Posted: May 16

Ordinary Time

(Rome) Pentecost has come and gone, putting an end to the Easter season and the long passage from Lent, which started during the general congregation. That all seems like eons ago now, although I am just now getting back to some ongoing projects after being submerged by the congregation. I met again with my friends from the One Laptop per Child Foundation who are preparing a special offer that will allow schools run by religious orders to buy the wonderful XO computer in whatever quantities they need. Originally OLPC thought they would just work with governments and go for really large numbers of computers. Then they realized that the Church runs grade schools all over the world, especially in some of the least developed countries in the kind of areas for which the XO computer has no competition. I just got an updated version of the production model, and it is really slick.

Yesterday Microsoft announced that it was porting a special version of its Windows operating system that would work on the XO. This will make it easier for some countries to adopt the computer, but OLPC’s insight about moving towards Open Source software and encouraging a whole new ethic of educators working together freely to share what they know is still very attractive to me.

On a related note, the Messina Commons project is also back in my sights. At the congregation we talked about this exciting project to link Jesuit educational resources with pastoral and social needs all over the world. Now we are working on it again. This is all part of ongoing efforts to help our communications apostolate develop; it happens in ordinary time, but it is actually quite extraordinary.