Kids on Computers Installfest – March 16th

Posted by avni on March 7, 2013 · No Comments · Subscribe to blog

We are having a Kids on Computers Installfest on Saturday, March 16th in Sherman Oaks, CA from 11AM – 6PM. A local high school in Topanga, California donated 80 laptops they were no longer using to Kids on Computers. We have shipped 20 of these laptops to Colegio Britanico, a school in Puebla, Mexico.  During this installfest, we are hoping to get 15-20 more of these laptops upgraded with additional RAM and installed with Free and Open Source software so they can be shipped to a lab in the city of Molcaxac also in Puebla. We will install Lubuntu along with offline Khan Academy videos and offline Wikipedia pages. Most of the kids we work with wouldn’t otherwise have access to technology.  The computer labs we build  help kids around the world get this access and we would love your help to make this happen.  Anyone can help and we are more than happy to teach you any needed skills.

Join us for a day of fun, learning, and making a difference for a great cause. You can sign up here: LA Installfest Info

Thank you!

 

Back to Huajuapan de León

Posted by randy on November 4, 2012 · One Comment · Subscribe to blog

A small group of volunteers from Kids on Computers returned to Huajuapan de León in October 2012 to update existing school labs, open a new lab, and train teachers. We had great support from the school administrators, teachers, parents, and local volunteers.

Schools

After spending a few days visiting schools and assessing needs, we went to the following schools to do updates and installations:

18 de Marzo
This school is the largest lab of donated KoC computers. There are about 30 desktops and laptops here. We updated them with Lubuntu, educational packages, Khan Academy videos, and offline Wikipedia. A few machines didn’t have working USB, so we left them with older (10.x) versions of Edubuntu. Although there is no Internet access available at this school, there is a local area network and wireless access point. We added 2 desktop computers with large hard drives, and had hoped to be able to turn these into local HTTP servers for the lab. But, we found that the switches/hubs were faulty and we couldn’t get reliable IP networking to work.

HP Touchpad Demo at 18 de Marzo

HP Touchpad Demo at 18 de Marzo

 

Antonio de León
This is a new school for KoC, located in Guadalupe de Ramírez, about a 2 hour drive from Huajuapan de León. The school director met with Thomas, Avni, Bill, and Gaby in Huajuapan de León and got a preview of KoC computers using Lubuntu. Their previous experience was with about 8 Windows computers, several of which had become infected with viruses. They asked that we add a few computers to their lab, and standardize them all on Lubuntu. It was a long day, but we got the lab up and running with a total of 17 machines running Lubuntu.

Antonio de Leon

Antonio de Leon

Antonio de Leon - Edubuntu Mr. Potato Head

Antonio de Leon – Edubuntu Mr. Potato Head

 

Saucitlan
This lab has been part of KoC for several years. Since many of the computers here were donated by a Mexican bank, they do not have hard drives. So they boot from an LTSP server. We added offline Wikipedia to the computers that had a disk, plus left an additional laptop with both offline Wikipedia and Khan Academy videos. Saucitlan now has 11 computers total. Members of the school board presented us with letters signed by community leaders requesting additional computers from KoC for a library as well as the secondary school down the street. As resources become available, we’d like to be able to help.

Saucitlan - LTSP Networked Edubuntu

Saucitlan – LTSP Networked Edubuntu

 

San Marcos
When KoC previously setup a lab in San Marcos, it included an Internet connection, strung across the street from City Hall via Cat5. Since then, the City Hall buildings have been demolished and are being rebuilt. As a result, they no longer have Internet access. We updated ___ computers with Lubuntu, educational packages, offline Wikipedia, and Khan Academy videos.

San Marcos

San Marcos

San Marcos Kids watching Khan Academy Videos

San Marcos Kids watching Khan Academy Videos

 

Zapato
This is a small school with just 6 laptops. When we visited, we discovered that they have had problems with theft, so the teachers typically take the KoC computers home when not in use. They bring the laptops back to school once per week for use in class. The laptops were not in the school when we visited, so we were unable to do any updates.

Local Support

We are very fortunate to work with Carlos (Cams) in Huajuapan de León as our local expert. He provides great support for the school labs, plus he was also able to conduct a 2 hour training session for the teachers in the area at 18 de Marzo.

Also, we were introduced to another Computer Science graduate from UTM – Eliud. He’s a computer support guru and Linux specialist in Huajuapan de León. We met him at San Marcos, and invited him to help with the KoC labs as he has time. He accepted our request and came to the teacher training session. Thanks Eliud!

In addition to these technical experts, we met (and re-met) several dedicated teachers, parents, and volunteers in the area that are engaged in helping us make technology available to underprivileged kids using open source software.

Cams training teachers at 18 de Marzo

Cams training teachers on Lubuntu, Edubuntu packages, Khan Academy Videos, and offline Wikipedia at 18 de Marzo

KoC Lab Installation

Posted by randy on · No Comments · Subscribe to blog

On our recent trip to Huajuapan de León, KoC wanted to update and standardize the installation procedure where possible. About 80 desktops and laptops needed to be installed and/or updated to have usable educational packages, plus some offline content. Here’s what we came up with.

Software Updates

Many of the donated desktops and laptops in our schools in Huajuapan de León have only 256MB or 512MB or memory. Older versions of Edubuntu run OK with this much memory, but Edubuntu 11.04 and later seems to take too many resources to run smoothly.

Because of this, we decided to try Lubuntu 12.04 i386 on as many computers as possible. With the LXDE desktop, these machines boot quickly and the desktop runs smoothly without hogging resources.

With Lubuntu installed, we added Edubuntu‘s educational packages, the LibreOffice suite, and security updates including the most current Linux kernel. This collection of updates was about 800MB, so we added them via USB. We also had several machines that didn’t have working USB, so we needed to make 2 CDs to get the packages completely transferred to the target machine for updating.

In addition to the educational games and software packages from Edubuntu, and the office suite from LibreOffice, we also wanted to add some more content for the kids (and parents) to use as needed. Since most of the labs have no Internet access, but a little extra disk space (most of the computers had at least 15GB of free disk), we were prepared to install some offline content:

Khan Academy Videos in Spanish
Using a pre-packaged collection from the Khan Academy on a Stick project, we added 873 Spanish language videos to the local disk of computers that had sufficient space. This collection of static .html files and .flv videos took about 15GB of space! Loading with USB was slow, but successful on all computers that had working USB. Thanks to Khan Academy and Mujica Norberto for this great package.

Offline Wikipedia in Spanish
Finding a usable subset of the vast collection of Wikipedia content can be challenging. Fortunately, we found the Kiwix project, which offers a light-weight HTTP server (kiwix-serve) which will deliver content from highly compressed Wikipedia data files. We added this content (another 15GB of disk) to machines that had space, and started up the kiwix-serve process locally. Kiwix and a compressed Spanish Wikipedia file gives these disconnected machines 1,070,530 articles and 666,304 media files for the kids, teachers, and parents to learn from!

With this additional content loaded, we added bookmarks to Chromium to kids could easily get to the locally stored content.

Cams Training – Chromium Bookmarks

Watching offline Khan Academy Videos in Chromium

Offline Wikipedia (Spanish), running on local port 4200.

“Discarded computers are our most wasted educational resource”

Posted by randy on August 16, 2012 · No Comments · Subscribe to blog

The title of this post is a quote from Robert Litt.  Mr. Litt is a teacher in Oakland, CA who has brought new life to old computers.

Although he’s not affiliated with Kids on Computers, Mr. Litt’s goals are very similar.  We put older, donated computers to work in school labs for underprivileged kids using open source software.

Here’s Mr. Litt’s recent presentation at Maker Faire earlier this year:

The computer classroom looks like a hodgepodge of random hardware!  But, who cares?  It’s a great model, and any kid without a chance to use a computer wouldn’t care one bit about how it looks.

Keep up the good work, Robert.

 

Potential Lab in Marrakech, Morocco

Posted by randy on August 12, 2012 · One Comment · Subscribe to blog

Kids on Computers was contacted recently about helping with a computer lab at a boarding house for girls in Morocco.  Last month, while traveling through Spain and Morocco, my wife and I stopped by to see about it. We visited the Dar Taliba (house for girls) in Marrakech, which provides housing for girls ages 12 to 18 that otherwise would not have the ability to attend a secondary school in their area.

Koutoubia Mosque

Koutoubia Mosque Tower

Koutoubia Mosque
Marrakech, Morocco

 

Because secondary schools are mostly located in larger cities throughout Morocco, many girls from remote villages are unable to attend due to the travel time. Often the girls are married off, or sent to work unskilled jobs for low pay. The purpose of the Dar Taliba program throughout Morocco is to provide housing in larger cities for these girls so that they can attend school and gain more education. In Marrakech, the Internat Soroptimist pour la scolarisation de la juene fille rurale (www.internat-soroptimist-marrakech.org) was founded by Ms. Touria Bine Bine. Ms. Bine Bine was kind enough to give us a tour and show us around.

The boarding house can accommodate up to 192 girls in dormitory-style housing, with on-site kitchen, dining hall, and study area. Once selected to the Dar Taliba program, there is no cost to the girls or their families. The boarding house is run from donations.

Non-working computersCurrently the school has about 10-15 older, but “working”, computers in a small lab.  They also have several older, non-functional computers in storage. Kids on Computers is working to identify how we can help update and/or expand the lab. Some possibilities include:  more memory for existing computers, printer toner, new desktops, and possibly some laptops.

If you would like to help, please consider donating a few dollars to help with memory upgrades.  Or, see if your company or school would be able to donate used laptops next time the IT department upgrades everyone to a new machine.  If you can help, please contact us at donations@kidsoncomputers.org.  Thanks!

Kids on Computers back at OSCON!

Posted by avni on July 14, 2012 · No Comments · Subscribe to blog

Hi Everyone! We’ll be at OSCON again this year in the Expo Hall and are extremely excited to be there!  We have a booth in the Nonprofit Pavilion thanks to the wonderful folks at O’Reilly. Just like last year, we’re collecting laptops at our booth to build computer labs in areas where kids have no access to technology. Please donate! The only requirement is the laptops have >= 512 MB RAM. If you donate – we’ll give you a special shout-out from our twitter account. The Expo Hall runs from July 17th through the 19th. Please stop by to learn about our past and upcoming adventures!

