As the first week of OLPC's Give 1, Get 1 campaign comes to a close, Salimata (Sali) Fandjalan, a former Web producer at laptopmag.com, continues her journal (
read her previous entries), reflecting on the advantages, and some design flaws, of the XO laptop that LAPTOP Magazine acquired for her. Sali gave the XO to one lucky student in Mali for some real hands-on experience and brought the laptop to a local school. The following are excerpts from Sali's second journal, which she wrote while testing the XO in Mali.
November 4, 2007
Today I returned to Mali with my XO. I came home to find the DHL package from OLPC. I opened it up and found the solar panel charger I requested. As soon as I plugged it in and put the panel in the sun, the battery light came on. I turned the computer on to double check (can you blame me?). I had to do a double-take to believe that this was really, actually working! This would have been so helpful in Guinea, where the computer ran out of power after the kids were playing with it for about three hours and with few electric outlets in the houses. I love the XO (well, sometimes)!
November 6, 2007
I went to Ouelessebougou, a village in Mali, on Tuesday. As soon as I arrived in the village I went to some of the private schools that are sponsored by an organization called Mali Rising (
www.malirisingfoundation.org). The public schools here are too full since they can contain up to a hundred-plus students per class, so those parents who can afford to pay about ten dollars per trimester enroll their children in the private schools.
I visited their first-grade through sixth-grade classrooms. I gave them a presentation on the XO and explained to them what OLPC is doing. Many of the kids asked how they could get one. I felt helpless again and told the teachers and the students to write letters to OLPC asking for the laptops. They were all so psyched about the XO, especially the little ones. The rush, the excitement, the enthusiasm, the smiles and happy faces can be witnessed and seen through the pictures I took. I was again so elated to see all the kids loving the computer, seeing their faces in the webcam and putting their fingers on the keyboard for the first time. I was so blown away by the teachers' reactions. They spoke and spoke about how this computer could change their school and the way they teach.
I didn't show the XO to the 7th through 9th graders because I thought they were too big for the XO. I didn't know that by doing that I was going to start a small riot; they were infuriated for being left out. I figured their hands were too big to type on the XO, but it made me realize how wrong and unfair that was. They too are children of the world, children who are left out and forgotten; children who have never seen, let alone touched, a computer.
November 7, 2007
Though it is powerful to see how all the kids react to the XO, I wanted to see how one child would interact with the XO alone. I went to a friend's home in Ouelessebougou and gave the XO to Sanaba Samake (called Ma by her friends and family). She is a 7-year-old girl in the third grade.
At first she couldn't figure out how to open the XO, but after really checking it out piece by piece, she noticed the antennas on the side. She began pulling and pushing it--I gave her a hand by lifting one for her, and she lifted the other one. She didn't know how to turn it on either, since she'd never used a computer before. Although she saw one and watched slideshows of pictures on it, she never got hands-on with an actual laptop. She was asking a lot of questions, such as "How do you open this? Turn it on? What does it do? Can I look at pictures?" She was able to maneuver the mouse and arrow very well and quite easily, so the first thing I showed her how to open was the Write application. She typed her name, although it took her a while to find the keys. After she got the hang of it, she knew where to find the letters for her name and Delete.
All children who get an XO WILL NEED TRAINING!!!!! There is nothing OLPC can do about it; there is nothing the children or their parents can do about it. Without training, the XO is nothing more than a little pretty green-and-white box that looks like a misshaped, overgrown bunny with no teeth.
She tried the built-in camera; it was very dark, and the picture quality was horrific. I couldn't tell where our teeth and lips began on our faces in the picture she took. During the daytime, the picture quality is fine, but when there are no lights, don't even attempt to try it, or you will feel like an alien (with hair) is starring back at you. Also, the position of the camera is not very smart in my opinion, because in order to see your full face you have to either turn the XO at an angle or turn your head back and forth like a sea elephant trying to seduce his mate until you see your entire face on the screen.
She tried the paint program as well. My first question after seeing her struggle to use it was "who made this?" It is so impractical, the tools are positioned too close together, and when the kids finally get the arrow to point and the options drop down, the window is too small. And with the size of the arrow, it was very difficult for her to choose what she wanted. Changing the color is also difficult. How would she know the hue number she wants for blue, pink, red, etc.? I've used Photoshop for three years, and I don't know what hue number to pick.
She tried creating a doll using the Etoys program with little luck on her own. She was having a hard time getting the shapes she wanted, but with time and help from me she had no problem and really enjoyed the program. After playing with a few of the programs, she wanted to type, so she took off and went and sat in front of the TV, so everyone could she her typing on her new computer. She kept it until around 11 p.m., and I took it from her so she could go to bed, since she had school the next day.
November 8, 2007
When Ma came back from school at 12 p.m., I gave her the XO, and she just wanted to type on it. She kept it until 2 p.m. when she had to head back to school. I asked her if she had any complaints about it; she just said, "Can I have it?"
Around 3 p.m. I went to the schools I visited yesterday to pick up the letters that the teachers had their students write to OLPC. I was more than impressed. They were all ready with their little envelopes. Some who couldn't afford an envelope created their own out of paper. I read a couple of them and I was smiling from ear to ear. The first one I read, though, brought me to tears while at the same time made me pat myself on the back and even more determined to get these laptops to Mali. A little girl, no more than seven years old, with no mother or father, wants to get an education because when she's not in school she is sent to different villages to go work for different people who only pay her about two dollars for the entire duration of her work, be it one, two, three months, or more. That is the money that she uses for herself.
I came back to Bamako, the capital and where my home is, around 6:30 p.m., exhausted, but smiling and thanking in silent prayer all those involved in this.
Don't Miss: Sali's Journal: The OLPC XO Goes to Africa, Part I
Our recipient of One Laptop Per Child's XO kept a journal of her experiences using it with children in Guinea.
