OLPC NZ

WELCOME

brenda — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 23:42:09 +0000

We are a group of New Zealand educators, technologists, polyglots, and more who contribute to the One Laptop Per Child project.

Our goal is to get a laptop loaded with educational tools into the hands of every one of the world's poorest children. OLPC has shipped to millions of children around the world, given laptops to every child and teacher across entire countries. The work continues.

We write software, test other people's software, design educational activities, and translate text. We are part of a global effort of professionals, volunteers, students, and people like yourself.

We also are deploying pilots into New Zealand schools. Come talk to us about the olpc hardware and the Sugar educational software.

We meet once a week in Wellington and Auckland. Everyone is welcome to join us. We have brunch, drink coffee, and enjoy conversation while continuing the good work.

Want to know more?
Read all about it

Want to join us?
Step 1) join our mailing list
Step 2) Find your local group
Wellington meets every week, Saturday 11am at the Southern Cross, 35 Abel Smith St. http://thecross.co.nz
Auckland meets every week, Saturday 11am at the Windsor Castle, 144 Parnell Road. http://thewindsor.co.nz/

Mona Lisa Experience

admin — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:42:40 +0000

A girl at Esquela Marina Orth, in Medallin Colombia reads on her XO outside in bright sunlight. The XO allows expansion of the classroom, and the school itself. At Marina Orth School, 70% of the learning experience is carried out in the field. Photo by Cecilia Arboleda.

Students work outside with solar power

admin — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:33:20 +0000

Solar Panels power XO laptops at Roman Catholic School, Sahn Malen, Sierra Leone

20100806-3080617962_f736b65e56_o.jpg

admin — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:17:58 +0000

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admin — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:17:52 +0000

20100806-3079783149_10c67f0f48_o.jpg

admin — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:17:49 +0000

Introducing Sugarbot

tim-clicks — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:50:34 +0000

Here's a tip for testers: you can use a machine to run tests for you. If you know introductory Python, you'll be able to create sets of instructions that a machine will carry out for you. How does this happen? Thank Sugarbot.

Some history: In 2008, Zach Riggle created Sugarbot during Google Summer of Code. His project was mentored by the editor of http://agiletesting.blogspot.org. That set him on a very good foundation. Sugarbot basically works as an activity withinside Sugar, it just happens to play with other Acitivities.

Further (only slightly technical) details after the jump.

Let's have a look at a sample of what it would take to test a generic activity, that we'll call Cookbook

#! /usr/bin/env python2.6 # Testing Cookbook # derived from http://bit.ly/9G2CnP sugarActivityName = "Cookbook" def sugarbot_main(widget): assert widget['entryBox'].text == 'Recipe' widget['entryBox'].text = 'New Recipe' assert widgets['Share with:'].selected == "Private" widgets['Share with:'].selected = "My Neighborhood" assert widgets['Share with:'].selected == "My Neighborhood"

What does this code do?

Setting things up is first.

sugarActivityName = "Cookbook"
def sugarbot_main(widgets):

sugarActivityName and sugarbot_main are both required in every Sugarbot script. sugarActivityName tells the bot which activity to open. sugarbot_main is a function that processes every widget available to the bot. The widgets argument is a dictionary (Python's standard implementation of an associative array[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associative_array]) with

Next comes our first test. :
assert widget['entryBox'].text == 'Recipe'
widget['entryBox'].text = 'New Recipe'

A test is an assert statement with a comparison operator. Actually, a test is an assert statement with something that evaluates to True or False. Therefore, the easiest way to create a test is to use the equality operator (==). These two lines of code check that "Some text" is the text of the widget named entryBox. It then updates that text to 'New Recipe'.

         assert widgets['Share with:'].selected == "Private"
         widgets['Share with:'].selected = "My Neighborhood"
         assert widgets['Share with:'].selected == "My Neighborhood"

These three lines share the Cookbook Activity with the Neighborhood. We first test that the Activity defaults to private, then we test that . Note, to actually test that the activity was tested, we would need unit testing to test the models independently of the Sugarbot process.

Localisation

You'll notice that the tests are currently testing a single locale, en. Perhaps you could take a look at how hard it would be to integrate gettext to make the testing process compatible with international deployments?

