OLPC-UK

Well it seems like it might well be quiet on the OLPC UK front. In some regards it is, but that doesn’t mean nothing is happening in the UK. In fact we have a number of members that are active in upstream One Laptop Per Child and Sugar Labs Activities. We’re actively involved in the up coming Sugar on a Stick third release and other upstream stuff.

In the One Laptop Per Child upstream the newer generation of XO laptop, the XO-1.5 with faster hardware and more storage in the same form factor, has now reached production and has started deployment around the globe. We’ve had a couple of the pre production units in the UK for a number of months to help with testing and development. One of our members has been actively involved in the deployment in Nicaragua and will soon (if he’d not already there) be headed to Argentina and Peru to assist in their deployments.

There’s also been some quite interesting developments around the globe. In Australia there’s been the first deployment of 200 OLPC XO computers at the Yirrkala Community Education Centre on the northeast tip of Arnhem Land. Arnhem Land is one of the most remotely accessible parts of Australia. The 200 XOs deployed are the first of up to 400,000 intended to be deployed by 2014 across rural Australia. The thing that makes this deployment interesting is that it is sponsored by the private sector with three large corporations, Telstra, News Limited and The Commonwealth Bank, being involved.

As always there’s constantly new and interesting deployments going on in the developing world. The Guardian newspaper recently published this article about Rwanda’s laptop revolution.

Keep an eye out for further UK developments, and please contact us if you have interesting development using Sugar or the XO in the UK.

The Sugar on a Stick 2 release, code named Blueberry is now released. You can read the SugarLabs press release here or if you just want to download it you can go straight to the site and grab it here.

OLPC-UK are reviewing the new release with the intention of running it on the OLPC XO-1 devices being used in the UK pilot. We also now have a couple of the newer XO-1.5 pre production devices.

With the OLPC UK pilot in full swing and some other exciting developments occurring it is time we met as a group.

The purpose of the meeting will be to both:
* Get an update on progress so far on the pilot, other actions
* Look at the next steps / actions / opportunities for OLPC UK

Full agenda to be sent to the olpc-uk mailing list closer to the meeting.

Meeting Details:
Time: 7pm Start
Date: Tuesday 6th October 2009
Venue: TBC (By 20 September 2009)

Please save the date and RSVP to the mailing list.

Welcome to OLPC-UK. The site has now launched. Keep coming back here to find news about the happening of OLPC-UK over the coming months. The pilot starts for real very shortly with all the kids heading back to school for the new year. Stay tuned for news and photos about that exciting development. There has been a lot of hard work done by the pilot team to get that off the ground. Of course its never too late to get involved. We’re looking for people to get involved on the ground in the pilot, to write articles for this site and generally help out.