[OLPC-SF] What would you say to a Haiti schoolmaster to interest them in OLPC?

[Holt]

Huge question!  A school's principal/headmaster must be deeply committed 
to laptop learning of one sort or another, or you will face trouble -- 
to put it mildly.

Just as a point of ref, George Hunt (with Anna Schoolfield's help) 
created a solid little Haiti build last month, based on OLPC Release 
11.3.1 and Sugar Activities we trained folks around, over almost 3 weeks 
in Haiti.  We'd love more Creole but quality 
translations/literature/Activities are hard to come by.  So for now we 
went with 40+ French books, Fototoon, WikipediaFR, Etoys (TuxPaint at 
times) etc.  This was reflashed onto almost 240 XO-1s in Haiti last 
month, which are progressively being introduced to Port-au-Prince area 
schools and orphanages.

See olpcMAP below (Grand Goave, Haiti and the northern part of 
Port-au-Prince) for snapshots and brief blog posts if curious. You're 
asking the most profoundly hard question, as I'm sure you're aware :)

Child in Hand is paying trainer/mentors to do this critical 
implementation work in Haiti, similar to what the Waveplace Foundation 
did in the past, if you are interested in paying these same Haitian 
implementors in Port-au-Prince and nearby to do some consulting for you, 
I can certainly connect you, as I speak with them on a weekly basis -- 
and yes Haitian do in fact need jobs not just computers :)

--
Help kids everywhere map their world, at http://olpcMAP.net !



On 4/20/2013 2:47 PM, Travis A wrote:
> Hello support-gang and OLPC-SF,
>
> A church in Carmel valley has been working with a school in Hinche, 
> Haiti as part of their outreach effort.  They have the headmaster of 
> the school visiting here and would like to introduce them to the 
> OLPC.  They even have 20 OLPC's ready to go if the headmaster is 
> interested.  They've asked me to speak to him and show him the XO.
>
> I have done more work with the programming side of OLPC, and not yet 
> done a OLPC deployment.  From those of you with that experience, 
> particularly in Haiti, what would you say to the headmaster?  What 
> type of XO content do other Haiti deployments ask for?  I was planning 
> to show the customization, language switching, variety of activities, 
> and maybe something about a power charging station if he asks.  I've 
> already read through past posts on the lists about Haiti, but I 
> thought I would just ask for your current input.
>
> Thanks!
> Travis