[Olpc-uk] OLPC Meeting Summary
Miles Berry
mberry at bcs.org
Sun Apr 19 12:56:42 EDT 2009
I've enjoyed following the conversations on this list, and was really
sorry not to have been able to make it to the first meeting :-(
I'd certainly be happy to help out with the website, and have a couple
of drupal sites under my belt if that helps, one of which, http://opensourceschools.org.uk
, may be of particular interest to those involved with this project.
Open Source Schools is a Becta supported community of practice for
teachers and techies using or interested in open source software in
the UK schools sector. We /might/ be able to offer some hosting on the
opensourceschools.org.uk server, which has a Drupal 6 code base up and
running.
I've been playing around with Sugar since the UK Moodle Moot, where
Martin Langhoff spoke eloquently about OLPC and the OLPC Class Server
project.
I've been running a programming club at school using Scratch this last
term, and have a few more projects ahead with this, and possibly other
programming languages; the programming competition idea is one which
some of the opensourceschools.org.uk community are also interested in
exploring, particularly following Ofsted's criticism of the lack of
challenge in UK ICT teaching (see eg http://opensourceschools.org.uk/ofsted-and-open-source.html)
We'd be delighted to hear from anyone with more experience of OLPCs
and Sugar who fancies writing something up for us, and there's plans
for an unconference in Nottingham on 20th July.
Best wishes,
Miles.
On 19 Apr 2009, at 16:30, Dom Baker wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Enjoyed meeting all OLPC UK folks, really diverse and exciting
> backgrounds and skills...
>
> I volunteered to kind of kick off looking at the OLPC uk site, which
> would ideally be fundamentally the starting point for all OLPC
> related content and info in the UK and further...This is primarily
> to start the discussion about what everyone wants.
>
> I've been having a fair trawl around the internets looking at
> existing OLPC sites and doing a kind of content audit to kick things
> off, and started drawing up a personal wishlist of content and
> channels which I will present at the next meeting, for you all to
> get stuck into.
>
> There's a fair amount of different communities we need to cater for
> (teachers, developers, casual browsers, potential advicates,
> parents, the press etc, etc, etc) and I think there's a job in
> identifying how we can engage them and deliver what they need,
> encourage them to get involved (or point them in the right
> direction) without a tottaly hideous user journey and a total swamp
> of content...
>
> So, just a thought, is it worth creating a small team to start
> working on putting the site together who will meet independently as
> well as reporting back to the main group?
>
> We could look at setting up a Basecamp project (i;ve got a load of
> space on my account) and potentially building the whole thing via
> some free sfotware (Wordpress or Drupal anyone?), Pete you metioned
> about possibly sorting some server space...
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Cheers
>
> Dom Baker
>
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> 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.
>
> The following is a summary of the meeting and comments from
> attendees and non-attendees; expanding on the below points or
> raising new issues, opportunities and areas of interest is
> important. I look forward to your comments.
>
> Key Themes
>
> 1. OLPC UK - aiming to adheare where possible to the principles and
> ideals held by the OLPC organisation generally
> 2. OLPC UK to create and support education projects here in the UK;
> and in regions as identified in the future
> 3. That the first step in the process is to run a pilot project
> here in London
>
> The first aim of the meeting was to identify each of the sets of
> skills and resources that attenedees could bring to the table. As I
> said in my email confirming the date for the Meeting on May 6, last
> week attracted excellent interested people with diverse skill sets
> which set the platform for a strong OLPC UK
>
> We grouped into categories of skills / resources required each of
> the attendees and while each category had at least one person to
> develop it; we will need additional volunteers so if you have skills
> in one of the following then please let us know:
>
> * Infrastructure and Installation
> * Software and Application Design
> * Curriculum and Content
> * Organisation and Structure
> * Marketing, PR and Communications
>
> If you have skills in any of these; or in project management then do
> return an email to myself or the mailing list.
>
> Ideas and Opportunities
>
> * Pilot - more detail on this below
> * Sugar Community - suggestions forthe development of such a
> community included a programming competition, a sugar and elearning
> based conference, and school science clubs
> * PR Strategy - The discussion around this on the night was brief,
> however it is important for a variety of reasons and resources in
> this area will be vital to OLPC UK success
> * Education Contacts - there is a need to work closely with the
> education department here in the UK to ensure all activity based in
> this part of the world meets the requirements of the education
> department -- developing contacts in this areas is obviously very
> important
>
> Issues
>
> * 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
> * 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.
> * Tech Coummunity - one of the issues raised is the perception that
> OLPC is alreaddy a failure; with 750,000 laptops in third world
> nations it is far from a failure and getting that message across
> will be vital to our success in the UK
>
> Pilot
>
> Full details on the pilot will be available at the next meeting. In
> summary though, Warren Pimm has been able to arrange:
>
> 1) School - a willing headmaster and teachers to pilot the laptop
> 2) Funding - while the final source is still to be confirmed I
> believe there was one option defiinitely available to fund the pilot
>
> Still to be done:
>
> 1) Curriculum: investigations into the current available content and
> how that may be adapted to the curriculum need to happen.
>
> It is an exciting opportunity and thank you to Warren for his hard
> work in that area. The success of this pilot is vital for the OLPC
> UK cause, as it will give us a strong example of what can be
> achieved using the XO and leverage for future projects.
>
> Finally
>
> Everyone with the thoughts, other ideas and issues they think need
> to be raised please reply to the mailing list. It would be
> fantastic to thrash out much of the detail on different thoughts
> prior to the May 6 meeting to give us a strong base for discussions
> on that night.
>
> Thank you and regards,
>
> Michael Jordan
> 07 8814 64213
>
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Miles Berry
Head, Alton Convent Prep | www.altonconvent.org.uk/prep
Website manager, Open Source Schools | opensourceschools.org.uk
Blogger | milesberry.net
Twit | twitter.com/mberry
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