Coding style

Experienced computer programmmers will notice the style of coding of the sugarbot_main() method as procedural programming. This is verbose and generally unfashionable. However, this example script is very simple. As you increase the complexity of the scripts, to meet the needs of individual Activities, you should call functions (perhaps you can help create a library of helper functions to make testing easier on everyone). As it stands, procedural programming does indicat the programme's flow well. This makes it easy to see what the bot is doing.

One disadvantage of using assert statements is that tests are not clearly demarcated from one another. This pleaces the burdon on the tester to make sure that she's being clear to the next reader of her script, which could be her in a few months time. I recommend placing empty lines in appropriate places to maintain the readability of the code.

Widget naming

How do testers know the names of the widgets that they are going to test? This is actually where communication with Sugar developers comes in. They are able to set the name of every widget they use with the .name_widget() method. Seem simple! Unfortunately, things are a little more complicated. Because Sugarbot is still not being fully utilised by the Sugar community, there are unnamed widgets in Activities.

Sugarbot does its best with unnamed widgets. Following the rules outlined in the Sugarbot wiki (see resources, below), every widget is given a unique identifier. The burden is then placed on the test script developer to track down that identifier so that things can be tested meaningfully.

The downside

Unfortunately for testers like us, the fully automated testing has not been fully ingrained into the Sugar development process. This has probably led to Zack, who developed the software, to become somewhat fustrated that his effort is stagnating. There have been very few (if any) commits to Sugarbot since late 2008. This means that if we as part of the Sugar community wish to utilise this work, we will probably need to spend some time getting the software up-to-date.

Resources

Sugarbot homepage http://code.google.com/p/sugarbot/
Screencast of Sugarbot's operation http://code.google.com/p/sugarbot/downloads/detail?name=ScreenCast2.mp4&can=2&q=
Wiki section on widget naming rules http://code.google.com/p/sugarbot/wiki/ScriptingSugarbot#Widget_naming

Summing up

Sugarbot is an underutilised piece of software. I recommend that people who are looking into developing experience in Python & automated testing take a look. There was a significant ammount of effort put in by Zack in 2008, and I'm sure its worth looking into.

tags: technical, software development, testing

Reflashing the XO-1 by Tim McNamara

brenda — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:02:35 +0000

Reflashing the XO-1 from Tim McNamara on Vimeo.

This is a tutorial on how to reflash an XO-1.0. The XO-1.0 is distributed by One Laptop Per Child to provide quality education. You can learn more about the programme by visiting laptop.org/.

This video was produced by OLPC Aotearoa, a group of volunteers that supports the work of the global programme with testing, software development and advocacy. Our local site is laptop.org.nz/. The video is made with free software: Ubuntu, OpenShot & Inkscape.

Open Video Chat

brenda — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 12:37:39 +0000

Today we tested the latest build of Open Video Chat, on the Wellington team's XO 1.5 laptops. More info on the project is at <a href="http://fedorahosted.org/OpenVideoChat/" rel="nofollow">fedorahosted.org/OpenVideoChat/</a> Also a story on the origins of the project: Students create video-chat program for deaf kids <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/21/students-create-vide.html" rel="nofollow">www.boingboing.net/2010/06/21/students-create-vide.html</a>

Team OneBeep wins 3rd place at World Imagine Cup

brenda — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 05:39:43 +0000

Team One Beep, made up of fourth year undergraduates. Vinny Jeet, Steve Ward, Kayo Lakadia and Chanyeol Yoo, Their idea is to send streams of data across the readily available FM/AM frequencies to impoverished communities.

Team One Beep won the Imagine Cup 2010 in New Zealand and traveled to Poland for the world finals.

After many days of judging, they came THIRD.

Big massive congratulations to the team. Looking forward to seeing this idea deployed to the children of the world.

Thanks iWantMyName

tabitha — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:31:15 +0000

olpc NZ volunteers wish to thank iWantMyName for their support and renewing our domain laptop.org.nz for free.

Casey and Alastair testing the XO 1.5 hardware.

brenda — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 14:31:19 +0000

Support Team OneBeep at Imagine Cup Poland by voting

tabitha — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:23:25 +0000

Vote for Team OneBeep in the Peoples Choice Award

Watch the videos about the Team OneBeep project

You can also follow OneBeep on twitter and keep up with the teams progress.

