[Olpc-uk] OLPC Meeting Summary

[Daniel Drake]

2009/4/17  <michael_jordan50 at bigpond.com>:
> Good afternoon everyone,
>
> As I am still in the process of preparaing the minutes from last weeks meeting I thought it worthwhile to update the entire mailing list on the topics covered, with the aim of fostering further discussion prior to the next meeting.

Thanks Michael... this is *exactly* the approach needed for engaging
the community, including those who were not able to make the meeting!
FWIW there are now 45 people on this mailing list.

Your notes are excellent and I'm glad to hear that the meeting was successful.

> * Content and Curriculum - one of the issues we will have to face is that eventually deployments of XO's will be impacted by content issues; hence the importance of developing a strong sugar community in the UK so we can contribute to content development

Exactly - I'm glad that you grasped this. OLPC is not in the content
business, so this needs to be done by the countries.
While the XO is often used for curriculum-driven "normal" teaching
practices, the philosophy behind the XO itself is somewhat different;
it is designed to engage constructionism (learning by doing) and
project-based learning, which is not so common in today's classroom.
You might try to generate some activities around these ideas, which
will really harness the benefits of computers in the classroom.

Some recommended materials on this topic, which I'd recommend for
everyone seriously interested in a UK pilot and especially those
working on the education side: (in this order, most accessible first!)

Beyond the printing press, a presentation by Alan Kay:
http://download.laptop.org/content/conf/20080520-country-wkshp/Video/2008-05-20/13-Beyond-Printing%20(medium).ogg
(its an .ogg video file, Linux users will have no problem, I would
suggest http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html for windows
users)

Mindstorms, a book by Seymour Papert

http://web.media.mit.edu/~cavallo/ - Emergent Design by David Cavallo

> * XO Production and Delivery - something that has to be monitored and managed is the production timelines of XO's; which, as per Daniel's email recently, is struggling to output units in a timely fashion.

Don't take my word as gold, since it is only to the best of my
knowledge. Also, for a pilot, you would not be utilising OLPC's
production line. You would be using the already-manufactured stock
that is available through the contributors program:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program
(at least I don't know any other way of obtaining a small number of
laptops at this time)

The contributors program requires a solid and well-thought out
proposal before awarding laptops, so one thing to add to your "To be
done" list is making a detailed pilot plan (which of course depends on
content/curriculum/activities as well as other things).

Daniel