Small Surfaces » OLPC

OLPC rides again

Gabriel White — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:32:20 +0000

The OLPC horse is still being flogged, this time in a smaller format and with dual touch sensitive displays (see the pics below). What consistently confuses me about this project is the lofty goals OLPC espouses without truly connecting with the situation into which it is supposed to be introduced.

Bruce Nussbaum summed it up quite well: “The problem from the very beginning was that this is a Western educational concept encased in a beautiful little childrens’ laptop designed by Westerners (Boston-based Continuum and fuseproject’s Yves Behar) for non-Western children and non-Western cultures and educational institutions. The education ministeries in India, China and elsewhere saw OLPC as a challenge to their authority and their abilities. After all, the rise of China and India and the lifting of half a billion people out of poverty in the shortest period of time in history is based on their existing educational institutions. They argues that with US companies chasing Chinese and Indian school graduates, why change their systems to conform to some Western ideal of learning?”

Dual display ultraportable computer: interesting. Dual display ultraportable computer that bridges the digital divide and creates better learning experiences for the impoverished: very questionable.

Link: First Look: OLPC XO-2 (laptopmag.com)

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OLPC “Sugar” UI on your PC

Gabriel White — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:55:38 +0000

It’s possible to get the OLPC “Sugar” UI running on your Windows / Mac through an emulator. Have a play with a very different UI paradigm.

Link: OS images for emulation (laptop.org)

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OLPC Human Interface Guidelines

Gabriel White — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 12:26:11 +0000

The One Laptop Per Child project has taken a fairly radical departure from the standard desktop metaphor, instead going for an activity-centric, social and temporally biased user experience.

“There are no software applications in the traditional sense on the laptop. The laptop focuses children around “activities.” This is more than a new naming convention; it represents an intrinsic quality of the learning experience we hope the children will have when using the laptop. Activities are distinct from applications in their foci—collaboration and expression—and their implementation—journaling and iteration.”

Link: OLPC Human Interface Guidelines (laptop.org)

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