Deployment options and costs to be considered for the XO 4 from Australia

Having used XO 1.5, an older version of the XO 4 Touch we will be getting from Australia, I have been
requested to write a paper on what you should be considering when deploying these laptops in your
schools.
Building Charging Racks and Storage space for daily charging at the school
You will need to allocate a room for storing and charging the laptops overnight. When fully charged, the
laptops work for a maximum 3 hours of continuous use. There are tips on how to use less power that we
teach all students to maximise the charge duration during the school day. Giving electricity connections
in the class room is a health and safety issue, as children can trip over wires. Too many charging points
in a class rooms can also be an issue, even though for some classes we have to do this, as our oldest
laptops have batteries that discharge quickly or do not charge at all.

We have built wooden shelves with

air vents or slats to prevent
overheating, with a continuous strip
of electrical sockets running on the
wall behind.

The shelves have hanger like hooks

on which each laptop is slid vertically
for charging. Please see photo
slongside.

One person is responsible for delivering the laptops to each class room before the first lesson starts. The
class teacher counts and takes delivery. The units are collected by the same person at the end of each
day and the class teacher is informed if any units are missing. For some classes, on some days or
weekends, the teacher gives students permission to take the units home. In this case the technical team
is informed, and they allocate a charger to each student that is taking the machine home. Otherwise, all
chargers are kept with the charging racks.
Allocating the XO 4 laptops to each student
Since our objective in getting these laptops is primarily to give each child his or her very own laptop for
use while he/she is with us, we need to give some thought to how these are allocated and managed.
From our experience, we have learnt the hard way that students in Pakistan do not regard free property
as sacred. Misplacing of laptops, stealing and deliberate damage, sometimes to get a newer unit, are all
tactics we have seen being used in school. To minimise this misuse, we have adopted the following
procedure.
On arrival at the school, each unit is opened and its unique serial number (found on the inside of the XO
body, once the battery is removed) is noted in a spreadsheet, together with the name and class of the
student it is being allocated to. Each XO is allocated a serial number by the school. The convention is
year XO was issued in, class, section. For example: an XO issued in 2018 to a student of Class 4A will be
number 1804A-1, next one will be 1804A-2 and so on.
We put this making with permanent marker on the side of each XO. The XO is then allocated to each
class room based on this visible marking in black on its body. Any subsequent repair undertaken on this
unit is also noted in this register against that specific serial number, to have a complete history of what
has been happening to this XO Unit.
We let the students know that when they move to the next class, these same units will move with them
to the next class, hence they must take good care of their units while they have them. Otherwise, we
saw students trash their unit and expecting to be getting a new unit next year! If they damage their
screen (such as a line or a blotch appears in one side or corner), or rip of any keys in the keyboard, they
will have to live with the damage till it can be replaced.

Internet Connectivity
The first consideration is whether you are going the children access to Internet while at school. Many
deployments that are in remote villages, do not have internet access at all. However, in this day and
age, internet access is taken for granted by most of the developed world, just like we assume all class
rooms to have electricity connections. Students need to be taught how to use the internet safely and
correctly, a skill they will need in their daily life to succeed.
At Rahnuma, we give all our students and teachers internet access. Students and teachers use this to do
independent research in the class room for History, geography, Sciences, Social studies, Urdu, Islamiat
and sometimes English projects. This allows them to supplement information in their text books and
allows them to do projects that reinforce valuable research and self-learning skills and develop a better
understanding of key concepts.
We find this a very enriching learning experience. Teachers give links to YouTube videos and other
websites, which explain the same concept with better illustrations than the text books. Our planners
have these links already selected for each topic. Doing their own research helps students understand
that there is a lot more information out there and there are different ways of explaining the same
concept. Text books get outdated and usually carry a single method or view of any issue. In cases where
the teacher wants the whole class to see the same video, such as Volcanoe erupting, a river flowing over
a cliff to make a waterfall or rapids, she uses an LCD screen to show the video in class. This is a good
substitute for smart screens, that teachers use in the west.
If you are giving Internet access, you will require a robust Broad Band connection, costing about Rs
2,500 per month. You will need a heavy duty router to which 100 plus students can connect reliably at
one time. It will also require a technical resource to manage and have oversight of Internet connectivity.

