[Toronto-dev] OLPC-Games : making the XO attractive for a young quebecois

[Yves Moisan]

Hi Michael,

Well, I read your email with great interest too :-).  A couple of points 
I'd comment on :
> I had my students do an assignment on the XO 
> laptop, basically they had to persuade our students and administration 
> to fundraise for the buy one get one free phase. You'd be surprised 
> (at least I was) how many of my 'less well motivated' students were 
> interested, many said things like 'that's cool' 'I want one', what 
> $399? sure, 'I'll have one, send one to a developing country' - it was 
> a pleasant surprise. 
>   
What grade do you teach ? You'd be surprised how far from the FOSS world 
Québec is, IMHO.  I doubt I'd raise the same level of interest here, but 
at least I'm trying with the wiki on OpenPlans I referred to in my 
original email to the list.  I'm trying more at a local level : if I 
could get 5 or 10 people within a couple of kilometers, just enough to 
have an operating radio network (sigh).
>
> My personal interest in the Solomon Islands is that I worked there 
> creating a mapping system for the National Population Census from 1998 
> to 2000, 
My day job is working in geomatics ;-).  I'm very fond of FOSS 
technology in mapping, especially on the Python side of things.  I'm 
also involved in Zope/Plone (to the extent I'm trying to convince 
management to adopt it for our intranet) and the PrimaGIS project (a 
Plone product that does mapping in the context of a CMS).
> I've waffled enough, it never occurred to me that the XO could be as 
> useful to students in developed countries as they are to students in 
> developing countries. 
>   
In some FAQ page on the olpc site, I read that a few US states have 
approached the OLPC folks so indeed the XO would be as helpful in our 
"developed" countries.  I quote the world "developed" because, as I 
mentioned in my original email, I don't consider 4 P-II's for 54 
students is a ratio one would expect to see in a developed country :-).
> I'll get my thoughts together in a more coherent manner and let you 
> know what I think my school/school board could do to contribute to 
> this fascinating project 
>
>   
Same here.  Thanx for sharing your thoughts.

Yves