[Olpc-uk] OLPC UK Pilot Laptop Proposal - HELP NEEDED

[Michael Jordan]

Martin,

Many of your points are important not only for the application, but also for
organisation of the pilot.

For instance, some of my current concerns each relating to some of your
points raised include:

* Deployment Set up time: How much time will it take to setup the XO's once
we have finalised what the teacher's want on them for the pilot? Who is
available for this? When?
* Pilot Assessment: We need to define what we want / need to achieve in the
pilot and how to measure it for it to be of value?
* Ongoing Support: for the pilot this will need to be done by us, support in
terms of answering questions / issues raised by the IT team looking after
the school.  Who will manage this? How much time will participants need to
allocate?

In terms of your points:

contribution to community: I think the big contribution to the community
relates to the school demographics. The potential pilot schools both have a
large number of low income families, diverse ethnic backgrounds and
nationalities and, therefore, greater needs for support in education.
Additional people: It would be great if a number of others could lend their
names / biographies and identify where they may be able to contribute to the
pilot
Background and Significance: would it help if we set some concrete goals on
what OLPC wants to achieve in 12 months? Say set a number for deployment by
September 2010? The reasons why we need a successful UK pilot to achieve
that?
Pilot Goals: Agree with yours, but comes back to how are we going to measure
success and what is a success of the pilot?

Timeline
I am working on a detailed timeline today, but it would be great if people
could contribute to the points raised above and by Martin and identify areas
they could conceivably contribute to.

Michael


-----Original Message-----
From: olpc-uk-bounces at lists.laptop.org
[mailto:olpc-uk-bounces at lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of Martin Dengler
Sent: 10 June 2009 19:10
To: olpc-uk at lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Olpc-uk] OLPC UK Pilot Laptop Proposal - HELP NEEDED

On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 12:04:42PM +0100, Martin Dengler wrote:
> Team OLPC UK,
> 
> We're trying to get laptops for the September pilot.  XOs, in 
> particular. Please help improve the proposal, help with the work, help 
> in any way you see fit.

> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_UK/Pilots/London2009/Proposal

Here are two comments on the proposal:

I) I have one major concern: we don't have a good goal for the
  pilot besides "start OLPC UK".  That - OLPC UK - is a means to
  an end.  What end that is - ultimately - is a big question for
  later.

What we need to be crystal clear about *NOW* is: how we want the school to
judge the pilot a success.  I propose two criteria:

  1) the class receiving laptops achieves one (1) *concrete* goal in
     2009 academic year; and

  2) the school wants to do a full deployment in Sep 2010.

Clearly we believe that 2) will follow from something, but I don't think
it's just "giving kids laptops" and I think we need to be very focused on 1)
because it will keep *the school
community* focused.  For parents, kids, and teachers we want to be able to
say "No, we won't spend our time on your request because we're doing #1,
which you think is the primary goal of the kids having the laptop".  We're
going to have to say "No" a lot!


If everyone's been taking it for granted and I've just realised it,
great...then please add any other placeholders to the proposal, but we need
to be more explicit about 1) who at the school signs off on this goal; and
2) by when they have to sign off on it.



II) There are other areas we need help on:

* The "Background and Significance" section seems weak.  It
  says "support us because we'll be good PR and will do some
  vague things ('variety of int'l and domestic projects') for you
  in the future".  This isn't convincing to me.  We need to
  address my concern I) and then revisit this section to punch it
  up.

* we need to work in a viable IT support organisation for
  day-to-day support and generate some confidence that we won't
  be handing over laptops and walking away

* we can be stronger in the "giving back to the community"
  section - any suggestions here?

* we'd be better getting more people to put their name to this
  too so OLPC Boston will have increased confidence


Martin