On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 8:27 PM, Robert Stephenson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rstephe@alumni.princeton.edu">rstephe@alumni.princeton.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Hi, folks, allow me to introduce myself. I work at The Tech Museum of<br>
Innovation in San Jose, and we have been talking with Ed Cherlin about<br>
the possibility of setting up an XO cluster (or two). It started with<br>
this question:<br>
> The Tech has a lot of Title 1 schools that visit the museum as part<br>
> of their educational program. We are planning a classroom area that<br>
> will be within and a part of the regular museum -- in other words<br>
> dual purpose: exhibit when not in use and classroom otherwise. Is<br>
> it possible that we could get enough laptops (24-30, plus spares) to<br>
> outfit a whole class of students?<br>
<br>
The focus of the classes, and of the exhibit the rest of the time,<br>
would be on media (music, remixes, graphics, videos, etc.)<br>
production. We can easily provide access to OLPC folks, either<br>
physically or virtually (no firewall). We have thousands of kids<br>
running loose every day, so it would be a great user and endurance<br>
test. Does this sound like a possibility?</blockquote></div><br>The one thing you'd have to worry about: While the XOs are very resilient to harsh conditions, they are _not_ "childproof", ie. if a kid throws it off a desk or picks at the rubber mesh keyboard then he _can_ break the XO. <br>
<br>It would be a <i>highly</i> useful tool, however, in testing and research. Assuming we can have the teachers/whoever survey the children and note where they have problems, it would provide a load of real-world data easily accessible and tweakable. <br>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Luke Faraone, who loved going to the Tech as a child and still visits today<br><a href="http://luke.faraone.cc">http://luke.faraone.cc</a><br>