KOC at OSCON 2011

Avni and Jen at the KOC booth at OSCON 2011

 

Can mobile devices change the way we bring technology to kids?

Posted by stormy on February 28, 2012 · One Comment · Subscribe to blog

At Kids on Computers,we bring computers to kids that have no access to technology. We’ve frequently debated the benefits of laptops vs tablets vs computers. I think the new devices coming out will soon lead us to phones … and they’ll change the world for kids in developing countries.

Here are some of the new devices:

Small devices like this would help us solve some of the problems we have:

  • Shipping. It’s really expensive to get computers to some of the rural places where we are trying to bring technology. Shipping full size desktops to rural Mexico or Zambia can be challenging from a cost perspective. (It’s also challenging for customs reasons, but that’s a different topic!)
  • Power. Most of the places we’ve set up schools don’t have strong power infrastructures. (Most of them don’t even have telephones.) Not only have we blown power to an entire school trying to turn on just a couple of computers, but we’ve often had to stop our work while we waited for power to come back on. All of the schools we’ve set up are in places with frequent power surges and as a standard practice, they cut power to the whole room whenever they are not using the computers to help protect them. (This has also led to problems. In one school they didn’t realize the importance of shutting down the computers first and they were shutting them down by flipping the power switch to the room …)
  • Cooling. Most of the schools we have helped so far are in warm locations (Zambia, India, Mexico) and keeping a room full of computers cool is tough. Especially when power is not reliable.

So the new devices which would be relatively inexpensive and accessible for people living in areas with less infrastructure, would be terrific. My cell phone has worked in all the places we’ve been so far … being able to give a cell phone with all the capabilities of the web to these children would be a wonderful experience to watch.

Disclaimer: I work at Mozilla.

Spreading the word & meeting like minded people

Posted by stormy on February 26, 2012 · No Comments · Subscribe to blog

A while ago Thomas and Hermes had a Kids on Computers booth at a conference in Huajuapan. They spoke to many about the project, including the people that went on to set up Proyecto Min, a project using local recycled computers for schools. I was later introduced to Proyecto Min through a GNOME connection – what a small world. Full of people trying to help kids learn about technologies!

(And still plenty of work to do. Getting computers to kids is not the tough part. Maintaining the labs and teaching and empowering is where the work is. Luckily everyone is enthusiastic! Let us know if you’d like to work with all of us.)

Kids on Computers goes to Huajuapan

Posted by avni on May 18, 2011 · One Comment · Subscribe to blog

At the end of May, five members of the KOC team are heading down to the Huajuapan de Leon area in Oaxaca, Mexico for a KOC Summit. We will be building two new labs at schools in Savcitlan and St. Marco’s.

We will meet up with fellow KOC members in the area, Hermes Ojeda Ruiz and Alex Mayorga Adame to work on building these labs and also doing maintenance on three other labs we have built at schools in the area – a school for kids with disabilities, a boarding school for girls from difficult situations, and 18 de Marzo.

The team will also be providing computer training to teachers and students at the schools with the hopes they will be able to
use the computers to help in their current studies and further their education.

In preparation for our trip, we hosted an install fest this past weekend at the System76 offices in Denver, Colorado. We installed edubuntu along with a local Wikipedia instance and math and biology videos made by the Khan Academy on computers donated by individuals and corporations. We will take the computers down to Mexico with us for installment in the labs.

To recap, we are going down to:

  • Take down some new equipment.
  • Set up computers in new labs.
  • Replace broken equipment in existing labs.
  • Teach kids and teachers.
  • Add and update software (things like Wikipedia in Spanish to the computers).
  • Show excitement, drum up support.
  • Thank all the local people and organizations that have helped.

This is my first KOC trip and I am extremely excited about our two weeks in the area. I hope we make a difference in the lives of the students we meet.

Girls’ school gets computers

Posted by stormy on December 9, 2010 · 2 Comments · Subscribe to blog

Hermes and Thomas have been working on the lab in the girls’ boarding school in Santo Domingo, Oaxaca. (Thomas went down a few weeks ago to work on this school in particular.) This is a school for girls that come from difficult homes, all teenagers. They have about 50 students and they sleep 25 to a room. The school exists entirely on donations, including donated food from the market. In addition to a place to live, and a school, they teach them skills like sewing to help them find jobs.

These are the computers that Partimus sent down.

The lab now has a floor, bars on the window, electricity and internet. They have 14 computers set up. (Partimus sent the computers. I don’t know if they found monitors locally or if Thomas bought them. I know he took one that was sent to us through System76.) There are 16 more computers in customs that are being slowly released. According to Hermes, 8 of those will fit well in the existing infrastructure. The others will go to other local schools.

The lab’s inauguration is on Thursday.

Awesome work, Kory, Cathy, Hermes and Thomas! We hope to meet all the girls on the web soon!

All photos by Thomas Peters.

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