190 Entries for “Recent Blogs”
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READ MOREJune 23, 2014 | Team Reflections | OLE Nepal
Comparing Deployment Data with XOvis
It is hard to believe that six months have already passed since my arrival to Kathmandu. My volunteering time at OLE Nepal is up. At the end of May, I delivered a final presentation about XOvis, an XO usage visualization application our Data Quest Team has developed, and bid farewell to my Nepali colleagues. From my previous posts on the blog, some of you might remember that contributing to XOvis project has been my primary focus during my engagement at OLE. While more than three million OLPC XO laptops have been deployed all over the world, the OLPC community has not done much analysis about how learners have been using these laptops beyond gathering anecdotal stories from students, teachers, parents, and school administrators. Identifying a need to learn more about the reality of XO use, a team of curious data scientists from the global community embarked on a project that goes beyond anecdotal evidence using quantitative analysis and data visualization. Before I dive into details, let me quickly summarize what XOvis is about.
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READ MOREFeb. 25, 2014 | Impact Stories | OLE Nepal
The Wise Man in the Training
The narrow training hall in the KP Plaza Hotel, crammed with 24 teachers, one school supervisor and four OLE Nepal staff, resembled the crowded fish market in the heart of Kathmandu. Actually, it was not exactly a hall, but a balcony turned into a hall by hanging curtains along the three open sides. The cold breeze from the Seti river streamed continuously through the gaps between the curtains, but that did not bother the participants gathered there for the seven-day long training on using laptops and digital learning tools in classrooms. Neither did they complain about the foul smell and the continuous noise from the generator. At 10 AM on January 22, 2014 Bajhang district headquarter, Chainpur, was slowly coming to life, and the participants braved the cold and and the inconvenience to get started with enthusiasm.
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READ MOREFeb. 20, 2014 | Team Reflections | OLE Nepal
Chandi Devi: Voluntourist Ventures into the Field
The day I had been eagerly awaiting has finally arrived. My first visit to a school with our laptop program, Chandi Devi Primary School. I met with Roshan, my fellow software developer and friend from OLE Nepal, at Lagankhel bus stop at 8 am on a sunny Sunday morning to set off for Dukuchaap, one of the nearest deployments just south of Kathmandu. As I had expected, our journey soon turned into a bumpy ride on an unpaved road. Traveling through Nakhkhu, Sainbu, and Bungamati, we arrived to Dukuchaap shortly after 10:00 am. At the bus stop, we met with an English teacher from Chandi Devi, who guided us through a steep winding path to the top of a hill, where children were just about to start the first school day of the week. Yes, you read that correctly. Here in Nepal, a week has six working days with Saturday being the only holiday of the week.
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READ MOREAug. 28, 2013 | Program Updates | OLE Nepal
The Road to Phaplu
The harrowing journey along a precarious mountain highway taken by OLE Nepal’s team of trainers and technical staff to reach program schools in Solukhumbu. “Phaplu airport is closed for upgradation. All flights are now landing on a makeshift landing strip in Kangel, a couple of hours from Phaplu”. The news welcomed me. After having flown twice to Phaplu within the last year, the adrenaline- or rather the thrill- associated with landing on a strip consisting of loose gravel has notably decreased. A makeshift airport. Landing there should be quite an experience.
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READ MOREAug. 6, 2013 | Learning Games Development | OLE Nepal
Getting Ready for XO-4 Touch.
Although it may be difficult to give a black and white picture of the impact of OLPC laptops on school children, one thing is very evident – children love to play with laptops, utterly. And this, I think, is the idea of the program – engaging young minds with a device filled with educational materials. Software and contents always grow bigger over time. Computer memory always tends to be insufficient. In the remote villages of Nepal, XO1 has proved itself to be a rugged and durable learning machine. Now it is time to give way to the newer verion -XO-4. There are several major advancement over XO-1, for example, efficient processor architecture, increased processing speed, bigger disk space and bigger memory. But introduction of touchscreen is the most exciting and remarkable difference.