and with out a doubt they all became re-engaged with their laptops in a much better way than I would have been able to think up. It was amazing to see how excited and focused they became by using the laptops as a documenting device. On the way back home almost all of the kids were going back and seeing what they had recorded and I must say that I was impressed with the batteries because almost all of them were recording video and playing the videos over and over again and none of the batteries died at the zoo, it wasn't until we were half way home that the batteries started to give out. We were at the zoo three hours and the ride back was about 90 minutes, so considering all the video use, this was pretty impressive. That night the kids were playing the sounds of chirping birds and monkeys beating their chests and comparing their photographs and i must say this was better than any photo class that I had participated in with the kids before because instead of talking about composition and what not, they had seen by trial and error what worked and what didn't.
This was no doubt a success in terms of re-engaging the kids with their laptops and aside from what I described earlier, the children have become more interested in what other activities can be done on the XO's. I have downloaded some new activities like scratch, connect and jump for the kids that are doing good in school (and don't need the extra study session we have at night after dance class.) It's as though we just opened the XO's for the first time , which is very gratifying to see.
Now, what i need is some help in coming up with ways to have the kids work on math or science projects because what I have been able to find within the activities is beyond their abilities, but we are off to a good start and I am still extremely excited about their excitement to learn and explore.

No Wi-Fi?

Ok, here is a partial update to some of the problems I was encountering with our XO's. One of my problems was that we don't have a Wi-Fi connection here at Aziza's and I couldn't get the computers online. I have now solved that by buying an $8 USB/Ethernet adaptor and at first it wasn't working, but after rebooting twice I was able to get online.

Another problem was that I couldn't see the USB Flash when it was connected to the XO laptops. Again, after rebooting a couple of times and Initializing the Flash to FAT32 format, i can now access the flash and this solves some of my issues and should help me in the future with updates and downloading software.

So, I still haven't solved some of the problems with the frozen keyboard and touch-pad, but I should note that they work fine with a USB keyboard and mouse. This is what i use on my personal XO because the keyboard is too small for my hands and I have always preferred the mouse to the touch-pad, but in the event that people out there have any problems with their keyboard or touch-pad, try plugging in external USB devices and they should work fine.
I also want to point out that the folks at laptop/support.org have been extremely helpful and have responded to my questions very fast. It is I that has not been able to make enough free-time to dedicate myself to reading all the available data out there regarding the XO's and get myself up to speed regarding the way these things work, but little by little I am getting myself familiar with them and the challenges don't seem as daunting as they seemed last week.

Technical Support for XOs

Technical help is available at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Support_FAQ. If you have specific technical questions about your XO, please email help@laptop.org.

Technical Solutions and a Plan for Support

Thank you for identifying the XO problems. I am sure we can find a solution to your bugs. There will always be glitches with new technology and new machines. There is an OLPC support forum: http://en.forum.laptop.org/, someone should be able to help you out. I think there are known issues with the keyboard for this build, I'll look into it.

Nader, you are one of the first to use the XOs. The machines for my school have not yet been distributed, so I can't say we're in the same boat -yet. Let's see what happens when these are unpacked!

-Has anyone else experienced these problems?

technical problems

Ok, the honeymoon has come to an end for some of our kids and their XO's. One of the computers wont start up with the Journal, otherwise it works, but there is no activity recorded... the keyboards of two other computers have stopped responding and two other computers flash a warning that the computer needs to be restarted, but it keeps flashing the same warning every-time we restart. The keyboard went out on one of the keyboards, but the next day it was working fine, other than that everything I just mentioned happened between last night and this morning.
Any suggestions?

By the way, for the keyboard problem, a day before it froze up, it was stuck in Cap locks until we restarted the computer, twice..

Fear and excitement of the unknown..

Ok, now that it has been 5 days since we introduced the XO to all the kids and staff, some interesting reactions I think are worth mentioning. The Computer teacher in particular feels threatened because I believe he feels as though his position as the Computer teacher has been diminished. One of our teachers that teaches English, Khmer(reading and writing) and Math has also expressed some skepticism because he feels that the children would rather "play" on their XO's rather than listen to the teacher. This attitude is understandable if you can see it from their point-of-view; The way they are teaching is the only way system in which they have been exposed to. This was how they learned and this is how they have been trained to teach and now I am telling them that some of our curriculum will be replaced by the XO's.
As of now, I am leaning towards creating two groups of students at Aziza's Place. One group will be going to all the same classes that they have had before, but in some cases they will use the XO's to write with instead of their notebooks...some of the classes will incorporate the chat networking capabilities to respond to questions and to do their homework, but they will still have their teachers and classrooms. Another group will have maybe 2-3 hours a day where instead of attending Math or Computer class they will be working with their XO's working on individual assignments and projects. These kids will be the ones that are doing good in school and don't need the extra Khmer and Math that we are offering at Aziza's. They will be given more freedom to choose between working on the XO's and attending the Computer class, for instance. Computer class will focus more on Photoshop, Flash for animation and Word for writing documents, but we will eliminate Excel or creating forms and documents which in reality 8 and 9 year olds can not apply into their daily lives. There truly is no need for them to get good at making spreadsheets and pie-charts until they are prepared to go into the workforce, but that is literally years away.
It should be pointed out that the younger administration assistants are fully embracing and excited about the possibilities that the XO have to offer. Aside from all the software programs, the chat feature is what has got all the kids and staff excited about. We are already using it to spread information back and forth and I think it is important to teach the children the value of an online community and the possibility of sharing information. It's a given, but the "chatting" has already been improving their English skills because it is giving them real-life situations that are more effective than the teacher giving them "examples" of when and how to use English.
With regard to creating 2 groups; I'm sure there are people out there who think this might not be a good idea and we should give all the kids the same opportunities to use the laptops as much as possible. I am flexible and plan on being receptive to this idea, but I think for now the two groups have already been created naturally; some kids are more curious than others. The kids that I am referring to are the same ones don't want to go to sleep because they would rather be exploring he XO's. They are not playing games, they are chatting or trying to compose music or make videos or just learn more about the XO's in general. I want to encourage all the kids to be curious and to explore but 8 or 9 of them don't really need any encouragement. They are learning faster because they are exploring more than the others. It's these kids that I want to start with in terms of giving them this tool and see what they come up with when left on their own to learn and explore. The other kids are also not doing as well in Public school and they are the ones that are benefiting more from the extra classes and the tutoring that is offered to them at Aziza's Place. And so by lightening up some of the classes by creating another group that will have assignments and projects to work on "on their own," the other remaining children will be receiving more time on an individual basis with their teachers. The kids that are "on the fence" (meaning they are curious to explore more on the XO's, but are not doing as well in class) will be encouraged to improve their studies so that they will be allowed to do the core XO sessions like the other kids. But again, the XO's have and will be incorporated into all the classes except for Dance, Art and Karate, its just that some of them will be learning more on their own while other kids will be able to receive more attention from their teachers in Computer, Khmer reading and writing and Math. None of the English teachers will be replaced by the laptops, but the XO's will be added as an extra tool to help them with their English. This is like having an advanced Algebra class while the other kids are in Math..once the kids in Math get better, then they could move up to Algebra....
I will try to keep updating this blog for all those that are interested in seeing how this wonderful, strange new journey unfolds.