26C3 - 26C3 1.15

26th Chaos Communication Congress
Here be dragons

Speakers
ChristophD
Schedule
Day Day 2 - 2009-12-28
Room Saal2
Start time 11:30
Duration 01:00
Info
ID 3547
Event type Lecture
Track Science
Language used for presentation English
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After the Hype

The current state of One Laptop per Child and Sugar Labs

While One Laptop per Child is a widely known and much discussed and often heavily critized project little is actually known about the current state of its efforts. So it may come as a surprise to many that almost a million children around the world use their Linux powered XO-1 laptop in school on a daily basis. This talk will shed some light on this and other interesting developments and look at how FLOSS and global grassroot communities can make a difference in ICT-supported education around the world.

Few initiatives in the ICT sector have received as much public attention in recent years as One Laptop per Child. Still most widely known as the "$100 laptop project" OLPC faced a lot of criticism and suffered some setbacks in recent years. Especially the perceived move away from Linux towards Windows cost the project much good will and many supporters from the FLOSS community. And despite the project's generally high visibility little is known about the very real progress it has made in increasing educational opportunities by distributing almost a million laptops to children in some of the poorest countries around the planet. And yes, more than 99% of them run Sugar, the open-source software originally developed by OLPC and now coordinated by the independent Sugar Labs community.

Hence this talk will focus on:

  • the current state of One Laptop per Child and Sugar Labs
  • what is happening the 30 or so countries where OLPC's XO-1 laptops and Sugar software is used by children on a daily basis today
  • the work European communities in Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and other countries are doing to support these efforts
  • current challenges and opportunities for FLOSS technlogies, open education approaches and global grassroots efforts in improving ICT-supported education around the globe
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