It was this e-mail from Paul Commons which pulled the trigger. This meant that my team which had been selected as a OLPCorps 2009 finalist was now officially participating in the OLPCorps 2009 program.
From:lpcorps@laptop.org>
Subject: Congratulations - Invitation to Participate in OLPCorps 2009!To: enduremasaraure@yahoo.com
Date: Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 10:51 PM
Dear Midlands State University, University of Zimbabwe, and MacalesterCollege Team,This evening, One Laptop per Child-Corps learned that we will be ableto fund an additional 15 university teams. Since we had selected yourteam's project proposal as one of the top 30 teams, we would like toinvite you to become part of the One Laptop per Child - Corpsmovement. Your commitment and passion for social change has earnedyou a selective position among some of the most highly talented anddriven students of our generation. Congratulations!Given that notification letters were sent 4 days ago, we fullyunderstand that many teams have already chosen alternate plans for thesummer. If your team would like to participate, please respondimmediately by sending us a note of acceptance with the names ande-mail addresses of all current team members. Upon acceptance, you willreceive detailed instructions on how to proceed, including all the necessaryforms and documentation to be completed. On the other hand, if yourteam chooses not to participate, please let us know immediately sothat we can offer this opportunity to another university team. Wehope to hear from you!Best,Paul CommonsOne Laptop per Child - Corps
The journey of empowering underprivileged children in remote rural district of Zimbabwe to become agents of change had begun and all preparations were all set for the two week training workshop in Kigali Rwanda
The OLPCorps Zimbabwe team is consists of three members ,Abide Masaraure - Midlands State university Zimbabwe ,Lorraine Manyonga -Univesity of Zimbabwe and Yeukai Mudzi from Macalester College USA.
Through the joint efforts of the three team members and an international partner organisation, Practical Action this will see the project being implemented as pilot actions spearheading the deployment of XO laptops in two mission Primary schools namely St Albans Chiweshe established (1957) and Nyamasanga (established in 1962). The schools are located in the remote and drought prone rural Buhera North District of Zimbabwe where pupils are drawn from the peasant farming community. The schools has an average of 400 pupils with two classes each from grade 1 to 7, each class hosting around 30 pupils. Of these pupils only about 50% make it to secondary school as many fail to proceed due lack of financial support. Grid electricity is not accessible to the schools and the main source of energy is wood fuel.
The indefinite strike by teacher has compromised education in Zimbabwe with more impact being felt in the rural areas where teachers are traditionally the only source of knowledge for pupils.
Lorraine Manyonga with her XO, in normal user mode
During the last two weeks Lorraine has been working tirelessly hard to obtain approval from the Ministry of Education. The education minister David Coltart has been out of the country but he is now aware of the project.
Yeukai is based in the United States of America and will be joining us in Zimbabwe before the 20th of June. Her Xo was shipped to Zimbabwe and she will be able to use it once she arrives.
Each school will receive a complement of 50 laptops each. The curriculum development will be through a participatory consultative process which would among other stakeholders include the teachers, pupils and parent. Pupils will be given the opportunity to exchange knowledge and discoveries during scheduled seminars.
With the current disruptions in the education sector in Zimbabwe it is indubitable that most children from well to do families especially in urban areas are learning from home rather than at school due to the advent of television and internet. The XO laptop becomes the bridge between the disadvantaged pupils especially from rural communities and those with free and open access to the internet.
Abide Masaraure holding his XO in e-book mode
Equipment to be used during deployment
Since the deployment is to be done on an off grid environment ,solar panels batteries
and an inverter pack are to be bought to provide a charging source for power for the XOs
The internet solution will be based on two iridium based satellite modems which will be installed on each of the two schools. The upload and download speeds of this satellite modems are 144kbps up and down respectively. This bandwidth is enough for a child to open a standard webpage assuming 50 xo laptops will be connected simultaneously at each time
Picture of Hughes RBGAN Satellite IP small modem
The main advantage of using this modems is that no complex installations are required and to operate the modem terminal is just pointed into the sky and you the start receiving a satellite signal from the iridium satellite based in space..
We are going to use wireless routers (WRT54GL) .They will act access points adding to their native routing capabilities.
They are going to be purchased and two will be assigned for each school. According to James Elkins on http://www.cornell/ pc.com
These routers have to be flashed with DDRT firmware so that they can support up to more than 30 connections. We had not purchased these routers yet as they are currently astronomically highly priced in Zimbabwe (ie one is going for US$250 .)
Storage
In article published on the BBC News website
Instead of a large hard drive the laptop has 1GB of flash memory, similar to that used in some digital cameras.
The memory can be expanded using an SD memory card slot underneath the screen or by plugging in peripheral devices through the USB ports.
Files can also be backed up on to a "school server" - a larger computer installed in a classroom - or via an online system provided by search giant Google.
A usb stick like the one shown in the diagram below will be used to give an Xo memory extra storage space and is versatile when flashing the XO and installing activity bundles.Most activity bundles are designed to be used on the XO sugar interface.
Olpc has been generous to provide the corp teams with a school server(the XS) which is like an ordinary PC which is used to back al the information on the children individual laptops.
Since we are doing our deployment on two schools we are hoping to secure two servers from OLPC and will bring them from Kigali to our deployment areas in Zimbabwe.
The XS server.
Our partnering organisation Practical Action can see the scaling up of the XO project in Zimbabwe.More details about this organisation can be found here
http://www.practicalaction.org/
Practical Action has an aim unit entitled Responding to new technologies in which this maiden OLPCoprps initiative in Zimbabwe will fit extremely well. Through this organisation, which I had been doing an internship in the information technology department we were able to drive a podcasting project in a remote district in the Zimbabwean Zambezi valley using mp3 players. The advent of this XO deployment came at a right time when we were basking in the success on bringing a new technology to a remote district which it was overwhelming accepted.The implementation plan of the project will be very similar to the one used during our podcasting mission and we are optimistic that the XO initiative will be a great success.
