Blog: One Laptop Per Child

One Web Server + Drupal Per Child

We've been hearing a lot of talk about how the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) needs more software developed for it if it's going to really live up to its potential impact. Since lately we've been developing some generalizable applications like a Disaster Relief Stick that runs a disaster relief toolset on a USB drive, an intranet package to help geographically dispersed teams communicate, and our first product Managing News (all built on Drupal), I thought it would be fun to see how easy it is to get Drupal running on the OLPC laptop and to see what the potential is for some other cool applications like these getting on there. 

Turns out that Drupal could be a flexible software application for the OLPC laptop. Three hours later (minus four hours spent hunting down a bug noted below) Drupal was up and running. Right now, I'm viewing the Drupal site being served off the OLPC next to my desk from my MacBook via its private IP address. Wow, it's fast! The hardest part about the installation was the small keyboard ; ).

Just think of all the applications that - once made lighter - students could get on their OLPC laptops. Our next move it to get our intranet package on the OLPC machine - its light weight wiki could help students collaborate together on their own machines. You can imagine how Drupal and OLPC can be used to help organize classrooms where students use OLPCs in a mesh network, with or without greater internet connectivity. We all know Drupal can do practically anything and can usually do it quite well. Now there is the opportunity for classroom intranets, student-editable wikis, and teacher portals to run on OLPCs. Each OLPC can be a web server, with the potential to serve Drupal to other students and teachers. That leaves the possibility for each child of OLPC to become a web content manager, a web server administrator, a content collaborator/creator, and ultimately, a Drupal hacker.

But getting back to what you really want to know - how we did it. (Note: We'll maintain a wiki of these instructions on the groups.drupal.org page.)

Within about three minutes, I had five applications open: a browser, a note pad, a music synthesizer, a video recorder working off of a built in camera, and a text chat program

I had the chance to test out the One Laptop Per Child this week while at the Web2forDev conference at FAO Headquarters in Rome. I was searching for a wifi network and ended up on the rooftop terrace overlooking the city. That's when I ran into Matt Keller, Director of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East at One Laptop per Child, and Ethan Zuckerman from Global Voices Online and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Matt had a couple of machines with him, and I assume from the curious look I must of had on my face, knew I was interested and asked me if I wanted to check one out. 

First impression: having really, really small fingers is key, which makes sense given the target audience. After looking at the user interface for a few seconds not sure of what to do because it is very different from anything I've seen before, I dove in. I found it to be very intuitive. Within about three minutes, I had five applications open: a browser, a note pad, a music synthesizer, a video recorder working off of a built in camera, and a text chat program. All it took was some curiosity to find everything, something that I'm sure will be easier with children given their nature and the fact that they're not trying to use the interface in relationship to other systems they've used before. Aside from checking out the different apps, I was most interested in seeing how the mesh networking capabilities between machines worked. It's one of the features I'm most excited about - the idea that it will be easy for kids to use the tool to create a collaborative network. Matt and I turned on the mesh network on our machines, and then within seconds we each appeared on the other's monitor. I added him as my friend, which made him show up in my chat window, and we started chatting. Of course we immediately wanted to see the range on this. Our line of sight was from one end of the building to another, in my estimate about 250 meters, and we were connected at this distance. But then when our line of site broke, so did our connection.