Thanks! This is really interesting. What sort of results do you have so far? Technologically: How many USB sticks failed? How many were lost/stollen? Did the kids find any places to use the sticks outside of school? Do you have any measure of how much content was created? Is there much sharing between schools? Do you have any advice on how to facilitate sharing of created content? Sounds like a great project. Thanks for letting me know. Caroline <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 3:14 PM, K. K. Subramaniam <<a href="mailto:subbukk@gmail.com">subbukk@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Hi, This thread was spun off "Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and "Mastering" Educational SW" There are differences in the use of computers in schools between Sikshana (<a href="http://sikshana.blogspot.com" target="_blank">sikshana.blogspot.com</a>) and Sugar Labs/OLPC. Sikshana's tech pilot is only three years old and will reach around 6000 kids (grades 5..7) across 120 schools this year. Our involvement in these schools, as community members, was child-centric and focussed on building basic skills set. Supplies shortage is a perennial issue in these remote villages. We introduced computers as digital authoring tools so kids never run short of 'supplies'. There was no pre-loaded content - no physics lessons, no cartoons, no quizzes. A 2GB USB flash memory chip issued to each kid served as a "digital school bag". Etoys (customized for vernacular support) ran off the chip while others were installed on the hard disk. The difference between OLPC/Sugar/SoaS in the separation of personal content from the rest of the stack. Computers are not networked, collaboration is physical. The machine, OS, GUI, software tools were all subject to change. Putting OS on the chip would have reduced space for project files and upgrading software on so many chips would be a logistical nightmare! Our field office maintains a pool of computers (notebooks and desktops) from which schools can borrow as many as they can manage in the classrooms. Bite only what you can chew. This system allowed teachers and students to focus on authoring and not get bogged down by IT issues. We didn't try to simplify GUI. It was not even localized though teachers and students knew very little English. We found that kids enjoyed the challenge of mastering GUI. They were thrilled to use the same 'computer' that IT folks use in their offices. English-Kannada dictionary got used heavily. "Undo" became a much loved feature. They learnt LaTeX encoding to produce Kannada and Math text. Students formed teams to share 'tips and tricks'. Now teachers, across schools, are forming self-help groups to share their findings. Subbu _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) <a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a> </blockquote></div> -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove Caroline@SolutionGrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax