Faster and easier IT tools can benefit a lot of people all over the world. A goal that LXDE shares with One Laptop per Child. To bring LXDE on the XO-laptop can help to turn the XO from a tool for children only into a device for the whole family.

OLPC Afghanistan

This year in April I had the chance to go to Afghanistan again continuing the cooperation with OLPC Afghanistan. The goal – to provide a drop in replacement for the Sugar desktop and to give users the choice between different desktops.

Whereas smaller kids use the laptop with all the advantages of the educational approach of Sugar, LXDE on the XO can be used by older family members as a more traditional desktop. Providing information about the local community and including projects like a collection of a local business directory makes the deployment of laptops more useful for the whole family and supports them in making a living and improving their lives.

Small energy saving devices like the XO offer access to knowledge and information in Afghanistan, even more so as the Afghan project deploys Freifunk Networks as part of the project implementation. A school server with thousands of books thus can serve local communities outside schools via advanced wifi mesh networks.

OLPC Vietnam

For a second cooperation with OLPC I am looking to Vietnam, that offers “all the ingredients” for a successful deployment of IT and communication technologies. The ultimate goal of OLPC Vietnam is a large scale deployment to support and foster the change of frontal teachers centralized methods to a learner and learning focused methodology in Vietnam.

Links

* http://wiki.lxde.org/en/XO
* http://olpc.af
* http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Vietnam
* http://olpc.vn

# The OLPC Vietnam project with LXDE will be presented at the GNOME.Asia Summit in Vietnam from Nov. 20-22: http://gnome.asia