Projects/RemappingLA

1. Project Title & Shipment Detail
Name of Project: REMAPPING LA: RESEARCH IN CULTURE, COMMUNITY, AND TECHNOLOGY AT THE FIRST URBAN STATE PARK IN CALIFORNIA
Shipping Address You've Verified:
Daniel Baker
UCLA REMAP
102 E Melnitz Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Number of Laptops (or other hardware) You Request to Borrow: 10 XO Laptops
Loan Length—How Many Months: 6.5 months (June 1 - December 15)

2. Team Participants
Name(s) & Contact Info: (include all email addresses & phone numbers)
Fabian Wagmister, Associate Professor, fabian@remap.ucla.edu, 310-206-4431
Jeff Burke, Director of Technology Research Initiatives for the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, jburke@remap.ucla.edu, 310-480-8040
Daniel Baker, Field Project Manager, daniel@remap.ucla.edu, 310-825-8698
Employer and/or School: UCLA Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance (UCLA REMAP)
Past Experience/Qualifications:
Since 2006, these team leaders have been working with California Department of Parks and Recreation and the Los Angeles State Historic Park (LASHP) to engage urban communities in the design of technological systems that express their cultures and identities. Collectively, they have decades of experience creating multimedia projects and community based research exploring how emerging technologies can serve expressive and social goals. They have previously led multidisciplinary research for sponsors including NSF, NEA, Intel, Cisco, Nokia, and private investors.

3. Objectives
Project Objectives:
Currently, students, artists and researchers from UCLA has been tasked with creating individual and collective interpretive media works to be publicly shown at the Los Angeles State Historic Park (LASHP) in the summer of 2010. They will be focusing on new forms of social media, community experience, and historical memory, including locative narrative, interactive storytelling, interpretive databases, physical interfaces, mobile devices, Wi-Fi environments, media-rich installations, etc.

The XO Laptops offer a unique tool to use in these projects at LASHP. The dual-mode screen is perfect for developing creative applications on its full-color mode, and for outdoor viewing while in the Park on it's black-and-white mode . The built in microphone and camera could allow for recordings of soundscapes of the City, interviews with its inhabitants, and photographic montages of its streets. The ability to program applications (Scratch, EToys) on this device offers endless possibilities for these projects.

UCLA and California Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) have been actively engaged with research and community development collaboration since 2006. Through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the UCLA Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance, LASHP has served as a “living laboratory” for research in the use of media, audio-visual and other technologies in a public space setting to document, explore, and express the histories and identities of communities. LASHP has only been open since 2006 and is still in the formative stages of park wide design and construction. This project will build from the previous MOU to provide additional outreach, research, testing, and prototypes to support media-rich, technology-based programs to facilitate interpretation and community involvement for LASHP.

4. Plan of Action
Plan and Procedure for Achieving the Stated Objectives:
The following tasks have already been established with our recent Agreement between UCLA and the California Department of Parks and Recreation:
Task 1 - Launch Public Web Portal and Media Database.
- Create and launch a public web portal with search, browse, and community contribution capabilities.
- Develop a media database consisting of oral, video, and other media- rich histories.
- Initiate research into the creation of a long-term media archive to be held in the public trust.
- Integrate web portal/media database with Hypercities (www.hypercities.com) and other UCLA efforts.
- SIGNIFICANCE TO OLPC: The XO Laptops will be programmed to creatively interact with this web portal, allowing for a unique multimedia experience. Part of the public web portal will include the project blog/wiki which will chronicle the lifecycle of the project and our interactions with the XO Laptops.

Task 2 - Facilitate community involvement and contribution to the Portal and Database.
- Work with DPR and local communities to determine appropriate authoring and curating approaches for public involvement and contribution to web portal and media database.
- Explore collaborations with new and current industry partners for immediate and long-term support.
- SIGNIFICANCE TO OLPC: The XO Laptops offer another tool for community outreach. Their portability and ease of use will prove invaluable to the breadth of users we are trying to reach. Also, community involvement with XO Laptops will create more interest in OLPC.

Task 3 - Pilot the use of the UCLA/Cisco Metropolitan WiFi Research Network.
- Complete deployment of wireless access points covering LASHP.
- Continue high-speed network connection from UCLA to LASHP area.
- Manage and maintain this high-speed network as a resource for prototyping and experimentation.
- SIGNIFICANCE TO OLPC: blanket wifi at LASHP allows for innovative online uses of the XO Laptops, and outdoor use will make wonderful use of the black-and-white high-contrast screen

Task 4 - Offer two (2) Cross-Listed Courses to generate prototypes.
- Research and test prototypes of diverse technologies that address the organization of the many layers of information (e.g. historical, cultural, and scientific) with the Park’s public interpretive programming.
- Offer two (2) courses that involve students in the civic opportunity being developed through the UCLA/State Parks partnership.
- Promote the courses to engage students from diverse academic backgrounds by cross-listing them among UCLA’s schools/colleges such as: the School of Theater, Film and Television; School of Public Affairs; School of Engineering and Applied Science; School of Arts and Architecture; and, the College of Letters and Sciences.
- SIGNIFICANCE TO OLPC: Provides a broad range of students the ability to work with, program, and create on XO Laptops, training a larger programmer base and building student interest in OLPC.

