Deployment Guide/Core Team

2. Core Team

The key OLPC stakeholders include the learning team, the hardware team, the software team, server-/connectivity-infrastructure team, the power-infrastructure team, the finance team, the operations and logistics partners, and the manufacturer, suppliers, etc.

The in-country stakeholders include government representatives, sponsors, supporters, deployers, implementers, power infrastructure specialist, suppliers, deliverers, storage provider, and recipients, e.g., school officials, teachers, children, and the community.

The core country team must include technical, pedagogical, logistics, and political (i.e. ministry of education) leads. The technical lead takes responsibility for the software, hardware, and communication and power infrastructures. The pedagogical lead takes responsibility for teacher preparation, content, and evaluation. The logistics lead takes responsibility for shipping, distribution, security, activation and repairs. The political lead is responsible for fighting the inevitable battles of will that will arise. Other team members include a liaison to OLPC, a liaison to the community, an independent evaluation team, university liaison, a diaspora liaison, and a local volunteer liaison.

It is important to understand that OLPC does not have the resources to have substantial direct involvement with deployments. It is therefore up to the country to establish and train a capable team to fill the above roles. OLPC will assist by providing training resources (such as this guide) and private tech support to large deployments.

Other roles that are expected to be carried out by the in-country team include:

• Digitization and collection of educational content
• Customization of the OS with activities and content
• Continued testing of the keyboard
• Localization (including translation)
• Community outreach
• Communicating back to the community (share your experiences!)
• Involvement with ongoing software development, to ensure that translations, keyboards and activities continue to work

The above topics are covered in detail in later sections of this deployment guide.