My School, My Community, My Laptop

In 2007, American schoolgirls Hannah and Julia Weber and their father Larry Weber visited South Africa. Of all the places they visited, Soweto and Kliptown in particular made a deep impression on them. There they met Kliptown Youth Programme (KYP)’s director Thulani Madondo and learnt about KYP’s remarkable work in South Africa’s largest township and home to a large portion of South Africa’s underprivileged children.

KYP is a non governmental organisation that works to fight the social exclusion of Kliptown’s children by engaging them in educational and recreational activities aimed at realising their full potential and ultimately benefit the community as a whole.

Back in the US, the Weber family made the most of their connection to One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non governmental organisation providing disadvantaged children with low-cost, low-power connected laptop, and raised funds to buy 100 laptops, which they brought to Kliptown the following year.

Since then, KYP has gone ahead to raise more funds to buy a few hundreds more laptops, which were later introduced into the school curruicula at Lilydale Primary School in Dlamini, Soweto. The laptops are also an important component of KYP’s educational activities, since they are used by the children to do their homework, research, play and surf the web.

The laptops, commonly called ‘XO’ (the name of the software on which they run), are about the size of a textbook and lighter than a lunchbox. Thanks to their flexible design, they double up as standard laptop, e-book reader, and gaming console. They are designed for constant connectivity. A few children working together can connect to each other without any other hardware, and a class full of students can share collaborative activities with one another and see what their classmates are doing.
This short documentary shows how the laptops are now part an integral part of Kliptown’s children’s day-to day-life. It peeks into the typical day of Thembi, a 12 year old schoolgirl and Kliptown resident. It shows how these boxy, green laptops became the most fun tool for doing homework, research play and chat.

The documentary was directed, filmed and editited by Chiara Frisone with the help of Maria Lima.

Many thanks to the Weber family, OLPC, KYP children and volunteers, Thulani Madondo, Colin Thsazi, Thembisile Dube and her family.

source

source https://gadgetsteam.com/2019/06/28/my-school-my-community-my-laptop/