WFP_Promo_Nepal

admin — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:47:11 +0000

Animated promotional video from WFP. Nindoma Sherpa, former WFP beneficiary and youngest Mt. Everest summiteer, and a snowboarding yak emerge from a UN helicopter from UN World Food Programme, descend the mountain and deliver XO laptops to children in Nepal.

Colombian_Boys_with_XO

admin — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:34:36 +0000

sichuan-outside

admin — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:22:36 +0000

olpc visits AuckLUG installfest

brenda — Tue, 11 May 2010 22:25:53 +0000

olpc visited AuckLUG installfest - in the photo you see an XO and you see others looking at Sugar on another laptop - most interesting in the picture is that there are 4 people looking at Sugar on the other hardware

Solomon Islands study evidence of OLPC's positive impact

tabitha — Sun, 09 May 2010 02:03:56 +0000

If you haven't already read about it, I recommend you look at the independent evaluation of the olpc pilot projects in the Solomon Islands.

The Solomon Island government commissioned ACER (Australian Council for Educational Research) to evaluate the deployments in three villages and have reported back not only on the impact on students, but also on teachers, parents and the communities.

"OLPC must and should be given the opportunity to expand in Solomon Islands," the report quotes a school principal involved in the pilots. "It must be realised appreciated and embraced."

olpc Auckland goes weekly

carrott — Fri, 07 May 2010 04:06:48 +0000

Everyone's Favourite Testing Adventure Now Weekly

By popular demand, we will be testing olpc, sugar and coffee at the Windsor at 144 Parnell Road in Auckland. Saturdays, from 11am.

Know someone who might be interested in helping olpc but not in a testing role? Invite them to come along as a translator if they speak another language, or to write lesson plans if they are an educator.

See you this Saturday at 11am at the Windsor.

Update on Team OneBeep - radio software gets data to remote areas

tabitha — Tue, 04 May 2010 06:55:37 +0000

Vinny and Team OneBeep have made the news again with their recent nationwide win of the Microsoft Imagine Cup New Zealand round. They are off to Poland for the internationals.

Project aimed at improving OLPC project wins Imagine Cup

Kiwi imagination yields winning solution

Kiwi Teams Creates Waves with Innovative Application

Congratulations on the win. We look forward to hearing more about the project as you progress and seeing it helping the olpc remote deployments.

Gaza_girl_at_study

admin — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:06:54 +0000

Gaza student exploring her XO

Larry Teckmeyer volunteers art for olpc

tabitha — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 08:47:18 +0000

Larry Teckmeyer has made art for olpc and has said "Share it ASAP" as he has donated it.

Team One Beep - radio software gets data to remote areas

tabitha — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 09:57:24 +0000

Team One Beep, made up of fourth year undergraduates Vinny Jeet, Steve Ward, Kayo Lakadia and Chanyeol Yoo, worked through the summer break to prove their idea could work. Their proposal was to send streams of data across the readily available FM/AM frequencies to impoverished communities.

Their project addresses a common problem encountered by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) charity. The charity makes education more available to third world countries by delivering low cost laptops to remote and poor communities. They have distributed 1.2 million laptops already, and the number is growing. However a lack of infrastructure, such as broadband or even telephone lines, makes it nearly impossible to update the educational materials on the laptops.

Read the full article here.

Team One Beep intend running field trials in Australia and the Pacific Islands. Solomon Island OLPC deployment has made contact and is interested in collaborating with Team One Beep.

Rwanda's laptop revolution

tabitha — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:15:04 +0000

Rwanda has a plan to prevent any return to the genocide of 1994: connect 100,000 children to the outside world with their own laptops

Source and full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/28/rwanda-laptop-revolution

Fuente de vida, Juigalpa

admin — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:30:32 +0000

Photo by Daniel Drake

olpc went to foo

tabitha — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 08:46:48 +0000

Tabitha and Fabiana were at Foo Camp in Warkworth on the weekend and took seven XOs between them - a mix of XO-1.0 and XO-1.5 machines - for attendees to try out and discuss where olpc is at in New Zealand and the world.
We can't say much more as what goes on at bar camp stays at bar camp. All we can really say is it was awesome and well worth going to.

Photo attribution: http://www.flickr.com/people/aur2899/
Thanks!

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:50:12 +0000

LCA2010: Wellington 18 - 23 January 2010

tabitha — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 04:54:29 +0000

The New Zealand olpc and Sugarlabs volunteers are running a workshop during the education miniconf on Tuesday.

