<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 14px; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><div>Greetings everyone,</div><div><br></div><div>I have just returned from Ontario's northern First Nations communities where I have been developing a number of projects for health and education, one of them assisting an OLPC Pilot in a community called Sandy Lake. Prior to the initiation of OLPC Canada, two pilots were started in Sandy Lake and Muskrat Dam First Nation. Sandy received around 100 XO 1.0s, while Muskrat received around 50 (Muskrat being the smaller of the two). I travelled to Sandy Lake and helped to "reboot" their use of the laptops by updating the ones that weren't broken and giving manuals and seminars, and then bringing back 50 laptops to repair in Sioux Lookout. We ordered 30 keyboards and the same number of XO laptops – these will be sent to another community school to enjoy. I also began a site that re-organizes and compiles a lot of the information about OLPC and the XOs educators found useful, please visit it at: www.littlegreenmachines.knet.ca </div><div><br></div><div>One other initiative that I started is called the ELDER Project (Educational Linux Distribution as an Electronic Resource) and its goal is to provide First Nation community schools with open source, curriculum ready, educational software, many of which are on linux platforms. Before, many school computers were on lagging Windows XPs and had very little or no educational content. Today, 5 community schools have Linux (Edubuntu and QIMO) on their computers, with more schools joining in the future as youth community workers are being trained to install the software. If you have time, please visit at: www.elderproject.knet.ca </div><div><br></div><div>Happy Holidays Everyone!</div><div><br></div><div>M </div></body></html>