5. Needs
Why is this project needed?
Locally?
The LASHP is still a young park but already has a very active community involved in its wellbeing. The neighborhoods surrounding the park are diverse and culturally very rich with history. Facilitated by the XO Laptops, our work at the park strives to connect with the culture, history, and community around LASHP; helping to inspire people to be aware of and active in their own communities.
In the greater OLPC/Sugar community?
The use of XO Laptops in an artistic form is hopefully a valuable one. Furthermore, we are using art/media to enable users to connect to their community/history/culture, and this is an important concept for our project as well as for OLPC. The application development on the XO Laptops will feed back into its community of developers for use in other projects.
Outside the community?
We hope to make our entire process from start to finish available to the public. By using a blog/wiki for our process and a public web portal to store our content, it can be accessible from anywhere. Our experience will be specific to the park's neighboring areas, but the idea of creating an experience on XO Laptops to spotlight one's own neighborhood's culture/history/community is something that can transfer to anywhere in the world
Why can't this project be done in emulation using non-XO machines?
For this project, the XO Laptop was selected for its hardwired components - the black-and-white high-contrast screen, microphone, camera and wifi capabilities are perfect tools for development in a park. We also are excited to introduce the XO Laptops and OLPC to our team and the community to provide more visibility for OLPC and all they support.
Why are you requesting the number of machines you are asking for?
See below.
Will you consider (1) salvaged/rebuilt or (2) damaged XO Laptops?
We would love to use the maximum number of XO laptops available to us, and would thankful to receive them in any working form. Future versions of the device would also be valuable for us to work with, as our students and programmers could provide feedback and/or applications for the new devices.

6. Sharing Deliverables
Project URL—where you'll Blog specific ongoing progress:
Please web-publish this entire completed proposal, removing any sections affecting your personal privacy. Ask if you want help -- communicating with our OLPC/Sugar global community is core!
If you would like to view the wiki of our previous work at the LASHP, it can be found here: http://bigriver.remap.ucla.edu/remap/index.php/Remapping_LA
How will you convey tentative ideas & results back to the OLPC/Sugar community, prior to completion?
Our current team includes a dedication website administrator, that has already established a internal wiki for our team. The public web portal as mentioned above will be launched by the end of June, and the project blog/wiki could be made public as soon as needed by OLPC.
How will the final fruits of your labor be distributed to children or community members worldwide?
Via our project blog/wiki, as well as the public web portal, which will be a public display of all the content created for this experience.
Will your work have any possible application or use outside our community?
If yes, how will these people be reached?
The public web portal will allow anyone in the world to view the history/narrative/culture of Los Angeles, and the project blog/wiki will allow the creation of the experience to be duplicated in any city. We will be able to give back to the online community of XO Laptop developers with the applications we create.
Have you investigated working with nearby XO Lending Libraries or Project Groups?
Yes, including the QLA lending library. Unfortunately, they had already exhausted their supply of XO Laptops for our time period.

7. Quality/Mentoring
Would your Project benefit from Support, Documentation and/or Testing people?
Teachers' input into Usability?
Certainly! The XO Laptop platform of application and programming tools would be new to us, but we are excited by its possibilities. Having support/documentation/testers would help ease our students, artists, and researchers into how to develop for the XO PCs.
How will you promote your work?
The project blog/wiki and the public web portal will be the first point of communication for the project. We anticipate a large interest in our project at LASHP and will be promoting the summer grand opening of the project across the UCLA campus, across Los Angeles, and across the web.
Can we help you with an experienced mentor from the OLPC/Sugar community? (WEB-PUBLISHED)
If YES: specify the kind of Ongoing Mentoring that will benefit you most.
If NO: specify who will help you share your progress, creations & results.
Certainly! Having someone more versed in XO application development for the students, artists and researchers available our team would be a great asset to the project. Perhaps we can even schedule a day or two for an in-person class/tutorial on developing for the XO platform.

8. Timeline (Start to Finish)
Please include a Proposed timeline for your Project life-cycle: (this can be in the form of Month 1, Month 2, etc rather than specific dates)
June-July: preliminary design and programming on the XO devices for the proposed multimedia projects in LASHP
End of July: Soft opening of projects in the park
August: Final tweaks to projects
End of August: Grand Opening of the projects in the park
September - December: Fall quarter class offered at UCLA to follow-up and continue prototyping applications on the XO Laptops for LASHP
Specify how you prefer to communicate your ongoing progress and obstacles!
Our project blog/wiki will continue to update the project development. The public wiki will probably become a collaborative space where team members can work through ideas and problems (our internal one already has).
[X] I agree to pass on the laptop(s) to a local OLPC group or other interested contributors in case I do not have need for the laptop(s) anymore or in case my project progress stalls.