University program
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NOTE: The contents of this page are not set in stone, and are subject to change! This page is a draft in active flux ... |
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This is a page to discuss and brainstorm about the design of a future University Program where interested students and professors can create OLPC University Chapters at their schools. Please edit, contribute, add!
Benefits
- An "XO lab in a box" - some number of spots (3? 5?) in the developers' program so the students can have machines to play/experiment with (note: not sure if this is possible yet)
- Connections, networking, etc. with others in the OLPC community (not that you can't do that without a university chapter, but this lowers the activation energy for people to join in)
- Announcements about research, internship, etc. opportunities for OLPC work
- A good excuse to work on OLPC for credit :-)
Activities
- Participate in the Classrooms for Free Culture program
- Run Jams at your school
- Take on OLPC projects as class projects/assignments for CS, engineering, education, history, language, etc. classes - see Andy Barry's X(I/O)_Reconfigurable_Gaming_Input_Device, Arjun's Measure project ideas for some examples
- Serve as mentors for younger students making content, software, hardware, etc
Ideas
Expand beyond universities - high schools, elementary schools, etc. might want to help
- They could always be part of the chapter by their local college - great mentorship opportunity for the college students.
Interested schools
If we can get at least 10 schools (with at least half of them outside the USA) that want to form chapters, we can start planning in earnest. Perhaps we can even launch before the start of the fall semester (end of August).
Olin College (USA)
Olin is an engineering college, and also has large numbers of students interested in appropriate technology, education, sustainability, and developing nations (and various combinations of the three). Nearly all classes are project-based; there have been attempts by professors to find community service projects for their students to do for credit, but despite interested professors and students, good projects are hard to come by (potential need to fulfill here!) Olin has community service hours on Friday afternoons where no classes are scheduled so that students can volunteer on a project of their choice. OLPC would probably be a popular one. There is an active group of Linux users who occasionally run installfests. Several professors (Mark Chang, Lynn Stein) have expressed interest in OLPC, and there would probably be more.
