One Laptop per Child (OLPC)

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) goal is to expand education to every child with the help of a low cost laptop. The OLPC laptop runs with GNU/Linux as operating systems and with a unique interface ‘Sugar’ which can be localised. It is developed by F/LOSS users and has customised software developed by each country deployment team (Jones, 2007). OLPC Nepal project is handled by Open Learning Exchange (OLE) Nepal. It is working with the DoE of Nepal to integrate ICT based teaching-learning approach into the country education system. The OLPC deployment was carried in two phase. In the first phase, two schools in Lalitpur district were selected as a pilot project namely Bishwamitra Ganesh Secondary School and Bashuki Lower Secondary School. The project started in April 2008 when 135 laptops were provided to the students from grade 2 and 6 (OLENepal, n.d. a). 

Teachers were given training to make them feel comfortable for using laptop in their teaching process. Teachers wanted to be focused more on practical aspects about teaching the students using laptop. The teachers were satisfied with the grade 2 materials that were in the laptop but not with the grade 6 contents. They did not find enough practice exercise for grade 6 students. The use of laptop had enabled teaching and learning to become more efficient. With the help of laptop, teachers found the lesson to be more organised and easier to teach the concepts of the lesson to the students with more interactions. It was also found that more than 80% of the students from grade 6 could effectively use the laptop and 95 % of them found learning to be easier now than the traditional way (Sharma, 2008). The pilot phase ended in March 2009 (OLENepal, n.d.).

In the second phase which started in April 2009, six district including Lalitpur was targeted. 25 schools were included in this phase.  4400 laptops were donated by SWIFT Banking Group in Europe for this phase.  This phase ended in March 2010 but the project is planned to get to cover all regions of the country in different phase.  The six district included in this phase were Lalitpur, Makwanpur, Kavre, Dadeldhura, Kapilvastu and Mustang.

District	School Name	Number of students involved			Teachers Trained
		Grade 2	Grade 3	Grade 6
Lalitpur	Bashuki Lower Secondary School*	28	37	26	11
Lalitpur	Sringeri Lower Secondary School	20	15	18	5
Lalitpur	Sidhheswor Lower Secondary School	30	30	38	6
Lalitpur	Navajyoti Lower Secondary School	27	21	20	5
Lalitpur	Bishwamitra Ganesh Secondary School*	20	27	27	14
Kavre	Janajyoti Secondary school	22	23	30	6
Kavre	Binayak Bal Lower Secondary School	29	30	30	7
Kavre	Nabin Primary School	40	35	N/A	4
Makwanpur	Raj Devi Lower Secondary School	24	25	30	6
Makwanpur	Dibya Jyoti Lower Secondary School	15	18	40	6
Makwanpur	Laxmi Lower Secondary School	25	36	40	6
Makwanpur	Manakamana Lower Secondary School	27	30	40	6
Makwanpur	Shree Devi Lower Secondary School	35	35	40	6
Kapilvastu	Mahendra Primary School	40	36	N/A	5
Kapilvastu	Pancha Lower Secondary School	38	37	40	6
Kapilvastu	Nepal Rastra Lower Secondary School	40	53	60	6
Mustang	Yogendra Secondary School	20	15	12	6
Mustang	Janashanti  Secondary School	10	7	20	6
Mustang	Janawal Secondary School	10	10	20	6
Mustang	Jana Adarsha Secondary School	9	15	17	6
Mustang	Janakalyan Lower Secondary School	13	12	11	6
Mustang	Gyanodaya Secondary School	15	16	29	6
Mustang	Janahit Secondary School	9	12	37	6
Dhadeldhura	Shree Samaijee Primary School	38	26	N/A	5
Dhadeldhura	Shree Janata Primary School	20	20	N/A	5
Dhadeldhura	Shree Janjyoti Primary School	36	41	N/A	5
Subtotal		640	662	625
TOTAL	26	1927			162

Table List of OLPC project in Nepal until 2009 (OLENepal, n.d. b).

Note: The schools involved in both the phases of the project are marked with *. The ones without * are the schools only included in the second phase.

In 2010, the project also included involvement of grade 4. In the same year 558 XO laptops were distributed to the schools where the project was deployed in phase 1 and phase 2. Also in 2010 Phaplu Community School located in Solukhumbu district was included in the project. 65 XO Laptop was distributed in the school and 5 teachers were trained.  Starting from 2011 grade 5 is also planned to be included in the project.  This year a school in Janakpur, Dhanusa district will be included in the project but with a different model which will be a shared model. With the shared model, 244 students from grades 2 to grade 6 are to be benefited from a total of 50 XO laptops.  10 teachers are expected to be trained in Janakpur School and this project is being supported by Nepal Library Foundation (Pradhanang, 2011).

District	Schools	2010
Lalitpur	Bashuki Lower Secondary School	23
	Bishwamitra Ganesh Secondary School	20
	Sringeri Lower Secondary School	17
	Sidhheswor Lower Secondary School	8
	Navajyoti Lower Secondary School	13
		81
Kavre	Janajyoti Secondary school	11
	Binayak Bal Lower Secondary School	31
	Nabin Primary School	42
		84
Kapilvastu	Pancha Lower Secondary School	44
	Nepal Rastra Lower Secondary School	63
	Mahendra Primary School	32
		139
Mustang	Gyanodaya Secondary School
	Jana Adarsha Secondary School
	Janawal Secondary School
	Janahit Secondary School
	Janakalyan Lower Secondary School
	Janashanti  Secondary School
	Yogendra Secondary School
		47
Makwanpur	Shree Devi Lower Secondary School	38
	Dibya Jyoti Lower Secondary School	10
	Laxmi Lower Secondary School	40
	Manakamana Lower Secondary School	45
	Raj Devi Lower Secondary School	3
		136
Dadeldhura	Shree Janjyoti Primary School	30
	Shree Janata Primary School	24
	Shree Samaijee Primary School	17
		71
	Total 2010	558
Solukhumbu	Phaplu Community School	65

Table XO distributed in 2010 by OLE Nepal (Pradhanang, 2011).

REFERENCES
http://pravab.blogspot.com/2011/09/references.html