This document summarizes a report on a visit to the Vung Vieng Village in Vietnam to evaluate a pilot project providing 12 OLPC XO laptops to local children's school. After 6 months, the laptops were still working and being used daily, though sustainability is a concern without consistent teacher support. The document recommends developing more Vietnamese content for the Sugar OS, training more teachers, and expanding to other villages while learning from Nepal's successful OLPC implementation approach.

1. OLPC Vietnam
Visit to the Vung Vieng Village -
Report (June 2010)
Serge Stinckwich
Serge.Stinckwich@gmail.com

2. OLPC (One Laptop Per
Child)
• OLPC = US NGO
• OLPC Goal : «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.

3. "It's an education project,
not a laptop project."
Nicholas negroponte
te

4. 100 $

5. XO-1

6. XO-1 as an ebook
reader

7. • CPU : 433 Mhz AMD Geode
• 1200x900 LCD (with sharp images)
• 256 Mb DRAM, 1 Gb flash memory
• Internal SD card slot, Wifi
• Water-resistant keyboard

8. Localized keyboard

9. Distribution models
• 1.6 million laptops (october 2009)
• Laptops are sold to governments to be
distributed through the ministries of
education
• Laptop are property of the child
• G1G1 program

10. OLPC in Asia

15. Warranty applied only if
you disassemble the
machine, Nicolas
Negroponte.

16. Sugar
• Sugar is a free desktop environment (GPL) designed with
the goal of being used by children for learning.
• Sugar does not use the «desktop», «folder» and
«window» metaphors (focus on one program at a time).
• Activities, no applications !
• Work on XO-1 laptop or included in Linux distributions.
Mostly written in Python
• Hundred of activities: math, physics, programming,
english, serious games, ...

17. Pilot Experiment in
Vung Vieng
• Vung Vieng is located in Bai Tu Long Bay,
Vietnam
• 40km from mainland
• Deployment in nov 2009 by Nancy Severs
(US volunteer)
• 12 XO + solar panels

28. After 6 months
• Every laptops are working correctly and are used
everyday by children. Children enjoyed using XOs.
• Kids know how to use their computers.
• XOs are not part of the curriculum of the children
• Sustainability problem: teachers stay only one year
in the VV school.
• Only a limited set of activities seem to be used by
children. Not enought vietnamese contents.

29. What to do now for
OLPC Vietnam ?
• Build a user community for SUGAR in Vietnam
• Build OLPC Vietnam
• Develop vietnamese contents
• Write (or translate) vietnamese
documentation
• Train teachers

30. Follow OLPC-Nepal
path
• OLE Nepal started 3 years ago
• 30 people (15 contents developers)
• 4 keys for success (according to Rabi
Karmacharya): 1) content, 2) educators 3)
network 4) capacity

31. Some projets for OLPC
Vietnam developers
• Translate OLPC documentation, books,
flyers in Vietnamese
• Translate Activities in Vietnamese (Scratch)
• Test EToys in Vietnamese (font problems)
• Develop vietnamese curriculum
• Developers training: Sugar, Python,
Squeak, ...

32. What do now for VVV ?
• Made an evaluation of activities used by
children
• Reinstall machines with a selection
vietnamese activities, update to the last
version of Sugar (0.82.1 => 0.88)
• Train teachers, develop local support
(parents ?)
• How to scale up to others villages ?

33. Some useful links
• OLPC : http://laptop.org/
• Sugar: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/
• EToys: http://www.squeakland.org/
• OLPC Vietnam: http://olpc.vn/
• Smalltalk-vn: http://
lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/
smalltalk-vn

34. Thank you for your
attention.
Cám ơn sự quan
tâm của bạn.