Thanks to a tip from Walter Bender, I discovered that wife Amy and I are featured in the new Cult of LEGO book from No Starch Press. My 2007 photo of Amy modeling a One Laptop per Child XO-1 laptop camera viewfinder made of LEGO bricks runs full bleed on page 41. The viewfinder is shown as an example of one of a wide variety of ingenious uses for LEGO bricks. The book itself is a broad survey of LEGO history, culture and fandom.

The Cult of LEGO is available in bookstores and online. No Starch Press offers an ebook or ebook/print bundle on their web site. The PDF ebook is pictured here on my iPad.

The LEGO viewfinder was discovered by design professor Phil Renato, who collaborated with me to create a custom design for 3D printing. We made a couple hundred of them for sale and gifting. The photo of Walter Bender looking through that viewfinder has been used far and wide. The viewfinder was even converted into a USB flash drive. Then Vik Olliver of RepRap fame came up with a simpler design that could be printed from an XO laptop to the DIY RepRap 3D printer.

My ongoing involvement with LEGO through the MIT Media Lab and the OLPC Learning Club of DC attracted a visit from producers of the LEGO Mindstorms Robotics products. I provided consulting on approaches to optimizing their low-cost WeDo robotics kit for the OLPC XO laptop. The discussions led to my introducing to LEGO the team of developers that did the port of the Win/Mac software to Linux that is now being deployed to 20,000 kids in Peru.

I’m looking forward to helping LEGO some more in 2012.

CC Flickr photo by Mike Lee

…you should too!

 http://olpcsf.org/CommunitySummit2010/

Sugar Labs DC presents Turtle Art Day as a celebration and learning opportunity for the amazingly versatile Turtle Blocks and Turtle Art Mini activities for OLPC XO laptop, Sugar on a Stick and Ubuntu operating system. Turtle Art incorporates many of the graphical capabilities of the seminal Logo programming language and has been championed in recent years by Walter Bender of Sugar Labs. Interested parents, students, and teachers can experience an introduction to Turtle Art at the Career Center. There will also be a sneak preview of the new Turtle Art Activity Portal where Turtle Artists of all ages can upload their works to share. The gallery has some sublimely beautiful pieces.

Saturday, August 7, 2010, 1-4pm
Arlington Career Center
816 South Walter Reed Drive
Arlington, VA 22204
Contact Page, Google Map, Aerial Photo, Bus Info

Download the poster artwork from Flickr.

NOTE: This event takes the place of the previously announced August 21st meeting. There will be no meeting on August 21st!

Eternal Snow by Jeff Elkner

Demoing the litl webbook to Sugar Labs’ Sean Daly at a recent impromptu meet-up.

 *** Note new time for August meeting. See end of this post. A new blog post will have more details.

This month, we’re doing a weeknight meet-up to look at a bunch of cool new OLPC-related hardware and another new release of the Sugar Learning Platform.

OLPC News July DC Meetup: See the Pixel Qi screen
Tuesday, July 13 at 6:30pm – 10:00pm
Looking Glass Lounge
3634 Georgia Ave NW in DC
1 block south of Georgia/Petworth Metro Station
RSVP on Facebook if you do the social networking thing…

The star of the evening will be a working example of the long awaited daylight-readable Pixel Qi 3Qi netbook screen recently offered as a DIY kit to swap into several models of off-the-shelf netbooks. The screen is the breakthrough technology originally developed by Mary Lou Jepsen for the OLPC XO that is now deployed on close to 2 million machines in developing countries. This technology is not only available now as a kit for hobbyists from Maker Shed, but will also soon be built into some major brands of consumer netbooks. See our previous blog post about this impressive DIY screen replacement kit.

We will also have the latest major milestone 10.1.1 build of  the Sugar Learning Platform on Fedora for BOTH the OLPC XO-1 and XO-1.5. More details on the release notes page. This is a must-have if you own a G1G1 XO laptop. It’ll be like you have a new machine after this upgrade and the Learning Club can advise you on the process at this and future meet-ups and meetings.

Hot off the UPS truck after a big (and much needed) price drop is Mike’s “litl webbook,” which is a large digital picture frame that flips around to become a web-only laptop that also connects to your flat screen TV.  The litl is significant to the OLPC movement in that it was designed by the same firms that worked on the original OLPC XO. Pentagram NY designed the user interface, and fuseproject the industrial design. The litl’s radically simple new user interface even contains software coded by several former OLPC employees. The litl is the closest embodiment to a consumer oriented XO laptop, except that it’s meant for your comfy broadband-connected living room or kitchen.

Jon Camfield will have the current incarnation of FrontlineSMS installed on his GSM modem-equipped OLPC XO-1. FrontlineSMS can send text message blasts out to groups, and manage replies, using only cellphone service. The system has proven invaluable for effecting agile communications in remote areas that do not have standard internet connectivity.