* http://www.lca2010.org.nz/wiki/Miniconfs/Education

We are also participating in the Open Day on Saturday.

* http://www.lca2010.org.nz/programme/open_day

If you are in Wellington, hope you can make it. :-)

laptop org nz cards

tabitha — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 16:32:27 +0000

Example of one of the olpc cards we made to hand out at conferences and events - it has laptop.org.nz on it so we can direct people to contact us and we can help them get involved

New year gatherings

tabitha — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 08:24:59 +0000

Come along to the Southern Cross on Saturday 9 January 2010 for the first session of the year, or on 16 January 2010 for the second session.

We will be preparing for LCA2010 which is 18-23 January, Wellington town hall where we are going to have a workshop on the Tuesday in the education miniconference as well as two areas during the Open Day (one for people to experience using the XOs and the other area for Sugar on other hardware and using Sugar on a Stick).

If you are in Wellington on Saturday 23 January 2010 please come to the Open Day. Bring a USB key and we will put Sugar on it for you to take home.

LCA2010 will be an exciting start to the new year.

Sugar on a Stick v2 Blueberry Released

tabitha — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 07:49:01 +0000

Sugar Labs has released Sugar on a Stick v2 Blueberry - the platform agnostic version of the Sugar Learning Platform.

Sugar is the educational software used on One Laptop PEer Child XO laptops. It's an entire operating system, and there are zillions of educational activities for Sugar.

"Sugar On a Stick" is the same educational environment, bundled up onto a bootable USB memory stick. Simply plug in the "Sugar on a Stick" to almost any PC's usb port, and reboot. Children's files and lesson progress is saved to the same usb memory stick so it's all kept for next time, and the USB memory stick can be used at home and at school.

This latest version of Sugar offers simpler navigation, improved wireless networking, streamlined updating of Activities for children, easier keyboard configuration, better Gnash support for Adobe Flash content, and more. New Activities such as Physics and OOo4Kids join updated favorites such as Browse and Read, suitable for reading e-books.

So what are you waiting for? Download Sugar today!

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Blueberry

OLPC Auckland meeting

brenda — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:00:08 +0000

OLPC Auckland meeting this saturday 11:00 am at the Windsor Castle 144 Parnell Road.

OLPC Friends Sydney Meet Up

tabitha — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:10:53 +0000

Join the first OLPC Friends BoF @ SLUG's monthly meeting for October 2009. Meetings are open to the general public, and are free of charge.

Acronym time:
* SLUG means Sydney Linux User Group
* BoF means Birds of a Feather

If you can't make it to the event (sorry I haven't got a plane) join online at #olpcfriends (IRC freenode).

Google Australia
48 Pirrama Road
Pyrmont NSW 2009
Australia

Friday, October 30 at 6:30 PM (EST) - that is 8:30pm for us in New Zealand

http://anyvite.com/zzrm86xe9b

now with te reo

brenda — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:03:08 +0000

The shiny new XO1.5s have arrived

brenda — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 02:34:18 +0000

They've cleared customs, and arrived in Wellington: Grant unpacking 5 of the new XO1.5 Laptops

One Laptop Per Pacific Child

tabitha — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:16:21 +0000

We caught up with Ian Thomson, OLPC Oceania Coordinator today, and heard about the pilot deployments at Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu.

Students in the Solomon Islands with the OLPC XO Laptops

There have been 3400 XOs deployed to the Pacific Islands so far, with another 1600 waiting to be deployed in the Pacific region. By working with ACER Australian Council of Education Research there is an evaluation being conducted of the Solomon Islands, anticipated publish date of November 2009.

As part of the pilots work has been done with teachers, parents and education ministries to ensure the best success of the pilots. Some of the lessons learned include reinforcements that the OLPC programme enhances, strengthens and aligns with regional and country education goals and plans. The communities have been supportive of the deployments.

Teachers in Nauru with their laptops

Traditionally, in pacific cultures it is not typically acceptable that the children know more than the adults, however the pilots have shown that it is okay for children to know more than adults with regards to technology and literacy.

There is interesting discussions happening on how XOs can be used to support traditional knowledge.

Another lesson learned by the pilot groups is that a standing stock of XOs and hardware peripherals should be centrally maintained in the region to efficiently feed deployments in a timely and cost-efficient manner.

