[OLPC India] Report on event held on 5th August 2008 at DAKC

[shirish]

Hi all,
   A workshop was organised by DAKC
http://www.olpc.co.in/olpcindiaday/olpc-workshop.html
 Reached DAKC (Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City), Thane at prompt
9:00 hours. Took in almost an hour to get my pass for the day. DAKC is
beautiful and is spread over 120 odd acres. They had issues with not
promoting the event as it could have been promoted and would have
involved more people. Anyways we had tea and snacks and the workshop
started at 11:15 sharp. Something around 20 odd people.
 David Cavallo (who's also working at MIT Media Lab
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Media_Lab)
 showed us the XO .

This is the first time I have involved myself with the machine and the design is
pretty clever. I also got to learn a bit about the Sugar Interface and
it takes a bit to know why and how things work. The software is pretty
much integrated with the hardware. For a normal desktop to function
like OLPC, it would need a keyboard like the OLPC has, the keyboard
bindings make it work the way it does. We used the XO for couple of
hours, then had a Q&A. Post lunch he showed us how the OLPC is making
changes across the world. He showed us something in ethopia, Mongolia
and couple of other countries with some interesting unique use-cases.
The most interesting I felt was the work shown with low-cost sensing
networks. Seriously, RFID is just the tip of the iceberg if you look
in sensor network technology. He also showed us an application very similar to
turtleart (I forgot the name of application, it was in windows :(
)which is using
mathematics, geometry, programming for children. It was really interesting
seeing how that tiny application could make it easier for teachers .
He demonstrated
the concept of making a square.

 Of course they would need to be trained and stuff like that. We broke
off for tea,
had a round of Q&A and finished off everything by 18:00 hours. All in
all had an interesting and engaging day ;)
-- 
 Regards,
 Shirish Agarwal
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