Rwandan resident Imfra Mwunvaneza says her XO laptop is the favorite thing she owns
by Devin Holterman
written: August 7, 2009
During the summer of 2009 a total of 30 teams from One Laptop Per Child will span the continent of Africa with personal laptops called the XO. The teams are distributing the laptops and teaching young students and teachers how to use them.
Based in Kampala, Uganda a small team of three OLPC volunteers from the United States: Kristen Watkins, Victoria Cheng and Jeff Xing have partnered with a NGO called Safe Alternatives for Youth and their representative Sarah Hady, to distribute and teach the XO laptops to the children and teachers of Kampala Primary School.
The teachers of the school were the first focus and the OLPC team spent three weeks with the teachers, showing them how the XO works.
Students in primary grades 4, 5, and 6 will receive their own XO and lessons on how to use them. Currently the team of volunteers keep the laptops with them, but each student is entitled to their own machine which they use each day.
The lessons are one hour in length and cover a range of topics, on day three of the teachings the students would learn how to open a document and write two sentences. They would save the document, open a document in draw and illustrate those two sentences, upon completion of their illustrations they would save the drawings and properly shut down the laptops.
Prior to arriving in their respective placement countries, the volunteers arrived in Kigali, Rwanda for a training course and the opening of OLPC’s Global Learning Center, they heard from Rwandan President Paul Kagame as well as the MIT professor who founded OLPC, Nicholas Negroponte. An update on the Rwanda stage of the project.
The OLPC project has been running for roughly two years and has worked in Afghanistan, Uruguay, the Australian Outback and now throughout Africa. Check this blog, following the OLPC project.
They have been far from free of criticism, below are some links concerning the many criticisms of the project:
- A relatively friendly criticism, interesting anecdote too, here.
- A wiki page full of criticism, some worth reading, some not.
- The Walrus chimes in here, perhaps a little harsh for a project with such good intentions, but Jon Evans makes a valid argument.
What follows is a look into an hour long session with the XO and the Kampala Primary School team, which is one of three OLPC teams in Uganda.
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