Category Archives: OLPC

Start a Laptop Project to Change Kids’ Lives Worldwide!

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Nonprofit One Laptop per Child is offering free XO Laptop loans and a strong network of dedicated Volunteer Mentors for visionaries of all ages, enabling grassroots projects worldwide.

Over half a million XO Laptops are in the hands of kids worldwide today, in South America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Oceania. These kids are not only changing their own lives, but are also changemakers in their villages, cities and countries. The laptops they receive contain software and content not only to learn academic subjects, but also empowering them to understand the world around them (learning online and off) materially engaging their families, environment and beyond.

  • Do you believe in a worldwide “Science Fair” of organic learning?
  • Do you know a teacher you can work with to create exceptional software?
  • Can you find exceptionally creative persons in your area?

Anyone can contribute: would you mentor a small group of tinkerers, or might you alone write a 21st century textbook to be put on all our laptops?  Simply demonstrate your project furthers innovative education in poor countries, architecting something new — we will then provide the hardware you need to lead the way.

  • Create software, hardware, guides, graphics, testing or support.
  • Advance the state-of-the-art in learning Activities around the environment, languages, health, science, math or humanities.
  • Seed a Community Repair Center or Local Laptop Library inspiring others to contribute.
  • Are you shovel-ready?

You will be hard-pressed to find a more deeply committed community, passionate to work with you shaping and delivering Quality Work you define. No matter how small or large. We strongly urge you to read our FAQ and apply today if you too can join us, facilitating a worldwide ecosystem of cutting-edge projects around XO Laptops, the Sugar learning environment, community leadership, and beyond.

Children the world over will thank you for engaging your curiosity, exploring their true needs, and actively sharing the fruits of your labor!

OLPCorps: Our Goals

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Last week, we announced a new student-based, grassroots initiative called OLPCorps (pronounced O-L-P-C-Corps). You can find information about the program at several places, and I’d encourage you to do so before reading on.

This post, addressing OLPCorps’ goals, is the first of many to address specific parts of the program.

Through OLPCorps, we hope to engage highly ambitious, talented, and connected university students in our mission of revolutionizing learning environments for children. OLPCorps can attract widespread international attention among young adults and facilitate long-term partnerships between university students, schools, and NGOS across the world. OLPCorps focuses on deployments in Africa. OLPC also offers internships in Latin America.

Directly, OLPCorps will yield up to 100 deployments and thousands of relationships each year. Because we’re reaching out to people who haven’t been actively involved in OLPC in large numbers in the past, we can dramatically increase OLPC’s network of supporters. The current OLPC community can actively participate in OLPCorps through the OLPCorps Support Committee.

I encourage you to join the discussion on OLPCorps and offer helpful suggestions and questions to improve the program. To everyone who has contributed to the discussion on OLPCorps, thank you!

Look for future posts on the OLPCorps program, including why we’re focusing on university students.

OLPCorps starts accepting applications

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The OLPCorps Africa program is getting underway, and OLPC are looking for a program director for the student summer program experience in Cambridge and Kigali.

Applications from student groups are now being accepted.  Accepted applicants will receive a stipend of up to $10k and 100 XOs, and take part in a 10-day preparatory workshops and a post-mortem review.  Read the FAQ for details or to ask a question of your own about the program.

If you’re interested in helping out in areas of program planning, the OLPCorps team leads will be joining the support gang call this Sunday, and are looking for additional help.  French-language materials and communication will be particularly important, for instance.

Be Rewarding

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Be Rewarding is a group that has been working on developing online educational quizzes in various languages that are fun and engaging, with participation linked to donations to related charities to encourage continued participation.  We have worked with them and their founder Elise Moussa (happy birthday, Elise!) for over a year, and it’s great to see their alpha site go live — it is looking quite beautiful and I wish it every success.

Check the project out and send them your feedback.

OLPCorps : a proposed summer grant program for student initiatives

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A group of students who have worked on two small deployments in Africa
over the past year have proposed an OLPCorps project (quick, how many C’s did you read?), to encourage students everywhere to found and contribute to locally-supported school projects.

You can find and comment on the proposal for this summer on the OLPCorps Africa wiki page.

G1G1 flyer from OHOT

G1G1 flyer from OHOT

OLPC is considering this seriously for promotion and funding this summer.  The program would be open to students from all countries.  Paul Commons from Indiana University has been leading the proposal development – their “one here, one there” chapter made the G1G1 flyer on the right during the fall.

What I like best about the proposal is that it is not competitive, and there is real incentive for different project enthusiasts to help one another make their projects better.  In practice this happens to some degree with publicly-posted proposal contests, since everyone reads other proposals and learns from the best; but it is a silent borrowing of ideas, not the give-and-take of suggestions.

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