University program

The contents of this page are considered outdated and some of the information may be stale. Please use information here with caution, or update it.

Support and enthusiasm from student communities has been immense for OLPC and is greatly appreciated. This is the page for you if you are interested in getting involved, want to learn about other student communities or want to share your story.

This is a wiki page which allows you to edit or add information. We do this because we want to hear from you! If you have a comment, feel free to leave it on the discussion page. But if you want to add your group to our growing university list or share your story go ahead and add it in! Just hit edit on the tab menu above.

Featured Student/Student Group

Want to be featured? Send us a short story about your work to: contributors@laptop.org and/or university-chapters@lists.laptop.org

Project Leader of OLPC Tanzania and executive director of Healthnovations International, Asad Moten is deploying XO laptops for HIV/AIDS prevention, diagnostics, and treatment at tertiary community clinics and schools in rural Tanzania.

David Sengeh and his colleague, Paul Commons, are taking 30 XO laptops to Sierra Leone during their Christmas vacation. They are forming a team to coordinate the implementation in the country. Keep track of their progress through their blog!: http://www.gmin.org/blog/

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A new group comprised of both Harvard & MIT students is fast proving as a force to be reckoned with. The group was started by a number of motivated individuals who were interested in bringing the XO laptop to Kenya. They had their first meeting this week in which over 20 people attended!

Upcoming Events

add an event you know about!

Ways to Participate

OLPCorps

Create a team and start your own deployment in Africa!
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPCorps_Africa

Intern

Intern for OLPC in South America or in Cambridge
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Internships

Contributors' program

If you have a great plan for a school or community that you think should receive XO laptops, or you need your own for software development, we encourage you to participate in our Contributor's program. Please visit the Developers Program page.

Grassroots community

OLPC has a tremendous grassroots network and college-aged students make up a large majority of this community. Check out some of the current college grassroots groups and learn about all the great promotion they have done for OLPC here: "University program" aka look below!

Many in our grassroots community have developed groups that advocate for laptops in a particular country region, and active diaspora communities have been pivotal in bringing the XO laptops to many countries. You can also join the grassroots mailing list: grassroots@lists.laptop.org

Create a university chapter

The process of forming a University chapter is very informal. University chapters are really just good excuses to get groups of interesting people together to do interesting things... that happen to be related to OLPC. Forming a chapter has some suggestions on how to start your chapter.

Fundraise

You can always raise money for the OLPC Foundation, which is a great help! You can do that by sending a check to:

OLPC Foundation One Cambridge Center, 10th Fl. Cambridge, MA 02142

Note: We are working on creating a fundraising kit! More soon!

Get your own XO for demos

Lastly, if you have a well-organized group that would like to perform your own demos or feel that having an XO would greatly enhance your efforts, please send a request to contributors@laptop.org, stating: PLEASE NOTE: WE ONLY HAVE TWO XO LAPTOPS PER/MONTH, SO ONLY REQUEST A LAPTOP IF IT IS A DEFINITE NEED.

1. Your Group/Background
   
2. What you intend to do with the XO
   
3. Shipping Information (including phone number)

Share!

If at any point during your fundraising, promotion, etc. you would like to share your stories or reach out to other University groups (who could also help with demos!) please email our mailing list: university-chapters@lists.laptop.org

Some Cool Links

OLPC FAQ: Official OLPC FAQ

An XO manual: http://www.laptop.org/8.2.0/manual/

Learn about current partner countries and their XO deployments:

Ethiopia

Haiti

Rwanda

Afghanistan

Ghana

UN Palestinian Camps in Lebanon

Uruguay

Peru

University Groups

Below is a list of OLPC chapters at universities across the globe. Check out their stories and please feel free to add your own. We want to hear about your great work and all you have achieved. Please update us all with your stories, be sure to send updates to: university-chapters@lists.laptop.org as well!

University of California, Santa Barbara [OLPCsb] (USA)

One Laptop Per Child, Santa Barbara is a collaboration of students, faculty, staff, and external partners working to utilize the benefits of technology in the education of children around the world. Our projects include the development of educational software for kids, research on the impact of collaborative technology in the classroom, and an international pen pal program designed to have children interact and collaborate on a meaningful level.

Wiki: OLPC Santa Barbara
Website: [OLPC, SB website] (note: new website currently being constructed)

Moorpark College (USA)

The Moorpark College Chapter is at a community college in Moorpark, California.

