Talk:University program

• This should be sent out to the international free culture lists, and directly to fc chapters. Sj talk 20:39, 25 July 2007 (EDT)
• We need to solidify the actual program proposal - let's have a series of brainstorming and design sessions, with an aim to launch the actual chatpers in mid or late September. I'll poke out to the Free Culture lists while we're in Taipei... maybe we can get the university students at the event to help us brainstorm on this. Mchua 22:54, 27 July 2007 (EDT)
• We also need a stage at which we begin looking at official and formal involvement of the University. Faculty and Staff are generally interested in things which have a formal structure. Things such as course plan suggestions for using the OLPC as a target development platform in engineering and computer science courses, and mechanisms for securing an "OLPC Lab", that is, sufficient hardware for testing (Universities are likely willing to pay for the lab given the low cost). We have contacts with top Universities in developed nations that can provide tremendous resources if we can give them a set of guide-posts on how to help. Universities are looking for relevance in their research, and we have a heap of relevance to offer. We need things such as "what do we need" documents so that professors can look at meeting needs from their class. We need backing materials (course outlines, texts, reference documentation) that can be taught from. We need support mechanisms that we can offer to professors so they aren't left hanging if they encounter deployment/teaching issues. To given an idea, assume that you have a university with tens of thousands and students and hundreds upon hundreds of computer science and engineering students, along with a large educational faculty. We want to be able to entice these Universities to see OLPC as a good "theme" for whole sets of official courses, from simple undergraduate projects through applying post-graduate research solutions. User:Mcfletch 2008-08-31

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.

There is significant interest in high schools having endemic chapters. We just started the first; at the K12 Open Minds Conference, we talked with at least one other high school that would be interested in such a thing. Merely stapling K12s to a university won't necessarily work. Moreover, I think there is benefit in regional coalitions -- I am looking at NIU, NU, and IMSA having a "Northern Illinois Meta-Jam" at some point in the spring. In this way, there is the kind of mentoring afforded by the "part of the local college" idea, yet allowing the students to lasso and run with their own creativity and organizational power. ScottSwanson 11:54, 12 October 2007 (EDT)