Recruiting: OLPC Social Media Warriors

Thanks to Joshua Gay of CK-12 for his help in crafting this posting!

Help us spread the joy of education to children all over the world by becoming a Social Media Warrior. At OLPC, we have the tools, the educational materials, and learning resources to help transform the lives of millions all over the world. To do so, we need thousands of volunteers to understand what we have and what we are capable of doing for the lives of children everywhere – and we need three of you to help us get the word out to them using the social networking and media sharing sites that pervade our lives.

Video Ninja

  • We’ll hand you the keys to our YouTube, dailymotion, flickr-video, and myspace-tv accounts; work with our marketing team and branch out to other video networks at your discretion.
  • Promote videos from media.laptop.org, olpc.tv, and other sources, including training resources for volunteers and staff in third-world deployments.
  • Track down celebrity speakers for original source material and permission to use it.

Facebook Rockstar and Myspace Maven

Details after the fold.

We have the accounts, you have the skills, and you’ll be working with OLPC’s top-notch marketing team to pull this all off. (Think about it: how many people have you met who already know about a product that is not sold on their continent?) These are very part-time (<10 hours a month, work-when-you-want), low-key volunteer positions, and we ask for a minimum 3-month commitment and that during the last month of your term, you work with us to find and train a successor to the job.

This isn’t just for us. We need brilliant, passionate people in this world who’ll take the initiative to Do Something about improving education – not just at OLPC, but in a myriad of other projects working towards bringing the joy of learning to some child, somewhere in the world. You don’t know what the tipping point of inspiration might be for someone out there. The more tiny nudges we can spread out there, the more chances are that you will cause someone to tip – and set off a chain reaction that will… well, who knows?

Interested? Reply here with your plan for what you’d do with one of these positions; we’ll respond personally to every inquiry sent in before November 17, 2008. We want to find these people before the second G1G1 launch, so even if you can’t do one of these, please spread the word and tell your friends!

Many thanks from me and all the others at OLPC.

6 thoughts on “Recruiting: OLPC Social Media Warriors

  1. Yu yamaplos, I’d think an “Upload to Youtube” button from the video application, at least which would be easy to add for users that are in situations that have ample enough available upload bandwidth, that could be pretty useful.. Otherwise perhaps also some “Upload to local server” and then perhaps from the server upload to services like Youtube when upload bandwidth is best available, for example it could be at night if there are many videos waiting in queue..

    Software based automatic posting of certain Journal items to a blog could be really cool as well I guess.. Perhaps again with some kind of teacher control or guidance control to moderate or filter it perhaps a little. Or that the teacher encourage specific children-friendly blogging activity for example an assignment to do a documentary about their school’s usage of the OLPC and how it has changed education for them. Then there should perhaps be really simple auto-synchronization from the Journal to a student or class blog that may partially be public..

  2. Thanks for the replies, folks! I’ve put volunteers in touch with SJ, as he requested the original posting and will be the one helping people get started.

  3. Really? 🙂
    Some people are wondering _what_, if anything, those teachers and kids are actually doing!
    There is a lot of anecdotal, third party enthusiastic evidence that teachers and kids are actually doing something, but extremely little shows up to be seen by the rest of the world, and that in itself hurts us, in, for example, getting World Bank kunding.
    Since those enthusiasts that report seeing action should be believed, for our own sake, then maybe the problem lies in the wetware interfacing, as users do not feel like sharing their stuff.
    I do not think we can or should fix that with outsider intervention, that is, by people parachuting in to film XO use. To really make a difference, actual users would need to be encouraged to seek collaborating with the whole world, I mean, to upload, share their stuff. If additional software or infrastructure is needed, we definitely should look into it, but basically success happens when actual users get moving, then the model not only shows off its accomplishments, but actually _is_ accomplishing something – communication. That way it is an education project – people learn and live what they learn using this marvelous piece of equipment and software, collaborating with the world.

    Otherwise, with visitors filming, it is merely a PR operation.

    BTW, there are quite a few teacher blogs around, but nothing approaching the impact that 500.000 computers should be making by now! Something is missing….

  4. OK great idea, are the children and teachers encouraged yet to make documentaries of how their experiences are with the laptops? I also saw the calf, but I haven’t seen many more videos posted on Youtube or other places from the actual teachers or students that are using the laptops.

  5. “remember to go around with their digital video cameras” You mean their XOs on Record, don’t you? (from Yama, the “eat your own catfood” freak).

    BTW, I need to go back to the wiki and see what’s up as to formats, a while back I tried without success to convert some video snippets into something the XO could handle. Sure, with Mplayer and Helix (Watch and Listen) available as Activities for the XO this becomes much easier, they are much more tolerant to what was available before.
    http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities/All#Media.2C_Audio_.26_Video_Players

    Yes, I agree that for higher definition you do need a real camera, yet the best demonstration that the XOs actually are useful is if they actually are used, as videos kids take using their green friends end up being an actual example of success. Otherwise we are talking PR (which we also need), but not yet objective, live success. They’re still talking about that calf…

  6. I’ll gladly help of course if I can be of help…

    The most powerful online videos in my opinion in following order:

    1. Children using the laptop all over the world and showing the world what the can do with the laptops.

    2. Teachers talking about their experience. Going from their expectations before starting the project, and how they are using the laptops to set in new ways to teach the curriculum. What are the teachers tips and tricks. What works great, what do they require help, suggestions, tools, educational material, digitalization and software to improve their OLPC XO powered class..

    3. What’s the news from the OLPC HQ, what is going on at the different education ministries, what are heads of state doing and saying. How’s the R&D going. Status for bugfixes and what is the roadmad for software features to be added and show a bit from the people working on those software and hardware updates..

    4. All the other stuff, including interviews with G1G1 users, interviews with people in the streets about what they think, product reviews at tradeshows and all that other stuff.

    I’d say, there isn’t really much that an online militant volunteer can do other then find videos and sort them on a blog (what I have been doing for the past 3 years at olpc.tv)… What I would say needs to be coordinated if possible, is to have volunteers at the implementation stage in all the countries remember to go around with their digital video cameras and with permition from parents and teachers, film a bit of the athmosphere in the classroom, film reactions from teachers and parents, school principals, local and national implementators and stuff like that. Try to organize a certain amount of videos from the OLPC HQ about all the latest that is going on and the latest news.. And then try to release everything on all the platforms and release things on an official video-blog in all the formats that work on the OLPC XO as well as web standard formats up to HD quality if possible, so people can have an online video experience that is nearly as good as actually being there where the OLPC stuff is going on.

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