p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Ever heard of Niue?

Although self-governing, “Niue is in free association with New Zealand, meaning that the Sovereign in Right of New Zealand is also Niue’s head of state,” says the Wikipedia.

It’s a tiny country, but it’s secured a permanent place in the history of 21st century communications by becoming the first place in the world to issue laptops to every child.

And the computers are, of course, One Laptop per Child systems.

“In late July I was very privileged to help roll out the world’s first 100% saturation of OLPC XOs to the country of Niue, in the Pacific near New Zealand,” blogs Pia Waugh in OLPC Australia.

She goes on »»»

 There are around 400 students, and every single one got a laptop! I was in charge of the server/wireless infrastructure, and the imaging of the laptops as well as technical training for the people there on the ground. I worked closely with Ian Thomson who coordinated it (from SPC) and Grisel Carriera, a education specialist from Australia. Grisel and I were volunteers for the project, and Ian/Grisel between them basically coordinated the teacher training.

I thought I’d write up a few notes about the project, although most of the details are on the OLPC Niue wiki page. Basically I spent a week setting up the (currently) fairly beta XS software on the server, setting up a WDS wireless network (to get network connectivity for the XOs throughout the entire two schools without an extensive wired LAN) and a few additions to the XS software such as Moodle (which will soon be integrated) and some great locally relevant education resources pulled together by David Leeming who is working with Ian in the Pacific OLPC deployments. I used the XO 703 image with about 30 applications including Speak, Cartoon Builder, Flipsticks, Colors, Scratch, Ruler, Stopwatch, Wikibrowse (v9 as v10 is all Spanish!) and Sudoku, as well as all the default applications in the activity pack. They worked really well!

Check out some photos below! One of the schools was a primary school, and one a high school, and I believe the primary school will gain the most benefit, but it will be an interesting experiment how the high school goes with them. Ultimately in Australia we will only be looking at primary schools, because they aren’t really made for high schools.

Useful references:

• OLPC Niue documentation
• Some Photos from OLPC Niue rollout
• Teacher training documentation
•  OLPC in broader Oceania

If anyone wants to volunteer for these kinds of projects specifically in the next month or two, please drop me an email at pia dot waugh at olpc dot org dot au with when you are available, your interests and skills, as Ian and David need more volunteers for Pacific based projects For people able to volunteer in the medium to long term, there will soon be a rego system available.

Great write-up, Pia! Great pictures, too.

Niue  is an example for everyone.

Your story proves all of us, not just those living there,  can get along fine without Intel, Microsoft, et al.

It’s what People 2 People is all about.

And to get rid of the idea you have to be a kid to benefit from a One Laptop Per Child computer, “I am an OX user, and 81 years old,” Herman Krieger posts under Pia’s story.

You can see a pic of him with an XO here http://www.efn.org/~hkrieger.

Definitely stay tuned.

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 7:36 am and is filed under Freedom, P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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