Teacher training session in Dreikikir - Papua New Guinea

The pilot phase has resulted in the development of community consultation guidelines that recommend principles for ensuring OLPC is introduced with the full involvement and consent of local communities.

Children from Patukae in the Solomon Islands

Translation projects are under way for Papua New Guinea pidgin, Solomon Islands Pidgin, and Kosraean. Future translations to start are Fijiian, Samoan and Tongan working with the local Ministries of Education.

One of the challenges they are still working on is funding trials in 15 Pacific countries. The technical working group have scoped the rollout trial phase at US$3.5 million including the hardware and all the support required for implementation.

The NZ testers will offer any support they can in testing and recommend any educational technologists wanting to donate their time, take a working holiday in one of these locations:
Piloted: Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu
Trials: Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Fiji, French Polynesia, Republic of Marshall Islands, Palau, Samoa, Tokelau, Tonga and Tuvalu.

Niue students with their XO laptops

The Tester's TODO list

brenda — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:02:28 +0000

We're working our way through the list of activities for the Peru deployment.

We've also had a request from Australia to test their bundle of activities for their upcoming deployment in the Northern Territories (spreadsheet attached)

We also have a request to retest foodforce.

Vik's Reprap in makezine

brenda — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:19:18 +0000

Vik's Open Source 3d printer, that prints many things including spare parts for OLPC XO Laptops, featured in Makezine's blog this week.

Next Auckland Meeting - 2009-10-10

brenda — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:15:23 +0000

Auckland meeting will be on Saturday 10:30am at De Post waffle house in Mt Eden.

The place is De Post: 466 Mt Eden Rd, Mt Eden East, Auckland 1024, Auckland‎ - (09) 630 9330.

Did we mention it's also a WAFFLE HOUSE!?

View Larger Map

Map of OLPC XO Laptops in Australia.

admin — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 08:47:59 +0000

View OLPC Australia in a larger map

Reprap view finder

admin — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 08:23:27 +0000

Aly tries out one of the reprap printed view finders:

in other news - the One-3D-printer-per-child project continues progress - imagine a world where every child had access to a printer capable of printing a real 3D version of any object they can think of and describe on their OLPC XO laptop.

OLPC in uruguay - 380,000 computers over 2 years

admin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:14:34 +0000

A video of the revolution going on in Uruguary in education, where every child and every teacher now has an XO OLPC laptop:

Tsunami hits Samoa

tabitha — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 06:45:48 +0000

An 8.3 earthquake caused a tsunami in Samoa today.

We have confirmed that Ian Thomson, RICS and Oceania OLPC Coordinator, is safe in Noumea.

There is an OLPC project deployment in Samoa and there has been some equipment destroyed. We are not aware of any volunteers being hurt or killed in the tsunami.

We will keep in contact with Ian and others in the area to find out what we can do to help during this time.

Our thoughts are with the survivors and their families.

What's happening in Aotearoa - kotahi tamaiti, kotahi rorohikoiti

brenda — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:57:26 +0000

WellyNZTesters have issued a Call For Papers for the education miniconf we're running at the LCA2010 conference on mid January next year
http://laptop.org.nz/content/miniconf

If you want to come visit us in New Zealand, and can't afford it right now, please apply for funding http://www.lca2010.org.nz/media/news/89

We're testing the full activity bundle for the upcoming Peru deployment
http://laptop.org.nz/test-request

An Auckland group has started!

Some kind folks in Sydney are rounding up unused dust-gathering XOs from the LCA2007 giveaway, to ship to Wellington.

We've got a school server running.

The OLPC XO and 3D printing with RepRap

tabitha — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 06:52:38 +0000

Vik Olliver made this video to show how the XO can drive the RepRap machine. This allows the XO to build its own parts. In the video, the RepRap is making view finders to help children taking pictures with the XO's built in camera.

Sugar on a Stick

brenda — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:51:05 +0000

Shown here, all the usb keys we flashed with Sugar on a Stick for Software Freedom Day. The keys were donated by Sun Microsystems.

OLPC hackfest / testfest - Auckland and Wellington

brenda — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:41:00 +0000

The NZ OLPC "Friends in Testing" meets every saturday in Wellington. This saturday will be the first meeting after a very successful Software Freedom Day here.
http://softwarefreedomday.org/teams/wellington

This saturday is also the first ever meeting of the Auckland group.

