User:Bnardone/Software

User:Ben Nardone::My Talk::Internship::G1G1::Software::Peru::Nigeria

I'm looking for ways that my organization might work with or through OLPC. Couple bits that have occurred to me are below in ultra-brief format. Input solicited.

1 - Communications mechanism between nearest health care providers and children with mothers who are expecting.

• Use laptops to connect health care clinics with the families in OLPC target areas.

• Something like 'polling' software to allow teachers (or nearest healthcare entity through teachers) to ask children questions, e.g. 'who's mother is expecting',
• and then pump info to the families through the kids/laptops based on responses, eg nutritional priorities throughout pregnancy, expected/acceptable duration of labor so as to trigger intervention in problem deliveries before it's too late.
• Use same mechanism to educate? Establish a 2-way communication mechanism so that health care providers who are too far away for easy visits can monitor and guide the mothers-to-be.
• Maybe explore use of the video capture to enhance distance monitoring by the healthcare worker?

2 - Monitoring & Evaluation Data Collection devices

Turn laptops into data collection devices? Submit survey info from laptops to a site, via email or ftp? USB GPS?

3 - Laptops as story collectors, citizen journalism devices

Wondering if it might be possibly use laptops/laptop recipients to help document our work, or to promote and/or advocate for RH/FP in recipient countries.

If twenty kids have a laptop with an OK camera and the ability to tell me what a picture means, then there's going to be one that can do as good a job as anyone of telling the truth about what's happening somewhere.

Interested in making a connection with a single recipient, or group of recipients, and exploring stuff in the vein of citizen journalism.

--- Not necessarily/immediately to do with my company, but other bits I'm looking forward to:

• VLOG to MySpace and the like
• Virtual world a la Second Life. I hear the folks at Linden Labs are working on an actual SL thin client for the XOs.
• Monetary transfer mechanism of some sort. Something to let people hire, invest in, donate to, individual laptop recipients.