It’s all XO’s in an Arbor Heights classroom – but it’s no game!

| Arbor Heights | West Seattle news | West Seattle schools

Arbor Heights Elementary third-grade teacher Mark Ahlness is not only an online pioneer – he continuously leads his young students out onto the technological cutting edge of exploration. Latest way that’s happening: The laptops the kids are holding in our top photo are XO’s, which Ahlness describes on his website as a “unique piece of hardware that kick-started the competitive innovations leading to the netbook, the Kindle, and yes, even the iPad.” You might remember hearing about them a few years back – the idea was, you buy two and donate one – here’s a promotional video that explained them:

As soon as Ahlness let the word out that he was interested in having his students work with them, that word got around in a way that now has 28 XO’s taking up residence in his room. As he writes online, the students weren’t short on technology, but this is a wholly different kind of technology, which has sparked them into more exploration, and collaboration, since the computers are networked.

He’s not stopping at one XO laptop per student – he’s hoping to get more donations, enough to create a lending library, among other goals (listed here).

cjboffoli January 21, 2011 (7:50 pm)

The OLPC program has always been a cool idea. And it will be interesting to see what these students do with this technology. However, it is a bit of a stretch to suggest that development of the OLPC “kick-started competitive innovations” that led to the Kindle and the iPad.
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The OLPC may have catalyzed a race to the bottom for electronic manufacturers who discovered a new market for simple netbooks in the place of bigger, more expensive and needlessly complicated laptops. But the genesis of the e-readers like the Kindle really goes back to the research of Xerox PARC and the first early e-ink prototypes in the 70’s and 80’s. Sony released one of the first consumer e-books in Japan in 2004, well before OLPC hardware development began in earnest.
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Likewise, the genesis of the iPad had more to do with the work Apple did on the Newton program in the late 80’s and early 90’s. And development of the modern iPad was well underway for years by the time the first working prototypes of the OLPC were rolled out. iPad may not have been released until 2010, but Apple has stated that it was in secret development for years prior, pre-dating even the release of the first iPhone.

knm January 21, 2011 (9:08 pm)

Way to go Mr. Ahlness and way to go AH!

Mark Ahlness January 21, 2011 (11:32 pm)

Thank you WSB for getting our story out there! I’ve made several more pictures available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahlness/sets/72157625877792198/with/5374288160/

Christopher, I will not back down on my assertions about the impact of the XO laptop. A big picture view puts its influence squarely front and center.
– Mark

pam January 22, 2011 (10:37 pm)

Congratulations to Mr Ahlness and his tech savvy students!!

Wes Felty January 24, 2011 (8:25 pm)

RE: cjbolffoli’s post

The iPad may have been in development far before the OLPC, but many things have been under development that never saw the light of day. I have to agree with Mark and add that I think that the success of some simpler graphical devices encouraged Apple to release the iPad. I’m sure that Apple had the age old question “Would anyone even want a device like this?” This is just like when Steve Wasnick developed the original Apple ][ computer while working for HP. HP didn’t want it since “Why would anyone want a computer sitting on their desk?”.
Great job again Mark and class!

cjboffoli January 25, 2011 (9:52 am)

Wes Felty: The chronology just doesn’t work. If there are actually independent articles and information out there (preferably authored by someone other than the OLPC marketing team) that discuss the innovations that supposedly cross-pollinated from the OLPC into the iPad, I’d be interested to see them.
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I’m confident in asserting that it had very little if anything to do with Apple’s development of the iPad, a device built on Apple’s very early innovation in personal digital assistants that stretches back decades before the OLPC was even conceived. Apple tends to do its own innovating and, in this case, even developed the revolutionary A4 processor that is at the heart of the iPad, which is rare for consumer computer manufacturers.
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If anything, the OLPC is a beneficiary of a number of Apple innovations in portable computing, as Apple was the first to put to market a consumer PC that used a QWERTY keyboard as the primary mode of input (it was actually the Apple 1, and it was Steve WOZNIAK who designed it) and Apple was the first (in consumer PCs) with a graphic user interface (GUI).
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And while Apple did not invent the laptop, most laptops on the market today emulate design innovations made by Apple’s first Powerbooks in the early 90’s, including the use of dark plastic, a centrally located controller (trackball or trackpad) and a keyboard pushed up closer to the screen to provide a palm rest.

Merita January 25, 2011 (6:18 pm)

Thanks for working so hard to get the kids up to date with technology. In the words of one of your students, “Mr. Ahlness rocks!”

Maada Moseray January 29, 2011 (8:21 pm)

Congratulations on your work. Can you please let me know how and where to purchase these units. Intended for Africa.

Thanks

Alfred K wame Mensah February 4, 2011 (5:54 am)

Congrats on your work doing for children worldwide. Can you plese let me know how and where to purchase these units. Intended fo Africa. I’m currently in the States and hope to go back in Apirl 2011.

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