PaleXO is the Palestinian XO Laptop Community. We are working with the coordination and support of the Palestinian Educational Initiative (PEI) on implementing the XO laptop project In Palestine, and trying to create a success story out of it.
This project started with a donation of around 1000 XO laptops in the West Bank by the American Charities for Palestine (ACP) with the coordination of the Ministry of Education. Following that, a group of university students volunteered and created PaleXO, the goals of which revolved around putting the XO laptops in use in a way that aimed at improving the education process.
In order to realize our goals, we started preparing curricula appendices that encourage the student to use the activities of the laptop while studying, which are not only designed to attract the student, but also to support and reinforce the concepts taught in the schools curricula, and to encourage collaborative sharing and studying between students.
As a first phase, and influenced by the OLPC projects in other countries, we are currently working on a pilot project that targets the math curriculum of the 3rd grade. The project includes preparing the curriculum appendices and the activity user manuals to help teachers and students use the activities.
In addition, we are going to make introductory school visits to guide the teachers and students, and to evaluate the effect of the project on the education process. In order to introduce the teachers to the project, we held two successful training workshops. In the end of this phase, we hope to present a success story to be extended to cover the rest of the Palestinian schools.
Really nice. The growing activity with XOs in the West Bank is exciting and I hope we can connect in person soon. Just for the record, the 1000 XOs that were donated to the Ministry came from OLPC thanks to G1G1 donors. ACP is a great partner and helped to establish the relationship with the Ministry, fund training trips and coordinate customs. PaleoXO, thanks for extending the work!
Hi Robert!
What you say is quite interesting. Could you share also where other G1G1 machines have been sent to?
So far I remember reading of about 3.000 to Haiti, maybe the same number to Mongolia, but that's about what I can recall off my aging head.
a nice table with numbers/locations would be a post we would like to see here at OLPC News!
Thank you!
Yama
Sure, Yama. The OLPC donation to Haiti was 10,000 XOs and on-the-ground deployment support.
Getting more and accurate data out is something we are working on (again). Look to the deployment map and the statistics link for updates - http://laptop.org/en/children/countries