What's involved is: brunch, coffee, conversation, intro to the green XO laptops, how the OS works, how to install an activity, and then you test your chosen activity, try to find some bugs. If we find bugs we send a test report back to the project.

If we don't find any bugs we also send a report saying how awesome the project is. Those that know python may wish to track down and destroy the bug, but for the most part we don't.

We've been ask to test the list of activities that are being deployed to kids in Peru soon

We're meeting at 10:30am, and tying the two locations together via irc (we're a bit bandwidth constrained in cafes.

Wellington is at the southern Cross http://thecross.co.nz
Auckland group is at Ironique, 448 Mt Eden Rd, Mt Eden.

Please join us - there will be many newcomers at both events.

p.s. People hacking on other projects are also welcome - we like "cross pollination". I know there are some koha, statusnet and drupal hackers coming.
p.p.s. If you have your own laptop, whatever flavour, bring that along too. The "sugar" software project that powers the OLPC laptops should run on most anything, and if it doesn't work on yours, we'd like to know that too.

View Larger Map

View Larger Map

Auckland OLPC meetup and test fest

brenda — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:32:30 +0000

Aucklanders are meeting this Saturday, to have the first OLPC test fest in the city.

There will be spare XO laptops, so if you're interested come along and join us. The coffee is good and there is wifi.

Location: Ironique, 448 Mt Eden Rd, Mt Eden, Auckland. 10:30am on Saturday.

There will be a simultaneous OLPC testfest in Wellington

Software Freedom Day photos

brenda — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 09:12:07 +0000

Sugar for the Children of the World

brenda — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:31:14 +0000

OLPC & Sugar has now been deployed to EVERY SINGLE CHILD in Uruguay, Peru and Niue!!

In total 1,374,500 XOs have been shipped to the children of the world in Uruguay, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Ghana, India, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mongolia, Kiribati, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, Papua, New Guinea, Solomons, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

That doesn't even include all the unofficial pilot programmes, the gifting of XOs to test groups (such as Wellington friends in testing), nor all the software only deployments of sugar and sugar on a stick.

We're proud to be part of a project that is creating educational opportunities for the world's poorest children.

Auckland Sugar

brenda — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:23:26 +0000

The XO known as "mojo" has moved to Auckland, and now lives with Fabiana Kubke, a neuroscientist and educator from Auckland University.

Here's a postcard we recieved today from mojo:

If you're in Auckland, and want to join in the fun of contributing to the OLPC/Sugar projects, get in contact with Fabiana Kubke

Software Freedom Day - Sunday 20 September @ Wellington Town Hall

tabitha — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:51:47 +0000

Software freedom day is almost open us:
http://softwarefreedomday.org.nz/

We have put OLPC and Sugar on the agenda for Kids programme, Students programme and for hackerfest.

We are very excited to have the sponsorship of Sun Microsystems who have donated 150 USB keys to the event and have given us permission to put Sugar on a Stick on some of these to give away at Software Freedom Day.

With well over two hundred registrations for this years event we are looking forward to sharing OLPC and Sugar with attendees.

Report from WellyNZTesters Group Test 2009-09-12

brenda — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:36:44 +0000

Present: Brenda, Callum, Alastair, Tabitha, Dave, Sigi, Carl, Tania, Tim

Sugar on a Stick - did 80 USB keys today! awesome! tested them and they all boot up, so we are ready for Software Freedom Day

Maori translation - started looking at pootle and talking about how much work the translation will take

Wellington OLPC group at the Open Govt Barcamp.

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:08:05 +0000

Last weekend, the Wellington OLPC group went to the Open Govt Barcamp.

Tabitha was recorded in this interview - Overview of how the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) laptop works:

Thanks Steve of Spring TV for making the video to share with the world.

Software Freedom Day

tabitha — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:24:34 +0000

Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The principles behind FOSS are underpinned by the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. You can read more about the four freedoms here.

Our goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business - in short, everywhere!

http://softwarefreedomday.org.nz/

What's on in Wellington?

This year Unlimited Potential, WellyLUG, SuperHappyDevHouse, DigitalNZ, Catalyst IT, the New Zealand Open Source Society (NZOSS), CWA New Media, and OLPC are coming together to organise another great event in Wellington.

