Tag Archives: OLPC-SF

Walking far: OLPC San Francisco Community Summit 2013

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“If you want to walk fast, walk alone; but if you want to walk far, walk together”. –African proverb, by way of Samuel Kobia

Mark your calendar! We hope to see you at the fifth OLPC San Francisco Community Summit from October 18 to 20, 2013.

The summit will be held at San Francisco State University‘s downtown campus at 5th & Market (835 Market St.) San Francisco. We will be opening a call for proposals, posters, speedgeek, and such in a few days. We begin on Friday, Oct 18th with a welcome reception and wrap up on Sunday, Oct 20th with a closing party. On behalf of the OLPC San Francisco volunteer community and our hosts at San Francisco State University, I invite you to the summit. Let’s get together, so we may walk far.

http://olpcsf.org/summit

Oct 18-20, 2013

OLPC San Francisco Community Summit 2013 is a community event that brings together educators, technologists, anthropologists, enthusiasts, champions and volunteers. We share stories, exchange ideas, solve problems, foster community and build collaboration around the One Laptop per Child project and its mission worldwide.

 

OLPC photobook available online: via the community summit

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OLPC-SF has posted their beautiful photobook with images from grassroots deployments around the world, along with a link to a print-on-demand service where you can order your own. I have one of these on my desk; it is beautiful! As Sameer says, “many thousands of words” in one smooth package.

Amazing photos and update from the Philippines

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The eKindling grassroots group gave a lovely update of their work in the Philippines, last month in San Francisco.  They have been working with the province of Occidental Mindoro for some years. This began with the Lubang pilot, spearheaded by Mayor Juan Sanchez and financed by his friends from National Computer Center Community Outreach, Metrobank, and  many other anonymous donors. eKindling’s counterpart contribution in this pilot was the education programming and training of teachers, students, parents, and local support team.

More recently, Governor Ramirez-Sato has begun an expanded initiative on Mindoro Island.  Elementary schools of the four southern municipalities,  San Jose, Calintaan, Magsaysay, and Rizal, will be receiving another 550 XOs later this year.  With Lubang in the north and these four in the south, can the rest of the province be far behind?



The Occidental Mindoro team conducted a baseline readiness survey in March, visiting some of the schools.  This was the children’s first chance to use the laptops.  Since then, there have been two training sessions with teachers from all involved schools, in June and October, and a training session with champion students from all schools in June.

They took  photos of their visit to the San Jose Pilot Elementary school.  Two of my favorites:


Photos by Ideals.ph

The new pilots are being advised (kindled!) by eKindling and managed by the local school system, an excellent example of government/grassroots collaboration.  Thanks to both groups for capturing this day in the life of the schools, and for making it possible.

OLPC retrospective in the latest Linux Journal

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SFSU professor and OLPC-SF organizer Sameer Verma wrote a nice project summary in the latest Linux Journal titled OLPC: Are We There Yet?  In it he discusses the state of the project, and what remains to be done before every child has access to tools for their own education.

Sameer writes from the perspective of his own efforts to promote olpc around the world, and that of the Bay-area education hackers who help with everything from testing hardware, Sugar, and peripherals (leggo my WeDo!) to supporting schools in other countries.  It’s a well laid-out piece, with pointers to how local groups can make a difference.

 

 

XOs are heading to Tannu Tuva

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Khürgülek Ondar, with help from OLPC-SF, is heading back to Tuva with XOs in hand and some Sugary ideas to share.   Sameer is helping maintain an OLPC Tuva project blog, and they are looking for help in localizing Sugar into Tuvan.

The excellent Kleider clan have been giving him some help… now I hope he finds someone from OLPC MN to meet with him there.

 

OLPC-SF roundup and thanks!

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Last weekend ran on into Monday for many attendees, due to late flights and the enormous hospitality of the Kleiders – June, Alex, Tanya, Isabella and Mike Gehl. Tremendous thanks are due to them and to everyone who made this such a joyous event!

Thanks also to the tireless design work and organization of Mike Lee and Elizabeth Barndollar, program coordination of Sameer Verma, Adam Holt and Hilary Naylor, social media and web support/registration fronts by Elizabeth Krumbach and Grant Bowman, and the local networking and support of Carol Ruth Silver and the SFSU student volunteer team of Alexander Mock, Abhi Pendyal, Brittany Dea, Charles Fang, Christian Pascual, Dan Sanchez, Gerard Enriquez, Hue La, Jay Cai, Lana Seto, Navi Thach , Neeraj Chand, Nina Makalinaw, Paul Mak, Russell Lee, and Simon Pan.

Live documentation of the event was possible thanks to tireless video work, moderation and transcription of Ben Sheldon, Nina Stawski, and others; and gifts and travel were supported by dozens of individuals, attendees (through their registration fees — thank you!) and by OLPC.

And finally, behind the scenes thank you to Yuliana Diestel and Richard Ho at the SFSU Downtown Center for managing logistics and Dean Nancy Hayes of the College of Business at SFSU for hosting us, and to Peter Brantley at the Internet Archive for allowing ten of us to join the excellent Books in Browsers event.