Harvard University: Digital Literacy Project

Digital Literacy Project (DigiLit) is a non-profit and officially recognized student organization of Harvard College that promotes digital literacy for teachers and students around the globe. The organization aims to integrate the XO laptop, a low-cost laptop designed for children by One Laptop per Child, into the classroom by developing training and curriculum resources that support sustainable technology practices. DigiLit has already raised funds for and initiated three XO laptop pilot programs: Nicaraguan Deaf Association (Managua, Nicaragua), Mission Hill After-School Program (Boston, MA), and the Cambridge Friends School (Cambridge, MA). In addition to launching laptop pilots and developing curriculum and training resources, DigiLit has conducted research on the XO's effects on classroom dynamics. The overall goal is to seamlessly integrate the XO into classrooms so that, rather than being an extension of existing pedagogies, the XO becomes a tool for realizing creative potential.

Indiana University (IU)

Under the auspices of One Here...One There, a non-for-profit org. served to mitigate educational disparities in sub-Saharan Africa, the Indiana University OLPC chapter is comprised of mostly liberal-arts students with an interest in alternative learning environments and international development. With technical support through the Kliptown Youth Project (KYP), the IU OLPC chapter distributed 115 XOs (15 thanks to Larry Weber) to 3 separate rural primary schools in Limpopo, South Africa from Aug-Sept '08, in addition to establishing power, internet, and the like. The team continues to support South African OLPC deployments in various ways, inlcuding its first XO Camp in Johannesburg, networking and support for future deployments, and the like. IU OLPC is now working to support Global Minimum (www.gmin.org) in distributing XOs to rural Sierra Leone. A recent pilot of 30 XOs in Dec '08 to Jan '09 proved highly successful. Contact Paul Commons (paulcommons@gmail.com) for any questions or concerns.

University of Lincoln (UK)

• Cornelia Boldyreff

University of Lincoln, Department of Computing and Informatics Chapter

This chapter is associated with the Lincolnshire Branch of the British Computer Society and located within the computing department at Lincoln. We are currently working on a summer research project, CODEX, to develop resources to support students within DCI who wish to undertake project work developing software for the XO laptop.

Olin College (USA)

• Nikki Lee

Olin university chapter

Olin is an engineering college, and also has large proportion 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. Professors have been enthusiastic about allowing Olin students to do OLPC-related things as schoolwork or for-credit projects, and have even pitched in on projects themselves.

Panjab University (India)

• Gaurav Chachra

The OLPC India Student Chapter was formed on 5th February 2008 at Panjab University, India after a presentation on OLPC at a seminar among an audience of about 100 people.

Yorktown High School (USA)

• FFM
• Matthew Gallagher
• Thomas Doggette

Yorktown High School chapter

YHS has 3 XOs in its possession. They are currently working on GASP, and are interested in starting up a repair center.

University of Arizona (USA)

• Blaine Light

University of Arizona Chapter

This branch is just about to form! If you have any ideas or suggestions, please visit Blaine Light's Page! Thank you, and hopefully we will update this soon.

Northwestern University (USA)

• James Levy

Northwestern has world-class engineering and management programs, as well as the Medill School of Journalism. NU also has a very strong activism environment. OLPC would likely get interest from a variety of student groups and new volunteers eager to achieve greater awareness and help OLPC, run Jams, and have major-specific initiatives.

Oregon State University (USA)

• Tim Budd

OSU has an active group of students working on OLPC projects. The port of the AbiWord wordprocessor used by the OLPC was made by an OSU student. Other students are working on the Helix media activity. Professor Budd teaches a course on open source development, and would like to get more students involved in projects for the OLPC.

Duke University (USA)

• Hannah Sieber & John Lakso
• OLPC@Duke
• Duke University Chapter

Duke University, sometimes referred to as a "Southern Ivy", has a range of strong programs that includes everything from engineering to computer science and business. Hoping to focus these skills on a philanthropic project, we have created an interdisciplinary effort to raise funds for OLPC, work with the community, raise awareness of the organization, and actually develop software/hardware for the XO laptop.

Pontificia Universidad Catolica (Peru)

• Lglira

Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú(PUCP) is a top-quality private education institution. There are currently 16,000 students who pursue 43 different specialties (undergraduate and graduate) in 9 faculties (Science, Engineering, Education, Business, Social Science, Humanities) . The campus also features a wireless high-speed internet connection and Internet2 available to all members of the PUCP community.

E-Quipu is a special program to support students groups and there are many chapters of professional and international organizations. Cultura Libre is the FreeCulture.org chapter at PUCP. Other student chapters: IEEE, ACM, AIESEC, ASME, ACI.

Paola Lira from Cultura Libre will be visiting MIT from July 11 to August 11, 2008.