Location: Wellington Convention Centre

Date: Sunday 20th September 2009

Time: 9am - 6pm

Come and take part in the hackfest, installfest, a makerfest, barcamp and techtalks.

The event will again be hosted by Nat Torkington, and you can find out more about the exciting events scheduled for the day on our events page, and our kids programme and student programme pages.

There will be free wifi courtesy of cafeNET and coffee all day, with lunch and afternoon tea provided. After things wrap up at 5pm there will be a networking session at a yet to be disclosed location nearby.

Follow SFD on twitter @WLGSFD and tag your tweets #sfdwlg09!

Open Govt Data Barcamp - Transparency is the new black

tabitha — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:14:01 +0000

What's it all about?

The New Zealand Open Government Bar Camp is an "unconference" for people who are interested in making government-held data more freely available for others to re-use. An "unconference" is an alternative participant-driven event, that avoids aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations.

Web 2.0 developments have shown the potential of combining data from different sources made freely available on the Internet. The government holds a huge range of non-personal data which could form the basis of innovative services and applications by others on the Internet.

You should come if you are interested in government information policy, explore ways to provide data, making entrepreneurial use of the Internet, or building working applications during a weekend.

http://groups.google.com/group/nzopengovtbarcamp/

FREE: Saturday 29th August: Barcamp - registration 9:15am+ / sessions 10am-5pm

National Library of New Zealand (70 Molesworth Street, Thorndon 6011, Wellington

RSVP needed for Saturday

brenda — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 02:48:15 +0000

This saturday's OLPC meeting will have a change of scenery - we're going to be at the National Library.

For catering purposes, they want us to RSVP - can you please reply to me if you're going to be there? Please reply ASAP

(Tuesday at latest).
details are

Saturday 29th August
National Library of New Zealand (70 Molesworth Street, Thorndon 6011, Wellington
Barcamp - registration 9:15am+
sessions 10am-5pm

Testing summary - 22 August 2009 Wellington, NZ

brenda — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 02:46:01 +0000

Who: Alastair, Tabitha, Tom, Dave, Carl, Brenda, Callum, Tim, Grant, Becs

Testing the new Sugar OS5 on XO hardware. Found the MESH does not work at all, cannot see Mesh1,6,11 only see olpc-mesh that we could not use, also the mesh icons show up as regular networks rather than the mesh target icon. Connected via shared internet through macbook with aircard, found that most XOs cannot see each other when all connected via macbook, though they can access interwebs.

Testing collaboration on different versions of Sugar and different hardware and in VM. We found some activities better than others. Struggle with audio and video in Sugar in VM.

Last week we had issues with creating soas strawberry - run script, script reports successful completion but the USB is blank. Resolved today - think it was to do with an existing boot partition. Have got it working correctly now.

Testing Lexar USB keys to check they mount and unmount on XO hardware. We like the way the behave so are buying more with a small donation we have received ($100 donation, the USB keys are $15 for 2GB).

Talked about SFD activities to do with kids and students during the day. Sorted out a SoaS install for the 150 USB keys that have been donated to the SFD. Now we just need the keys to arrive from USA and we are all go. Some of our ideas in case they are useful to others: get kids to measure each others height with distance activity and use spreadsheet activity to graph heights of kids (noisy environment would stop this from working); make a circuit of activities so kids get to try different activities in small groups doing 10 minute activities with a volunteer helping them at each circuit station; making memory games with memorize, making music with kazoos (or other instruments) and tamtam suite, recording each other with record (maybe interviews), maze races (this led to discussions on how we could map a maze out on the floor utilising distance and then getting them to race the maze), etoys or turtle art with sensors (makerspace can make sensors for us and the rep rap machine can make us view finders). More ideas welcome. We are hoping to give them a problem to solve, some kind of challenge.

Talked about Sahana project. This is a FOSS application for coordinating agencies response to disaster . Recently deployed on XOs aggregating areial photography into the maps in Sahana.

rotating main screen with rotate button kills the laptop when using new Sugar OS5. only thing still working is text mode console.

new sugar OS5, no video or picture capture in record activity anymore, only audio capture, Record-64

Decided next Saturday testing will be held at National Library as the OpenGovt Barcamp will be there. Opportunity to involve them (and drink free coffee).

Recent Deployments - Rwanda

brenda — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:38:55 +0000

OLPC official blog reports on the recent deployment of XO laptops with the sugar environment into schools in in Rwanda
.
They include the software that the Wellington team contributes to.