Use of School Servers to Provide Specific Content to the Class Rooms

The XO School Server, or XS, is one of the products of the OLPC project, designed to complement the XO
laptop. It is a Linux-based system engineered to be installed on generic low-end servers. We outline
hardware recommendations and in the future, we may offer a hardware platform specially designed for
the role.
When we deploy one laptop per child, we must also provide additional infrastructure extending the
capabilities of the laptops. While the laptops are self-sufficient for many learning activities, other
activities and services depend on the School Server providing connectivity, shared resources and
services. Services, tools and activities running on the School Server allow asynchronous interaction, can
use larger storage capacity, and take advantage of the processing power of the XS.
We find the following content on the School Server very useful:
1. KA Lite - an offline version of Khan Academy. We use these once a week for Math in Primary and
Secondary School. It allows the students to practice math exercises at their own level, while the
teacher can see at the admin level which child is moving along well and which child is struggling.
This allows her to pay attention to weaker children or concepts that the children are struggling
with.
2. Phet- off line Science Simulations for Secondary School, again it may be downloaded for
Secondary School or served through the school server. We found that some XO 4 from Australia
came loaded with Phet.
3. Learn English- British Counsel lessons for primary and Secondary school
4. Pustakalaya –Library of books produced by OLE Nepal which includes their own material as well
as some great classics. We have lifted our 100 books selection for primary school, mostly from
here.
5. E- Paath- OLE Nepal has developed Lessons from year 2 to 6 in English, Science (as well as other
subjects but these are in Nepalese). These have some very useful lessons for Primary section
that we use to supplement our own teachers’ knowledge.
6. Sugar Activities- Volunteer Tony Anderson has downloaded almost all good sugar activities to
the server. Students and teachers can download these on to their laptops instead of
downloading online from sugar labs.
7. Programming made easy- these are basic programming in python that Tony Anderson has
written to encourage Secondary School Students to take up programming in their spare time.
8. Toys from Trash – A website that gives easy instructions for making toys from trash and showing
the science behind each project. Its content has been provided offline, in our School Servers.
9. Rachel- Offline school server that also includes a large number of books, KA Lite, Phet,
dictionaries, wikipidia and many more items we have yet to explore.
10. Project Gutenberg- An off line collection of all the worlds books who’s IP has expired, so that
they can now be read by anyone free of charge. These include old classics from Mark Twain etc.
11. Learn- A place created to add school’s own planners and projects for teachers to download
from.
Hardware requirements: A School Server is a Desktop PC with 4GB RAM and a 1TB Hard Drive. It also
needs an ethernet port, usb ports - preferably usb 3, and either a VGA port or an HDMI port. Often, a
used PC can be used by purchasing a 1TB 3.5" desktop internal hard drive and additional RAM memory.
While installing the software on the PC, a moinitor and keyboard are required and a mouse can be
helpful. The monitor is connected to the VGA or HDMI port on the PC. The keyboard and mouse are
connected to usb ports on the server. Note: use a wired mouse and keyboard because the firmware
may not support wireless devices.

Heavy duty WIFI Routers with capacity to handle each school’s volume
Each deployment that is using internet connectivity or delivering customised content through a School
Server, will also need to invest in a heavy duty WIFI network for these laptops, to connect to the
internet or the school server or both. In our case we give access to both. However, our connectivity has
not been great so far as we were using low cost routers, that are meant for home use. Only last month
we have for the first time invested in a heavy-duty Router, details of which are provided below. The
results are being tested and I will let you know if this is reliable solution.
1) Ubiquiti UniFi AP AC Pro UAP-AC Pro UniFi Pro Indoor Rs. 25,930
2) LIEAN CAT6 Gigabit 4 Pair UTP Cable (328-meter) Rs. 4,428
3) Sun Kit SK-868G Crimping Tool Wire Crimper RJ-45 RJ11 Rs. 1,150
In case of Rahnuma, as we do not have a technical team other than one part time resource (Mr. Younus
Zafar), it is the IT department of AAJ TV which donates their time and guidance to undertake any major
installation at the school. I plan to ask the AAJ team for help us get ready for the clean-up drive of the
2000 units. They can prepare the 50 USB’s we need to run this operation smoothly.
As both SOS and TAC have computer rooms and internet access, I feel your existing resources will be
able to take over this additional work of maintaining a robust WIFI network.