The Learning Club’s next meeting will be back at the Arlington Career Center on Saturday August 21 August 7, 2010*** at 1pm. Sugar Labs DC will present a much-anticipated workshop on TurtleArt as well as provide a peek at the social networking site they are building to support the software. Check back on the blog the week before or in your email inbox for meeting updates.

Hope to see you soon!

Flickr photo by Wayan Vota.

TimeLapse is computer software for the Sugar Learning Platform used to gather periodic data (sound and images).  It is the first software activity developed by Sugar Labs DC and runs on the OLPC XO-1 laptop. The idea for TimeLapse grew out of the exciting, eclectic, interdisciplinary meeting of scientists, computer programmers, pedagogues, and hardware hobbyists originally brought together by the OLPC Learning Club DC.

Dr. Frank Linton, who has an observation bee hive in his house, was interested in studying the relationship between the sound made by the hive and the health and well being of the bees inside.  He wondered if he could use his XO laptop to gather periodic sound sampling from the hive.  This real world need became the seed for the development of TimeLapse.

Over the past two years, with Dr. Linton acting as customer, Jeff Elkner, and a group of young programmers from Sugar Labs, DC have made steady improvements to TimeLapse.  The current release is the first one that is installable through the Browse Activity in Sugar, making TimeLapse easily available to Sugar users all over the world.

Come celebrate the accomplishment of these talented young programmers.  Bring your XO and try out TimeLapse for yourself.

Update: TimeLapse is now available for download on the Sugar  Labs activities site.

Note time change!!!
When: Saturday, January 16th, 2010, 1 pm to 4 pm
Arlington Career Center
816 South Walter Reed Drive,
Arlington, VA 22204
(Contact Page, Map, Aerial Photo, Bus Info)

Walter Bender of Sugar Labs will join in by video conference from Cambridge, MA.

We’ll also raffle off an original copy of the new XtraOrdinary 2010 SD card!

What: Family XO Mesh Meetup
When: Saturday, March 21st, 2009, 1 pm to 4 pm
*** Note time change ***
816 South Walter Reed Drive,
Arlington, VA 22204
(Contact Page, Map, Bus Info)

Our March meeting is upon us this Saturday at the Arlington Career Center, but at 1pm instead. At the meeting, we’ll review this month’s OLPC/Sugar Labs headline news starting with the relaunch of the Sugar Labs web site to coincide with a new release of the Sugar user interface, now dubbed Sucrose 0.84. Not only is this new version ready to install on the OLPC XO-1, it can be tried out as “Sugar on a Stick” (SoaS) on USB flash drive (as demonstrated last month and pictured above) as well as a “live” CD-ROM. We’ll review the new features and help those who want to have it installed on their XO or want a USB drive configured. You must request a developer’s key from OLPC to install this update, and a 2GB USB drive is recommended for the SoaS. As you may have seen at the last meeting, Sugar runs on many netbooks now as well as desktop PCs and Macs using Virtual Box.

I visited OLPC Headquarters at the beginning of the month and I’ll report on what’s new there including a new Contributor’s Program. Work is beginning on the XO 1.5 with updated hardware specs and a release date of late 2009/early 2010. We may also have a special guest from Boston.

Randall Caton, Professor Emeritus of Physics and Computer Science at Christopher Newport University in the Department of Physics, Computer Science and Engineering, will speak about his work at NASA developing Etoys lessons and his hopes for the future of learning. At the January meeting, we some of us participated in a Jam session to review and collect feedback on his existing Etoys activities. We’ll be presenting our preliminary findings to Randall.

And I finally bought a replacement for the $149 Alpha 400 netbook that was smashed by some kids slamming into me on the subway. I’ll bring it to the meeting.

If you aren’t already subscribed, our monthly email update is the best way to find out about meetings. April’s meeting should be back at Gallaudet, and our confirmed guest speaker will be our very own Kim Toufectis, who will speak on using the OLPC XO to access web-based productivity tools–or what techies call “cloud computing.” Kim published some of his intial thoughts and discoveries in a post on OLPC News last month.

The photo is of my 5-year-old daughter Cici posing with two netbooks running Sugar on a Stick. The shot is from a set I created and donated to Sugar Labs.

OLPC Learning Club DC member Mike Cariaso popped up on my Google Talk last night to tell me he had arrived at the Elaine & Nicholas Negropnte School in Reaksmy, Cambodia. This is the school featured in the May 2007 60 Minutes report on OLPC. He made the eight-hour drive north with Elaine from Phnom Penh the day before in great weather. After settling in, Mike was naturally eager to document his surroundings to post online. The school has a satellite uplink and generators, so I was chatting with Mike as he uploaded some fantastic photos to Flickr. He even ran back outside to get a better picture of the kids using the laptops in sunlight. Cambodia is exactly 12 hours offset from Washington, D.C. So while I was yawning in my easychair, it was the height of the day’s learning for the kids in the school. Mike’s first observations (as a technologist) were that the kids were still having lots of problems with the XO trackpad and none of the machines were currently accessing the satellite internet due to technical problems. Those sound like great first challenges to which Mike can apply his considerable skills as he begins his several-month stay as a volunteer. We’re looking forward to many more dispatches from the learning fields.

