[olpc-nz] 2 Chch laptops now in Wellington

[Gregory Baker]

Hello Tabitha

I'm from Jamaica and am doing a PhD at Canterbury U. While I was at the University of the West Indies in JA, I was active in olpc-Jamaica and was involved in the preparation for an XO rollout at an inner-city school that has been implemented this summer and helped initiate a project at a Teachers' college that is now underway. I also coordinated the OLPC booth for our project at a UWI research exhibition.  

Sameer Verma from SFSU put me in touch with Brenda Wallace back in July. I got an email from someone named Jeremy from the list after Brenda put my name out, but I haven't been able to get back in touch with him. I had no idea that there were laptops which had been sent to Christchurch (I returned the laptop I had to olpc-ja when I left for NZ) and don't even know where they would have been 'sent' to :/.

I'm surprised there seems to be no group in South Island. I do know there's an active community of IT professionals - including developers - in Christchurch. I'm a member of the New Zealand Computer Society and we have regular technology briefings that are well attended by people who may well wish to get involved in the project. Could someone from olpc-nz come to one of our meetings to present on OLPC and say what the NZ chapter is involved in and what opportunities there are to get involved (under 'broadening awareness')? Please let me know, if so. I'd be happy to try to arrange it on this end. 

Lerc's work looks fascinating and I'd like to see more of what he's doing, if he doesn't mind. I'm not a developer but I'm always interested in seeing new stuff, and I'm sure his reasons for using something other than Sugar would be interesting as well. 

Finally, please do let me know if you decide to re-do the Christchurch deployment. I asked Brenda about availability of laptops when I joined and suspect that there are IT pros and students on Campus who might be interested if they were introduced to the project, but my experience has been that it's a lot easier to get people interested when they can see the laptops in action.     


Peace

Greg Baker


On Sep 21, 2010, at 8:42 AM, Tabitha Roder <tabitha at tabitha.net.nz> wrote:

> Hi Greg
> 
> We have been loaned laptops by olpc foundation to assist globally by testing Sugar and its activities on olpc hardware. We can also use these laptops for broadening awareness of the olpc initiative by taking them to events and conferences so people can try them out and ask us questions.
> 
> Martin (olpc's School Server Architect) and I sent two laptops to Christchurch and they were not used. So they went back to Wellington. We tried again and sent two laptops back to Christchurch but again they were not used. This was the unfortunate reality of the last two years trying to get a Christchurch testing community setup. These two laptops sat idle for months on end while the testers in Wellington and Auckland who did turn up every week and devote significant hours to the project were without the benefit of having XO hardware in front of them. 
> 
> There is someone who owns an XO laptop who lives in Christchurch. He goes by the nickname "lerc" and can be found at screamingduck. If you are looking for a real name, I believe it is Neil Graham. He does some interesting things - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58UmxHryq8E - with his XO. Lerc does not run Sugar on his XO. 
> 
> If there was a chance that Christchurch is ready for attempt number 3 then we can look at sending some XOs back. The rules for having XOs are that the tester/event-hopper reports back each week on what they are doing with the XO. If people want to get involved, then starting with Sugar on a Stick or running Sugar in virtual box and starting to talk regularly on the mailing list with us is a good place to begin. 
> 
> Tabitha
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 21 September 2010 08:01, Gregory Baker <gbaker555 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi both
> 
> I'm not sure what the above means. Are there laptop owners in Christchurch who are active, or does this refer to something else?
> 
> 
> Regards
> 
> Greg
> 
> 
> 
> On Sep 20, 2010, at 11:42 PM, Tim McNamara <mcnamara.tim at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Tabitha,
> >
> > Let me know if there is a better place for the laptops that have recently migrated. Wiki is up to date.
> >
> > Tim
> > _______________________________________________
> > olpc-nz mailing list
> > olpc-nz at lists.laptop.org
> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-nz
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