One Laptop Per Child powered by One Cow

OLPC stands for "One Laptop Per Child" this is a non-profit association that is working to develop & supply a $100 laptop for children around the world.

Presently they are working with the following countries: Argentina, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Libya, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Thailand, Uruguay & USA (read more about selection of countries and those waiting to enter the program.)

The laptop is called the XO, it was "created expressly for the world's poorest children, living in its most remote environments. The laptop was designed collaboratively by experts from both academia and industry" (see laptop specs).

Highlights of the XO are:

• can be hand powered
• light and durable
• estimated product life: 5 yrs
• full-time wireless router
• 2 display modes available (low power consumption)
  
• 7.5 inch TFT 1200×900 pixel screen
• the machine overall has been designed to be power efficient...from the CPU to the display
  
• built from free and open-source software
  

Now, what initially grabbed my attention was an article written about the OLPC experimenting on new ways to power the XO program......they are looking at "cow power."

An article written in InfoWorld discusses finalizing the design of a cow-powered generator that the XO could easily be powered from....."The goal is to develop a low-cost energy source that can be used in Indian villages."

What a great innovation!

Cows hold an honored place in Hindu society, and it is part of Hindu tradition to avoid the consumption of beef. There are an abundance of cows in India and what a great partnership this would be to help the children of India!

Some delays in production has the XO hopefully rolling off the production line for mid-November 2007 (Reuters).

Sakai

Sakai is an online Collaboration and Learning Environment. Many users of Sakai deploy it to support teaching and learning, ad hoc group collaboration, support for portfolios and research collaboration.

A set of generic collaboration tools forms the core of Sakai:
AnnouncementsDrop, BoxEmail, ArchiveResourcesChat RoomForums, Threaded Discussion, Message Center, Message Of The Day, News/RSS, Preferences,
Presentation, Profile/Roster, Repository Search, Schedule, Search, Web Content, WebDAV, Wiki, Site Setup.

The core tools can be augmented with tools designed for a particular application of Sakai.
Teaching Tools:
Assignments, Grade book, Module Editor, QTI Authoring, QTI Assessment, Section Management, Syllabus
Portfolio Tools:
Forms, Evaluations, Glossary, Matrices, Layouts, Templates, Reports, Wizards.

FastStone - Image Viewer

ImageViewersupports all major graphic formats including BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA. It has a nice array of features such as image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping, color adjustments, musical slideshow and much more.

eLGG

Elgg is an open source software platform designed to allow people to easily connect and share resources. Elgg allows you to create a social network and host it on your own infrastructure, modifying the features to fit your specific needs.

Users establish personal digital identities and connect with other people, collaborate with them and discover new resources through their connections. Plugins allow users on different social networks to collaborate, and provide specific functionality for tasks like project management, mobile browsing and collaboration through user-controlled wikis.

This can be used for student or teacher blogs and as a podcasting platform.

SchoolTool

An opensource solution that has been developed to help schools with an online administrative infrastructure.


Three different programs to look at: SchoolTool Calendar, SchoolBell, and SchoolTool2006.

NVU - "N-View"

An open source Web Developer for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

Move easily between design and code modes along with an integrated FTP manager to easily upload your web content.