South East European University (SEEU)(Tetovo - Macedonia)

• ALIU

http://www.seeu.edu.mk SEEU is a contemporary, young, educational institution, established in 2001, based on the goodwill of ‘friends of higher education’. SEEU is a university with five faculties, featuring quality undergraduate and postgraduate programmes within the socio-economic disciplines, business and public administration, law, communication sciences and technologies and teacher training. All programmes offered by the University are modular and follow the pattern of the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) conform the Bologna Agreement. This gives students the flexibility to specialize or take a more broadly-based programme.

Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Colombia)

Offray Luna

We have some initial experience in the building of learners networks and "communities of discourse" inside one class (Introduction to Informatics) as as way to "imitate" the communities of practice of Free Culture/Software/Content and in the process we produce free content and software (this is an experience with first semester students, so the software is not much advanced --small games, interactive books in Squeak-- and is used as a "probe of concept" of their own learning process). All the process is documented in Eduwiki (www.eduwiki.info), which, at this stage is a little messy, but it works as an organic memory for the class and new students improve it every semester. We need now to work on extended and sustained bridges with the Free Software/Content community, but the main problem is that there is still not a Spanish speaking community of practice for teaching/learning at that grade in the tools we use, so we're trying to build a Spanish Squeakers community for young people in contrast with English speaking communities for children or young programmers. Another problem at this moment is the lack of comprehensive Spanish documentation on the subjects we try. We can find plenty open content documentation in the form of small tuturials and we produce also new content in the classroom experience, but this can be as comprehensive as a textbook, so we're planning the liberation of excellent textbooks as the Stephane Ducasse's "Squeak: Learn programming with robots" under an open content license

Another place where we have been working is in differential calculus and linear algebra with computational mathematics using TeXmacs/Yacas/Maxima as the principal free software tools to produce free content. The open content at this moment are solutions of text book problems and exercises, but there is no problem on comprehensive free content mathematical books to be translated/changed or even created from the scratch on these matters as there are on themes related with new technologies (as Squeak, for example).

About the previous issues I have being planed some projects for the summer of content that I would link when they're better structured.

University of Salford (UK)

Frances Bell [1]

We are forming a chapter at Salford based on content development with a group of home and international students. Computer science colleagues are also interested so we may contribute code too. We need to do much more research into OLPC.

Illinois Math and Science Academy (USA)

• April-Hope Wareham and Kevin Crews

IMSA Chapter Page

We are the first high school chapter of OLPC, started in September 2007. We are currently working on a student inquiry project and an intersession (weeklong study between first and second semester) with OLPC. More soon to come about us, and feel free to email us any questions!

Moraine Valley Community College

See MVCC for more information.

Bradley University (USA)

• Chris Miller

This is a newly forming student chapter at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. Our work will hopefully include XO software and hardware development, content creation, and fundraising. More to come as the school year begins...

Carnegie Mellon University (USA)

• Nirav Patel

Student Technology Outreach is a student organization at CMU that does Activity development. Its current projects are Bridge and Panorama. Meetings are held weekly on campus.

University of Wisconsin (USA)

UWOLPC is a student organization based out of the University of Wisconsin with efforts to take local ownership of the broader OLPC ideal.

San Martín de Porres University (PERU)

CIXOS-FIA is a team that includes students, faculty and graduates from the University of San Martín de Porres (USMP) whose interest is to research and develop on topics related to the OLPC Project in Peru, the creation of a developer’s organized community, including Graphics Designers, and volunteers from the university, also the promotion, through Workshops, conferences and the mail list in gmail, of all the community work. This work is directed to support the children education, developing activities focused on children to enforce their education. Our main objective is to help children from all around the world.

LATTC LULAC Chapter Library Club (Los Angeles-USA)

Watch this space for information about one of the newest, and soon to be greatest, OLPC University Chapters.

Dominican College

The members of this group are faculty, students from Dominican College (Orangeburg, NY) in collaboration with Kampala International University, Kisubi Brothers College, and Makerer University, all in Uganda.

Please contribute to our Collaborative GrantProposal

Not-quite University Groups

Below is a list of individual or small groups of students with short-term projects across the globe. Check out their stories and please feel free to add your own. Also be sure to send updates to: university-chapters@lists.laptop.org

BoliviaGWU

Amanda Lilley, Chloe Feinberg, Matthew Karlesky, and Vid Nukala are second year master's candidates at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University pursuing a degree in International Science and Technology Policy. They are participating in a capstone course in Spring '09 which requires them to work with an organization and conduct a study based on their needs and our areas of interest. This research team hopes to study the diffusion of health technologies and innovations in the context of international development.

They are interested in conducting a research study or needs assessment, especially one that is focused on the innovative use of technology as a mechanism for disseminating health information and engaging local communities in health education programs.