University program

 

NOTE: The contents of this page are not set in stone, and are subject to change! This page is a draft in active flux ... Please leave suggestions on the talk page.

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 :-)
• Your ideas here - what else would you like to see?

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
• Your ideas here - what else would you like to do?

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

Olin College (USA)

• Nikki Lee

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.

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.

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.