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.

XO revolution

Thanks to the XO laptops, I have been able to offer 20 kids an eduational revolution. I am the director of Aziza's Place; an orphanage/learning center for children that primarily come from Stung Mean Chey( Phnom Penh's Dumpsite)  and we have been open for just under a year. Because of luck and circumstances I have been given the opportunity to offer the 20 children that live at Aziza's their own individual XO laptop. Thanks to the North American donors who purchased them through the One-Laptop-per-Child and because of Elaine Negroponte's curiosity I have been given this unique opportunity to offer 20 children a unique opportunity to learn in a new exciting way that puts the focus on the children's own creative exploration.

 I was invited to an education workshop which in the end I wasn't able to attend because I was sick. When I heard that the workshop was in fact a demo/tutorial on how the XO laptops work, I didn't feel as bad that I wasn't able to attend  because with 9 computers for 20 kids, Aziza's Place has one of the best child-computer ratio in Cambodia. I didn't feel that we really needed or deserved these $100 laptops, when we have so many computers and so many other schools in cambodia have so few, if any computers. What I didn't know or realize is that these laptops are not just laptops. In fact the XO offers children an exciting and new way of learning. 

Luckily for us, Elaine became interested in Aziza's Place when she heard that I was an artist. She came for a tour of Aziza's and even after I told her that I wasn't looking to receive any of the XO's, she thought that we should give them a try and so we decided on 6 laptops because we have 6 kids that don't go home on weekends like the other 14 children that have families and a home to go to on Saturday night. I was thinking that this would be a way of offering the 24/7 kids something else to do on Sundays while they wait for the rest of the kids(24/6) to come back on Sunday evenings. Sundays have been very long for these kids while the rest get a break from Aziza's and get to hang out with their siblings and parents.

The moment we opened up the boxes and started to play with the XO's I realized that these were much more than just fun, cool looking laptops. All of a sudden these kids had in their hands all the tools they would need to chat, make videos, take pictures, compose and edit music, paint and write,  learn math, science, geography...instead of playing games the laptops encourages to program and develop their own games! Because we have a focus on Arts and Education, this was exactly what I was looking for without knowing that they even existed!

Almost immediately I realized that we are going to have a problem though....the cat was out of the bag and there was no going back. I wanted to completely change our curriculum to incorporate the XO's into Aziza's Place. How could I take the laptops away from the kids and tell them to stop the creative exploration that they had embarked on and put everything on hold until next Saturday night? How could I restrict this creative explosion to only 6 out of the 20 kids?

Luckily for me(and especially the kids) Elaine had come to the same conclusion and the next day I had a wonderful email waiting for me in my Inbox saying that she had been thinking of our place and because of our small size Aziza's would be the perfect place to saturate with the XO and indeed give one laptop per child. She had 15 more XO's waiting for us to pick up! I was able to offer our kids a revolution. There was a before and an after at Aziza's, and here we were with the tools to completely change the way that these kids learn. My problem now was that we do not have enough time to let these kids explore the capabilities that the XO has to offer because they have a very full schedule from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed. In addition to attending Public School, the kids study English, Computer, Art, Math, Karate Khmer and traditional Khmer Dance. Including playtimes, three meals a day, movies twice a week the kids had everything scheduled from 6 AM to 9:30 PM. The only solution I could see was to incorporate the Xo into the classroom experience. Only Dance, Art and Karate would be left untouched, but other-wise, nothing would ever be the same. 

I am very excited about this, but because my background is in Art and not Education, I don't feel qualified to make or change a curriculum, but I see no other way but to have faith in the kids to explore for themselves and take advantage of the creative possibilities that these laptops offer them. Children are inherently curious and resourceful and I feel like if I could just give them the chance to explore, with some guidance, I don't se how we could go wrong. Elaine has been extremely encouraging and giving me the confidence to take the leap and trust the kids. Having said all that, I am still a little nervous about the unknown. It is very exciting, but at the same time I don't want to change so much that we are in fact distracting the kids. I don't believe this will be the case, but it is possible that we will have to have two different programs; one where the children are replacing some of their classes with the XO, but all of the kids will be incorporating the XO's in to their classes. Like I said, I do have faith in the kids and I guess I want to believe that the open-source community out there will keep developing software that will enable these kids to stay interested and focused once the honeymoon of the "new toy" feeling wears off.

It has been suggested to me that the English teacher could use the XO's to record the proper pronunciation for vocabulary. In our Math class, we have been letting the kids play the memorization games, and through the chat/networking activities, we have been able to keep the children interacting with the teachers, but now instead of raising their hands, they type the answers in the laptops  and post them for the teacher to see. The possibilities seem endless, especially once we get a handle on how these things work. 

I am very curious to see how other educators have been implementing these into the classroom. Any ideas or suggestions would be eagerly accepted. Does anybody know of any English Language software available for the XO's? Also, one things that has come up a lot s that sometimes the mouse (the track-pad) goes a little crazy and it becomes impossible to navigate. Sometimes it has gone away by itself and other times we have had to re-boot. The only other thing that comes to mind was that today, one of the computers was somehow locked on Cap-Lock and we couldn't figure out how to unlock and again, we had to re-boot.

A small price to pay as far as I am concerned for how much we are getting out of them.

Well, I wanted to share my story, but I will try to post my experiences up on this blog and I will definitely be asking questions from here in the future. The revolution has begun!

Nader Ebrahimi

Director of Aziza's Place

Phnom Penh

Welcome to Cambodia's computer learning community: free downloads

Do you know there is great free software to download so children and 'big children' can start programming straight away? These programming environments can be downloaded to any PC or Mac and they are the same environments as children are using on the XOs! If you are not working from an XO, please follow these links to download the applications, for Scratch: http://scratch.mit.edu/pages/download
and for Squeak (know as Etoys on the XO) : http://www.squeak.org
Both these sites are full of information and very cool project ideas.

Etoys is already installed on the XOs, but you will need to install Scratch as the Scratch activity has only just been made available for the XOs and it is still being tested. To download Scratch to your XO, please go to the Actvities Page on the olpc wiki and follow the instructions.

XO Machines Arrive in Cambodia

Over 500 XO machines arrived in Cambodia in late January as part of One Laptop Per Child's (OLPC) Give 1 Get 1 initiative. Thank you to all those donors in North America who made this possible! These machines have been distributed to several NGOs involved in child-centred learning. These children will be Cambodia's XO pioneers and the first of, hopefully, a growing number of Cambodian children who can learn, share and construct their own collaborative learning community.

The initial batch of XOs has already created a need for the recipients to ask questions and learn more about the XOs. This blogsite is dedicated to answering those questions and linking Cambodia's XO users to the world wide community.

The best link to all XO questions is: www.laptop.org Here you will find a link to the olpc wiki which includes technical advice, an Educators page and new activities to download to your machine. This wiki is community driven and once we all get the hang of things, I hope we can contribute our experiences and ideas to the olpc wiki.

So, please post your questions and ideas here, and we'll try to answer you questions, or point you in the right direction!