Building the XO Learning Tablet | www.morphoss.com

This is a great project that I'm keeping an eye on: a kiwi company that has built a management interface for Android tablets. The big features for educators are parental controls, app curation and deployment, all of which will help educators who want an alternative to iPads, but also want a way to manage multiple devices and stay sane.



"Freeing an idea by One Laptop Per Child, based around a graphical design by The Fuse Project, Morphoss has spent the last year developing & building the user interface and related software for the XO Learning Tablet.

The project to build the XO Learning Tablet was a complex and demanding one, requiring us to delve deeply within the Android OS in order to provide parental controls, support tracking of usage by multiple children. Outside of the direct user interface development we also built web-based administration software to help OLPC track the inclusion and classification of over 100 third-party educational applications. At the same time we also contributed code and translations back to the free software community for a number of projects which are used within the product.

We're proud to have been a part of this process and look forward to continuing to work with One Laptop Per Child as the tablet revolution evolves and develops.

Visit http://www.xotablet.com/ for more information."

Seriously solar-powered OLPCs in Haiti

Great video on a large solar installation that charges 500 XO laptops at a time. The installation was completed by a team from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago, Green WiFi, and Haiti's National OLPC Coordinator and took place at EFACAP school in Lascahobas, Haiti.

"With the system having been designed and built to power 500 XO laptops it was - and very likely still is - the world's largest single-school solar laptop charging deployment."

OLPC goes Minimally Invasive

I don't think it's bizarre, I think it's genius. Sugata Mitra would probably like it too:

"The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project has devised a bizarre plan for deploying its new XO-3 tablet. The organization plans to drop the touchscreen computers from helicopters near remote villages in developing countries. The devices will then be abandoned and left for the villagers to find, distribute, support, and use on their own."

From Arstechnica 

Go Uruguay!!!

This is a wonderful endorsement of a wonderful programme. This from the BBC:

Uruguay has joined the small number of nations providing a laptop for every child attending state primary school.

President Tabaré Vázquez presented the final XO model laptops to pupils at a school in Montevideo on 13 October.

Over the last two years 362,000 pupils and 18,000 teachers have been involved in the scheme.

The "Plan Ceibal" (Education Connect) project has allowed many families access to the world of computers and the internet for the first time.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8309583.stm