I’ve been playing around with an OLPC laptop from Martin Langhoff recently(so have our kids!) This is an amazing project! – Part of their mission statement: “To create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.”

Larissa using the XO

I have friends in the mission field overseas who tell me stories about the limited resources available to the children, these laptops are soo cheap and yet, they provide an abundant source of learning! – I’ve really been amazed at the quality and the quantity of what the OLPC team have packed into this device, especially the focus on applications that are simple and fun to use, and have solid learning objectives.

Martin Langhoff has been working on the School Server for the OLPC project, and Moodle is going to be a core part of this which looks quite interesting…..

Moodle has traditionally been used by higher education institutions, but as it has matured, it has been picked up by a range of other organisations (here in NZ it’s being picked up by a lot of government departments!)  the OLPC program brings in a very different demographic – 6-12 yr old children with no computer experience, no IT support, and maybe 1 teacher? From what I understand – the “school server” will sit at the school and the teachers won’t know how to configure/administer any of the usual stuff, so it will just need to reliably work out of the box. Martin alludes to some of the changes that are going to be needed here I’ll be watching this project with interest, and may dig out an old box at some point to install the school server to connect to my XO at home!