[Toronto-dev] Little Green Machines and ELDER Project

[Michael Mak]

Greetings everyone,

I have just returned from Ontario's northern First Nations communities where
I have been developing a number of projects for health and education, one of
them assisting an OLPC Pilot in a community called Sandy Lake.  Prior to the
initiation of OLPC Canada, two pilots were started in Sandy Lake and Muskrat
Dam First Nation.  Sandy received around 100 XO 1.0s, while Muskrat received
around 50 (Muskrat being the smaller of the two).  I travelled to Sandy Lake
and helped to "reboot" their use of the laptops by updating the ones that
weren't broken and giving manuals and seminars, and then bringing back 50
laptops to repair in Sioux Lookout.  We ordered 30 keyboards and the same
number of XO laptops ­ these will be sent to another community school to
enjoy.  I also began a site that re-organizes  and compiles a lot of the
information about OLPC and the XOs educators found useful, please visit it
at: www.littlegreenmachines.knet.ca

One other initiative that I started is called the ELDER Project (Educational
Linux Distribution as an Electronic Resource) and its goal is to provide
First Nation community schools with open source, curriculum ready,
educational software, many of which are on linux platforms.  Before, many
school computers were on lagging Windows XPs  and had very little or no
educational content.  Today, 5 community schools have Linux (Edubuntu and
QIMO) on their computers, with more schools joining in the future as youth
community workers are being trained to install the software.  If you have
time, please visit at: www.elderproject.knet.ca

Happy Holidays Everyone!

M  


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