Winner for third-world Skyping: OLPC!

New Picture: Me in my normal Skype environment (wireless!).

It occured to me the other day that at my fingertips were two options for wanting to talk to the US from over here in Asia:

Option 1: Desktop computer, external monitor, wireless receiver, Uninteruppted Power Supply (UPS) backup battery
Option 2: OLPC XO laptop (built in wireless, monitor, battery (UPS))

Option 1: Full desktop setup (UPS was faulty so it was removed [and I lost the first version of this blog posting due to a power outage!])

Option 2: OLPC XO Laptop (Cup of chai optional)

Now to either of the above lists I just add a standard headset with microphone and chat away! (In fact, if the conditions are perfect, don't even add the headset to the OLPC, just use the Built in microhphone, speakers, and webcam!)

For the audiophiles out there, it turns out that the XO laptop gives way better filtering of background noise (I'm in a 20' x 30' concrete room)! Way to go OLPC team! (I would have thought it would be standard due to both computers running Skype brand software, but there is a repeatable difference!)

The official page for installing Skype on the OLPC laptops can be found here, but I used an amalgamation of help forums, etc. because I installed it a while back (and/or didn't see the main page... :-) )

(Now looking into the status of Google Talk on the OLPC (Seems like might have to use a third-party for billing to call to non-computers at the other end). -- suggestions welcome!)

OLPC was here!

Merry Christmas!

The first thing I did today was to sit up in bed, pull out my OLPC laptop and check the news on a few of my favorite sites, check my email, and generally cruise the web. I haven't started posting to this blog yet, but thats fairly trivial. The main thing is that the keyboard is a bit small and I'm still getting used to it. I guess I'd be mad if it wasn't kid sized anyway...

The point is that my Christmas gift to myself (the cute OLPC laptop to the right) arrived before Christmas, and was played with at work (I bought one on work's dime as well, so they were "meshing" a bit).

I think that despite the whole "technology for the sake of technology" argument, these laptops are good for kids. I agree, we need to do more with clean drinking water. And food. And education. But I also think that there have been ongoing efforts into those realms for years, and it is great for people to make a first stab at investigating the effects of technology on those without it. If todays youth from third world countries are ever going to compete with those from first world countries, this type of device is whats going to be required. Vast distances are shrunk, language barriers overcome, and in a way, the playing field is leveled.

Thanks to the team that put this together (both technically, and from the business end), I do feel a modicum of satisfaction, knowing that I helped drive up the volume by 2 units, and thus down the price, and at the same time donate 2 units to the third world efforts. And, I also like that the 2 donated units will be later versions than mine (and thus improved)!

The OLPC has some really neat stuff in it that, I think, will actually teach kids stuff. These are the applications that move the device from the "toy" to the "tool" category, such as the Python programming environment. Also, the measurement suite enables students to learn about science by performing actual experiments, and quantifying results. Logically, the next step is to use the built-in digital video camera to post / share / publish their learnings with peers as well as the outside world.

I'm excited to see how they're received. So far they're mostly in South America and southeast Asia. Check it out!

(Do people edit thier blogs? I have a feeling mine might be a stream-of-consciousness style blog, so please, forgive the errors, and let me know if they get annoying.)

Electricity + OLPC Lesson Plans (Grammar School Science)

This post is about the lesson plans that I created for the Electricity chapter of the class 6, 7, and 8 students back in Meerut, India. They include the basic concepts, some examples of classroom interaction and homework, as well as the low-cost science experiments (materials and explanations) that I produced. Additionally included are notes on the learning curve and student interaction with the OLPC laptops. As with the OLPC report, this one wasn't written with a clear audience, and in hindsight, should have been separated into a mostly-science report and a mostly-OLPC report. C'est la vie. Take it or leave it.

[Sample of Lesson Plan / Notes used for teaching: Wikipedia graphics and custom graphics.]

Click here to download the Lesson Plans / Notes that I created.
Click here for a Test (with answers) for all three classes.

[Sample of student's work, showing the path of electricity from the source to a light in the home.]

It should be noted that I've posted this content just for blog readers - mostly friends and family. As the folks over at Iridescent Inc have discovered, random lesson plans on the internet aren't too helpful for educators, there are plenty of bad ones out there to sift through (I'd like to think mine are good although I'm sure we all would). The times are changing, and now even lesson plans are out - replaced by simpler concept maps that teachers can build around.

If you are an educator, and looking to contribute or to find content, check out Iridescent's new approach: a wiki for science education analogies! It's in it's early stages, so get involved and throw some content in there!

1 more day to Enroll!

Just wanted to give a quick update on my status -- I arrived in Delhi a few days ago and was whisked away from the airport around midnight by some new friends - the principle of the Chiragh Grammar School (in Meerut, India) and her son. Over the past few days we've been getting ready for the new school year to start- April 2nd is just around the corner!

(This is the quality picture taken from the OLPC laptop -- click for full resolution.)

(Side note: I'm posting this from one of the OLPC laptops that the school had donated from friends in the US. Lots more to come on these gems, but the current point is that I can't post pictures from them to the blog, although I can post video from them to the blog, see entry a day or so ago. So I'll have to edit this post to add pics separately, bummer.)

The current plan for teaching is to try to elevate the student's understanding of electricity and magnetism. These subjects are covered in their science class and text books in class 6, 7, and 8, to varying degrees. Since I'll have the small, combined 7th and 8th graders, I have some freedom with respect to the depth of coverage. I'm going to try and let the students complete some hands-on-hardware experiments, as well as software simulations on the laptops. As such, the first few periods are set aside for the students to 'explore' (that's code for play with) the laptops -- then it's down to business! Keep checking back as I may try to post some of the documentation generated in the course.

