[OLPC-Philippines] OLPC in the Philippines

[Bernie Innocenti]

I subscribe everything Mel said.

Mel Chua wrote:
> Ms. Medado,
> 
> I'm not sure if anyone responded to your email from last month - if not,
> I apologize for the long delay. Both Bernie and myself are currently
> unable to travel to the Philippines without travel and housing support,
> though we're happy to assist remotely as we can, and of course this
> mailing list has great people already in the Philippines that might be
> might be able to offer slightly more local help.
> 
> A few thoughts, building on the ideas you presented:
> 
>>    1. One of our strategic learning methodologies is Project-based
>>       learning (PBL).  Our students engage in live projects in software
>>       development and networking.  The program is undertaken during one
>>       Academic Year across different subjects in a trimester schedule.
>>       I am thinking that our students might benefit a lot in developing
>>       applications for projects for OLPC.
> 
> This is a great idea, and one of the best first projects for a
> university club (if there are students interested in forming such a
> group). Jerome and I have been working on putting up instructions and
> examples of how to do an Activity Development Sprint
> (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activity development sprint), and other
> groups have been working on Activities to directly address sets of state
> curricular objectives (http://sugarlabs.org/go/User:Gdk/4th_Grade_Maths)
> - it might be an interesting project to have a class of students see if
> they can collectively create software to support the teaching of a
> similar list from DepEd.
> 
> It's not just limited to software development, though - if there are
> classes looking for QA/testing projects, marketing and outreach
> projects, curriculum development assignments, and other ways to make
> their work benefit the educations of real kids in (hopefully local!)
> schools, we can find something for them to do as well.
> 
>>    2. Secondly, the Center offers consulting to academic institutions on
>>       education technology.  It is our way of helping basic education
>>       become attuned to teaching and learning with technology especially
>>       at this time when we would like to enjoin these schools to use
>>       open source systems.
> 
> This is great, and reminds me of the deployment model being used in
> Oceania right now - one of their pilots started at a specialist
> education center so that this center could serve as an example and an
> outreach point to other deployment schools, and also create curricular
> materials to inspire those schools to adapt them and create their own.
> 
> I think the first step here would be for the Center to work on its own
> first small deployment to get firsthand experience on how Sugar (and
> XOs, if you choose to pursue getting OLPC laptops)* can be used in
> Filipino schools. It would be a great public example of the use of open
> source systems in education and be a key place to visit for academic
> institutions interested in implementing similar technologies in their
> schools.
> 
> I'd also love to hear the thoughts (and projects!) of others on this
> list - we've been a bit quiet here lately and I *know* that things have
> been going on...
> 
> --Mel
> 
> *OLPC XO laptops are currently difficult to obtain in small quantities,
> which is why I'd personally suggest a first pilot using donated old
> computers, netbooks, or bootable USB sticks - they can run exactly the
> same software.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> --Mel Chua
> 


-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://www.sugarlabs.org/