Posted on July 2nd, 2008 by metasj.
Categories: Uncategorized.
See the latest from an active Peruvian OLPC school in Ferreñafe. Peru is on course to become OLPC’s largest deployment, and is working through language issues in Spanish, Quechua and Aymara.
Posted on June 7th, 2008 by metasj.
Categories: Uncategorized.
The OLPC community Week in Review is back. It’s currently just a slice of what is going on around the community — missing large facets from IRC channels, mailing lists, and wiki updates, code commits, and community media. Updates referencing any of these information channels are welcome. Please take a look and add any notes from the week to it.
Posted on May 18th, 2008 by metasj.
Categories: Uncategorized.
Some of the great projects that are currently underway in the OLPC world began with personal connections between an enthusiastic volunteer and a school or developer working directly with schools and teachers in a deployment region. A few that come to mind are the blogging project in Uruguay that Greg Smith has helped facilitate as well as his work with server development for Nepal’s school trials last month; and the Spanish-language educators list (olpc-sur@lists.laptop.org) that Yama Ploskonka has recently gotten off to a very active start.
As part of an ongoing effort to increase direct connections between the communities and schools interested in and implementing OLPC, we are holding a long week of grassroots events in early June. There will be an unconference for general grassroots organization, a week-long bootcamp for people interested in becoming advisors for local user groups (both in Cambridge), and a weekend-long grassroots jam in Manhattan.
Bootcamp admission is by application, and the event is targeted at active community members; limited support is available or travel (and crash space) for the bootcamp, for people who cannot otherwise afford to come.
Please take a look at the event pages above, and sign up for those you are interested in joining, whether or not you can attend.
Posted on May 18th, 2008 by metasj.
Categories: international, Glory, glory, glory, Uncategorized.
OLPC is having a flag day of sorts on Tuesday — a media event at the Media Lab with attendees from many countries where we are working, and presentations from a few of the government officials responsible for country deployments. It is unfortunately not open to the public, but I will do my best to publish summaries and link to any raw materials from the events on the blog; and to pass on any comments and questions you may have for country implementers and teachers.
Some of the country representatives will be in town for the rest of the week, for a project and learning workshop; stay tuned for points of interest for the community that come up. I am particularly looking forward to finalizing details of the educational blog project underway in Uruguay, with help from Greg Smith and Tarun Pondicherry, and the WebJournal project that Robson Mendonca will be working on this summer in Brazil with Juliano Bittencourt.
If you have projects you’d like to see pursued more actively, or data you would like to see from countries and schools, leave a comment here…
Posted on May 8th, 2008 by metasj.
Categories: Uncategorized.
It’s springtime in Cambridge, and there is change in the air. Walter Bender, my mentor and OLPC’s longtime president, resigned last month and is looking for new ways to support the project’s educational mission.
A storm of discussion followed recent statements about OLPC pursuing XOs that could dual-boot Linux and Windows, with flame wars about being subverted by Microsoft, OLPC’s educational focus, and the reported uselessness of proprietary tools and systems for learning. A lot of useful conversations were started, some of them spawning a new mailing list focused specifically on education; but in the short term there was a lot of smoke that had nothing to do with education at all. I have been dismayed by the willingness of many people to exaggerate what is known about how the world and education work, in order to fit their preferred narrative…
Leslie Hawthorn commented astutely it is precisely the failure of a grand, sweeping narrative that has been most distracting from a new and wonderful global meme — something which needs swift repair.
Meanwhile, Nepal has started their second laptop deployment, to much fanfare and colorful reception. Some photos from the weekend’s unwrapping, care of Ties Stuij:
And, finally, here are some quaint turn-of-century sugarlabs for your delectation.
Posted on April 4th, 2008 by metasj.
Categories: Uncategorized.
It has been a long day, punctuated by passionate expositions and the occasional insightful aside. I had a few good ideas about physics and human interactions with the world around them… as well as about memebrand implementations. now I need to learn to draw key elements such as space elevators and lasers and metaconcept maps, so that I can spice up my posts a bit.
Posted on March 27th, 2008 by metasj.
Categories: Uncategorized.
This is the best video all week : an ECG on the XO with three leads and a $4 board setup.
Posted on March 18th, 2008 by metasj.
Categories: Uncategorized.
Arthur C. Clarke is dead. Long may his memory live.
There is a last time for everything… I’m going to go reread a few of his stories.
Posted on March 6th, 2008 by metasj.
Categories: Uncategorized.
Even Encyclopaedia Dramatica couldn’t have scripted the past week’s drama around Wikipedia, its supporting Foundation, and many of its prominent promoters.
Danny Wool penned a few blog posts I find in outrageously poor taste, not to mention bad faith. Valleywag gave JW the star treatment, including paying for dirt, which I suppose is final vindication of his being a part of pop culture… which I usually wish the ‘wag wasn’t. Surprisingly, a half-dozen major media outlets followed suit.
Jimmy gets bonus points for going out of his way to address the only matter of true significance to a Wikipedian : whether the standard of neutrality upheld by the project and its core community was compromised by even a hair. The moment that any traditional media or publishing source devotes half this attention to neutrality, I will subscribe instantly and dedicate a week to honoring them.
The community of editors has been dealing with all of this remarkably well; as with every previous drama I can recall, it is robust to such troubles, since 90% of contributors don’t know or care about such things. (A few more tweaks to its infrastructure, and it could be robust to any calamity or change.)
Slashdot came up with some good posts on the subject…
(on the success of the open community model) … It doesn’t matter… the only thing that matters is the positive contribution he made by founding Wikipedia and his later life or his personal details don’t effect that. It is like science, it doesn’t matter who comes up with the evidence or the theory to explain it. The only thing that matters whether it’s correct or not. - abeautifulmind
Love is doomed to fail because men are stupid and women are crazy. — Groening
But in the end, I am left wondering (as usual) why our culture encourages us to be distracted by trivia at so many levels. That is something that WP is directly rooting out in the realm of verifiable essays… perhaps we can reconsider how to get the same spirit to infect other areas of life as well.
Posted on March 4th, 2008 by metasj.
Categories: Uncategorized.
A nice photoshoot with three young cousins: the XO, eee, and Classmate. The text and analysis could use some work, but the visual comparisons speak for themselves.