For more info on the laptops I've got, check out the following:
www.laptop.com
www.olpc.org

More to come!

Bike Upgrades: Audio & OLPC Charging

One of my favorite things about staying in Meerut, India, was that I could explore it by bicycle. You might remember my post about my shiny new, ultra-durable and practical bicycle a few weeks back. Friends of mine will know that when I have two wheels under me, there's bound to be a customization hack in some form or another. For my jaunts around town I knew I'd definitely need some tunes, and I'm not the type to keep them to myself!
The (hard to see) speakers on the back bikerack worked wonders and I was getting smiles all over town when I pumped my party playlist (anything from Jamiroquai's Virtual Insanity to Armstrong's Stompin' at the Savoy). The computer speakers are directly powered by the dynamo (generator) on the side of the cycle. More on this later. One side-effect of this no-battery setup that I actually really like is that when I stop completely, I have about 2 seconds of fading music. Starting up, the volume naturally has a nice ramp up so it isn't annoyingly loud at the outset (but it is when moving?!).
Unfortunately despite a few half-days of effort, the XO laptop charger never reached its full potential, although I gave a good effort (with lots of email help from friends in distant lands!). Hopefully someone can finish the design with minimal, inexpensive parts. My condensed writeup can be found here on the OLPC wiki (for now). (About the above photo: it turns out that the "charging" light being on doesn't always mean that the laptop is charging. Bummer.)

The above photo has four jacks/plugs facing each other. On the left there are two 12 Volt DC power sources: AC to DC wall adapter and clips to AC bicycle dynamo/generator with rectifier circuit. On the right there are two power sinks: OLPC laptop and computer speakers / audio player. Using just RCA jacks was very convenient, as a splitter (not shown) could be used with the extra jack going to a multimeter for live voltage monitoring.

Same devices in the 'lab' (secret code for the front yard).

The "alternative" source of power (compared with the AC adapter that plugs in the wall): a bottle dynamo for a bicycle. This is actually a generator that produces AC power, normally used to power a front and rear light. I think it's a fantastic, low cost, readily available power source in third world countries.

My time in India would not be complete without some sort of work outsourcing, and so I embraced globalization (well, down-the-street-ization) and had the resident engineer at Rajni Radio design the solutions to my problems. It was an iterative process, to say the least. :-) And I can definitely attest to the notion that labor is cheap in India as a result of my outsourcing!

OLPC Video

Just trying to post a quick video from the XO / OLPC laptop!

OLPC Laptops in the Classroom - report

This post goes back to April when I was teaching science to the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders
at Chiragh Grammar School, in Meerut, India. I was experimenting with the role of the low cost, rugged, OLPC laptop computers in science classrooms.
So how did it go? Well I just so happened to write it all up! Although I wrote up this full report (20 pages) in early May, we weren't sure where the report should go. If you're interested in reading it all, find it over at Iridescent Inc -- the non-profit science education group I've been involved with the past few years in Los Angeles.

Click here to download the report.
Click here for Iridescent's Educator website.

Since I wasn't sure the audience that I was writing this for, nor where the report would show up, I didn't put a whole lot of effort into polishing it (grammatically or otherwise). That said, I put in our experiences and hope that others can benefit from what we learned!

Leaving Meerut - Academic Edition

My time in Meerut, India has come to a close, and so I thought I'd post some pictures from the classroom over the last month. Hopefully I'll have time for a non-academic "Leaving Meerut" post as well.


First off, I've finished my time as science teacher for 6th, 7th, and 8th class here at Chiragh Grammar School. I've written a roughly one-month syllabus for each class, to teach Electricity and Magnetism, using loads of hands-on experiments, at varying levels of complexity. Of course the experiments require only very simple, inexpensive, easily obtainable materials! I'm currently not sure where the syllabus/report will be posted, but It will probably be in conjunction with our friends over at Iridescent Inc. and have some sort of a free-to-use Creative Commons license.

I'm glad that I got the chance to be a teacher, and I really learned more than I had thought I would. I was surprised to hear the exact same questions that I used to pose to teachers before a test, and this time around they seem like such silly questions. "Will there be multiple choice? Will there be true/false?" It doesn't matter! Study the content! :-)

Most positive realization: Students look up (metaphorically) at the content of the course as a series of facts that are hard to understand, and thus must be memorized. Teachers look down (metaphorically) at the content of the course as one, completely related string of interdependent ideas. Thus, the teachers job is to (sure, why not. once again, metaphorically) weld the links of steel into a chain of knowledge that can be relied upon for strength in later courses. It just blew me away when I realized the way I used to see content, and the way I see it now, after teaching it.

Second, I've finished my time as a science teacher who was using the OLPC laptops in an unofficial deployment! Very related in that the initial hope was to use the OLPCs as the platform for the hands-on experiments. Unfortunately, there were limited opportunities for this. But to turn a negative into a positive, the laptops will stay here for the students to learn computer skills, and are available for all teachers at the school to use in their curriculum. Additionally, I've written another document which outlines what it was like and the hurdles to using these OLPCs in an unofficial deployment. More to come on where that will be posted later as well. (Psst! One of my recent blog postings was covered by someone else! Check me out!)

Just a regular day at the office.
Theme in the last 5 pictures? We're not exactly a One Laptop Per Child deployment.
More like a One Laptop Per Multiple Children deployment! OLPMC!
6th Class happily showing the XOs they use.
8th Class is a bit more stoic, although equally appreciative!