XO OLPC / Sugar running Turtle drawings Fractals

mangee — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:22:23 +0000

Lilblip wanted to make better pictures, so we built this one.. Mesh|pod shows the plan, just had to follow the logic (and translate to different version of turtle)

XO OLPC / Sugar running Turtle drawings Fractals

mangee — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:06:21 +0000

Lilblip wanted to make better pictures, so we built this one.. Mesh|pod shows the plan, just had to follow the logic (and translate to different version of turtle)

OLPCorps Kenema Sierra Leone With her XO

admin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 06:51:20 +0000

Girls Chat outside on XOs in Kenema, Sierra Leone

Micro Sponsors wanted

brenda — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 23:58:31 +0000

Wellington OLPC Friends in Testing a seeking micro sponsors to contribute usb memory sticks

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) Give One Get One

brenda — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

http://laptop.org/g1g1 Masi Oka speaks on behalf of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) Foundation about the Give One Get One opportunity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQbtebeftyA

Sahana project

brenda — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:38:54 +0000

This Saturday (1st August) during our regular test fest there will be people from the Sahana Project having a hackfest.

Further details on Sahana's facebook event:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=220276240206&ref=ts

OLPCorps Kenya DSCN2842

admin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:13:21 +0000

Girl_with_xo_classroom_Sierra_Leone

admin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:09:03 +0000

Girl poses with XO laptop in classroom in Sierra Leone.

Kicukiro2

admin — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 04:02:55 +0000

Kagugu teacher Simon's students with XOs

OLE Nepal cover

admin — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:46:41 +0000

OLE Nepal DSC05361

admin — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:40:19 +0000

Final pre-release Candidate Release 8.2.1 incl Activities

brenda — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Testing requests coming out our ears! Isn't it fantastic to see
momentum in OLPC.
I hope lots of people can make it to the Southern Cross this weekend -
usual time 10.30am, 35 Abel Smith Street.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Holt
Date: 2009/5/13
Subject: [support-gang] "Final pre-release Candidate Release 8.2.1
incl Activities"
To: Support Gangsters , Testing
, Devel's in the Details

Please test this Give1Get1-suitable image, including Activities now.
Notify pronto if any final showstoppers preventing Release 8.2.1!

http://download.laptop.org/xo-1/custom/g1g1/gg-802-1/
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Friends_in_testing

In short, clean install as follows:

(1) Burn these 2 files onto a fresh USB memory stick:

http://download.laptop.org/xo-1/custom/g1g1/gg-802-1/fs.zip
300KB

http://download.laptop.org/xo-1/custom/g1g1/gg-802-1/gg-802-1.img 454MB

(2) Insert the USB Stick into your XO Laptop. Make sure the XO's
plugged in, and contains its battery.

(3) Turn on your XO Laptop while holding down all 4 games keys,
above the power switch -- the reinstall should be done < 10min later.

(4) Sanity-check your favorite Activities :) As compared to:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/8.2.0

Thanks! Firmware Q2E41 now appoved, thanks also to your help last week!

plz test Build 802 - Candidate Release 8.2.1!

brenda — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The build is now signed so you don't even need a developer key:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Friends_in_testing

Helping us test WPA (WPA2 especially) would be most useful, since these
wifi connections sometimes fail as much as 20% of the time, when similar
8.2.0 seemed to fail only ~10% of the time. And of course try:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/1_hour_smoke_test

Please help me clean up Release Notes on the way:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/8.2.1

Recap -- all you should need are these 2 files burned onto a USB stick:
http://download.laptop.org/xo-1/os/candidate/802/jffs2/os802.img (233MB)
http://download.laptop.org/xo-1/os/candidate/802/jffs2/fs.zip (155K)

Follow the usual procedure (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/USB_update), grab Activities from your XO's Control Panel later.

Schools out at Daniel Ortellado

admin — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:53:58 +0000

Schools out but laptops are in. These children only spend 3-4 hours in school every day; a very important aspect of the project is that the children get to take the laptops home and make them a part of their lives. Photo by Patricia Escauriza Butterworth.

7th February - Solar power, and wifi aerials

admin — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Maintenance Workshop

admin — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Our workshop on basic laptop repair - aka "pull it apart and put it back together again"