Technology has undoubtedly permeated every aspect of the human world, and as such it is essential for all people, regardless of the economic status of their country, to learn to utilize its potential. One of Casa-Nica’s most prestigious partners in the technological arena is OLPC, which stands for One Laptop Per Child. OLPC is an international effort to supply kids and their families in the developing world with access to modern technology in the form of the specially designed “XO laptop”:The OLPC project manufactures and supplies the XO laptops to kids and families in Nicaragua and around the world. The OLPC project abides by a similar ideology as Casa-Nica, and will only work with an in-country organization by supplying them XO's and offering advice and support; they never relocate their host facilities to that country.

You can find their website at one.laptop.org. The organization that is working in Nicaragua to introduce the XO laptops into schools is the Zamora Teran Foundation: www.fundacionzt.org

Casa-Nica is currently working with the Zamora Teran Foundation in many areas of their XO Laptop project. The Foundation already has approximately 30,000 laptops currently deployed across Nicaragua as of Feb 2013. However, their human resources are not doubling in unison so they need as many volunteers as they can get to assist them in all aspects of their work.

We have and will continue to provide assistance to the Foundation with the maintenance of XO laptops in the areas of:

• Hardware Inspection
• Hardware maintenance (disassembling and reassembling the XO's replacing any damaged components)
• Software Inspection (running the software diagnostic)
• Reinstalling the OS and firmware
• Maintenance and Upgrade of infrastructure (including monitoring systems, content caching and filtering)

We also assist in the deployment of the XO's in the recipient schools. There is an ongoing need to train schoolteachers in the use of the XO's so they can in turn teach their kids how to use them, and also how to utilize them effectively as a teaching aid in their classrooms.

There are three local schools near the Casa-Nica house that have XO deployments and with whom we will work going forward and with whom we will need volunteers.