Here are links my photos, presentation slides and archived audio from the meeting. The automatic MP3 capture from FreeConference.com worked exceedingly well and also provided toll free numbers to those dialing in. We were, however, constrained to staying near the speaker phone at both locations, but that was workable.

The audio is stored on OurMedia.org, which offers an embedded audio player or downloading in various audio formats. I’ve posted my timestamped annotations on the page so you can advance the audio player to the portions you want to hear. With the slides open in another window, you can follow along the audio of my trip report.

Thanks again to the teams at Nortel for helping with logistics, Anna Schoolfield for calling in from Birmingham on a busy Saturday and to the new and regular attendees for bringing your energy.

The OLPC Learning Club DC’s information table at the Takoma Park Folk Festival has been confirmed. Mark your calendars for Sunday, September 14, 2008.

David Rothman, editor of the TeleRead Blog on the Ebook industry, is a happy customer of the DC-area OLPC repair service.

Both of the third-party XO accessory stores, XO Explosion and I Love My XO, will soon offer replacement parts such as keyboards and batteries. XOExplosion will also carry the OLPC specified 10-watt solar panel.

LEGO recently announced that a special XO-compatible robotics system for developing countries, the WeDo, will go on sale January 1, 2009.

Students at Duke University organized OLPC GrassCon,  the first virtual grassroots web conference. The conference video was streamed live Saturday, July 19. There were some technical glitches and speaker lineup changes, but the presenters’ content was excellent in my opinion. I’ve posted a few minutes of video and screenshots on Flickr. The con organizers say the archived video and chat text will be posted soon.
Update 7/23: The archived video of the GrassCon talks are now posted.

The Waveplace Foundation has released 30 (!) new video tutorials on eToys. The tutorials are already being used for teacher training in Haiti, Florida and Nicaragua. The videos will also be released as a DVD and book. Currently, it is necessary to sign up on their web site to be granted a password (some days later) to see all the videos.

The Birmingham Alabama Board of Education has voted to accept the remaining 14,000 OLPC XO laptops after piloting the 1,000 received in the spring.

Jim Gettys’ most recent OLPC Community News Update is chock full of deployment stories, new software activities and product development progress.

TED.com now has a couple videos in its archive of Nicholas Negroponte pitching OLPC at the conference as well as some classic footage of Nicholas from 1984.

Lastly, I notice that the CBS DVD of Nicholas Negroponte’s appearance on 60 Minutes can still be ordered (for $17.95) on Amazon. I got a copy of this a while back, and it has been very useful in briefings on the OLPC mission and history.

I was touched by Carla Gomez Monroy‘s beautiful photograph of children using the XO laptop in Mongolia. Carla is part of the team that is still on the ground there beginning the deployment of 10,000 laptops that are first out to a developing country from the Give One Get One campaign. There are many more photos on the OLPC wiki.

Walter Bender also had this to say in this week’s OLPC community update:

3. Ulaan Baatar: Enkhmunkh Zurgaanjin, Carla Gomez Monroy, Jan Jungclaus, and RedHat’s David Woodhouse are working hard to set up a structure that can provide sustainability to the project in Mongolia such that it can spread it throughout the country. On Wednesday, the Minister of Education visited the school for the “laptop hand out” event. On Friday, an optical-fiber cable was set up, in spite of the extreme low temperatures; on Saturday, the schools were connected to the Internet. David has been working with a group of local technical people on the servers and Internet set up infrastructure as well as on configuration. John Watlington has been providing support remotely from OLPC.

We have been meeting almost every evening with the strategic team of the Ministry of Education to provide feedback and sort out challenges. We met yesterday with the Ministry of Education team, teachers, principals, ICTA, content team and pilot research team to provide detailed feedback of how the project is going so far and to bring up things to be considered for the short and long terms.

Teachers are putting their hearts into the program. They had their first sessions with the children. Parents, too, have shown support. And the children, of course, love it. The Constructionist model of learning has found wide-spread support within the MoE.

20. Mongolia: Dave Woodhouse is in Mongolia setting up servers in two schools, which as been an educational experience. Firstly, the wireless penetration through the walls they have here to cope with temperatures of –40°C is fairly dismal—Dave reports that we are having to use a lot of active antennae to get the coverage we need. We’re laying them out as if they were “normal” access points, to try to get coverage of all the rooms they’ll be teaching the 2nd–5th grades in. Hopefully, the nature of the mesh will improve coverage.

To start with, each school will have five antennae, with two servers. That setup will be re-evaluated when it’s fully deployed and tested in the classrooms. It is physically installed in one school so far, and fully cabled (including CAT5 to the other rooms where they have computers). The other school should be similarly set up by the end of Monday.

We’re looking forward to a detailed report on the OLPC wiki in a few weeks.