the first OLPC deployment - Nigeria.

I'm not sure if this picture is making me smile ear to ear because of the future of learning it represents for students all over the world (not just in the OLPC pilot countries), or

because the laptops appear already to be a source of wonder and engagement and curiosity for the kids (exactly what powerful learning tools should do!), or

because I can only begin to imagine what kids here in the US will learn from being connected to co-creators and collaborators in Nigeria and elsewhere, and what problems they will solve and new innovations they will develop together...

...but it's the first time in a while that a picture in the news has made me smile.


http://news.com.com/2300-1041_3-6175025-8.html?tag=ne.gall.pg

Buried beneath the "news from Washington" about presidential hopefuls, the future of the Iraq War, and the Scooter Libby trial, is the perpetually unbelievable (truthfully, all too believable) state of DC Public Schools. Here are excerpts from a high school student who attends one of the several schools that have gone without heat this past week:

"Things have been crazy since last Monday when we had to leave our school because of flooding and loss of heat....Last Thursday, we were so cold that the principal put us in the library, and we kept warm by opening the curtains and letting the sun warm us up. Students and teachers kept their jackets on the whole day....We were shoved into classes with students that we had never seen and without our regular teachers. We also did not have any textbooks or supplies. The teachers were doing their best to teach us, but most of us were not learning anything in these classes."

To read more student voices from this ridiculous situation:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/14/AR2007021400645_3.html


And, what they lack in heat DC schools apparently make up for in lead:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/14/AR2007021401678.html