Other Deployment options available for the XO 4 in your School

The next step is to consider how you plan to use these XO’s in the classroom. The XO 4 you receive will
come with 8GB built in memory. If you plan to use these with a school server that will hold all the
content, then 8 GB of memory is adequate.
Our experience has shown us that due to shortage of teacher time, connectivity issues etc., it may be
good option to download critical material to the XO laptops themselves, enabling students to work on
their own and away from the school in their own time. We have found that downloading and ebooks to
read off line, is great in promoting reading skills; downloading Sugar Activities (or games Apps) for Math,
English and programming etc. are also very useful in promoting self learning. At Rahnuma, we have add
16GB memory card to each laptop, to allow more material to be downloaded. But this is optional and
may be done at any time in the future also.
These memory cards cost about Rs.700 per unit, and can be loaded with 100 plus reading books for use
in the class room and at home. We have created such a collection of 100 plus books for our Primary
School and 50 books for Secondary School, that we can share as a starter pack. You may want to add
more stuff yourself.

Training staff and teachers to maintain the hardware and software update
requirements.
With use, hardware will breakdown and will have to be repaired and maintained. While these XO units
are built for use by children, they do get damaged either by accident or misuse. The most vulnerable
parts of the XO which have to repaired most frequently are the screens, keyboards and chargers. We
should ask OLPC Australia to send us spare screens and keyboards with the shipment, which we can
allocate to each school. We can also use the damaged machines we get (extra 10% being sent) for spare
parts
It has been part of the OLPC learning objectives that students should learn how to repair damaged
machines. For year 5 to 10, students should be encouraged to open a complete XO and put it together
again, reviewing the material used for different components and discussing the design of the units. It
can serve as a great learning project.
Teachers with initiative can also learn how to repair these units. OLPC WIKI has step by step
instructions on repair of every component of hardware. Both Aslam and I, who have no technical
background, have learnt to open and fix the XO 1 (the earliest models) to fix their dead clock issues. It
was a problem that does not recur in newer versions.
Software needs updating from time to time as new releases are issued or you want to make changes to
how you are using the laptops. We call this customization. It will be discussed in more detail under a
separate heading at the end.
At Rahnuma, we have one trained resource that is at the school daily from 9 to 12 to handle this as well
as internet connectivity, router issues etc. He is paid Rs. 20,000 per month.
Customising the XO 4 for use with the School Server
If you wish to use the school server built for Rahnuma, you will also need to run a Custom script to
modify the software loaded on the laptops. We have this script for XO 4. This custom script can be put
on the same USB that has the OS 13.2.9. used to clean the laptop of previous data and update it with
this latest operating system. At the end of the OS update (called flashing the laptop), we run the custom
script in the Terminal Activity (called customizing in OLPC jargon). This process could take from 10 to 15
minutes. We usually get each person to work on two to four laptops at a time to reduce waiting time
while the machine is updating. For the technical people here is an explanation of what the custom
process actually is doing. The XO-4 version of the script does the following things:
It installs:
path.py, a python routing I often use in scripts
zip, for some reason Sugar includes unzip but not zip. The compression routines are needed to convert
folders to files for uploading to the schoolserver
It modifies Sugar:
#customize sugar
#control frame visibility only with frame key gsettings set org.sugarlabs.frame corner-delay 1000
gsettings set org.sugarlabs.frame edge-delay 1000 #set resume_mode = False gsettings set
org.sugarlabs.user resume-activity false #set save_as_mode = True sudo cp ../common/activity.py
/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/sugar3/activity
gsettings set org.sugarlabs.journal save-as true
It updates the SimpleHTTPServer.py module. This is used for the roomserver option.
The library content is deleted to save space. These are small bits of content accessed from Browse
(cluttering the Home Page). When deleted the Home View clutter goes away.
Remove the GetBooks and InfoSlicer activities. These depend on the internet and are redundant since
the books and wiki material are available via the schoolserver.
Remove the Welcome activity. This is an interesting show of the startup screens for nick, gender, age,
and xo color selection. These are not seen by the learners since that was done in preparing the laptops.
Installs a custom version of the Browse activity (v162). This enables websites to be downloaded from
the schoolserver and displayed by resuming from the Journal. Local copies of these documents as you
know are essential.
Installs the Quiz activity. The version on the school server is 5, this is v 24. The main difference is that
v24 enables scripts to be executed from the Journal (local copy). Version 5 had a fixed collection of Quiz
examples but no way simple way to build or use new quizzes.
Installs Zim (Gnome activity) and Zim Sugar Launcher.
Installs Libre Office (possible on XOs with 4GB or more storage.
Installs GCompris (Gnome activity) and Sugar launcher.
Install TuxMath. This was supposed to work but I don't think it does yet. Also on the ToDo list.
Turns off the computer. This forces reboot which is needed to register the new activities and in 'factory
mode' shows that the stick is ready to be used for the next XO.