How-tos

Have a great idea for a tool, gadget, attachment, structure, or other object that laptop users might want to create? List it below, with a brief description. If the description runs to more than a couple of paragraphs, consider making a separate page for it and linking to that from this one.

Groups to get such content from include Instructables, wikiHow, and the Concord Consortium. Please add your favorite groups to this list.

Wanted:

• Basic health how-tos
• Basic sanitation, water filtration
• Construction of more useful household/daily items

wikiHow

Volunteer Team

wikiHow has a team of volunteers creating and curating a collection of how-tos for the OLPC. If you'd like to nominate an existing appropriate wikiHow article for use by OLPC, follow the instructions on this page.. As at December 20, 2006, if you nominate an article, it'd be really helpful in streamlining the process if you could please also alert Flickety to mention the articles that you have nominated.

For general queries, please contact one of the wikiHow volunteers active on the OLPC project, including Flickety, Nicole Wilson, Sondra Crane or Jack H.

Requests for Articles Welcomed

wikiHow volunteers are available to "answer requests" and create new pages that OLPC might specifically need. If you have a request, please make it at the wikiHow forums. It would also be very helpful to contact Flickety to mention that you have made this request.

wikiHow Article Progress & Status

The list of (currently unverified and unconfirmed) pages that have been nominated for use by the OLPC is available at: Laptop Candidates.

Status as of Oct 4, 2006:

• 523 articles nominated for OLPC project
• 270+ how-tos in static html delivered to OLPC

Update as at 20 December, 2006:

• The wikiHow articles are currently undergoing sorting.
• Those that are being chosen as possible candidates are also undergoing editing to ensure a high quality standard.
• There are currently 367 articles considered to have potential for the project.
• Nominations for articles remain open but it is helpful to alert Flickety of any new nominations. Thanks!

Update as at 20 March, 2007:

• Over 400 articles and counting
• Over 50 for laptop now sorted
• Over 50 edited for server
• Remaining 370 to be edited (not counting new ones to be added yet)

• Placement of laptop quality articles into list continues;
• Articles for server are being edited currently by Flickety & Dvortygirl.
• New articles are being selected.
• Relevant VideoJug articles are being created and moved into wikiHow for LC use.
• Nominations still open but subject to editing discretion.

Expected date of finishing sorting & editing is end of April 2007.

Instructables

Instructables.com now has a group[1] devoted to building how-tos that might be interesting to OLPC. If you have a full-fledged how-to in mind, you can build it there and get feedback; if you have a design in mind but don't know how to create it, list it further down the page and hope that someone else will figure out an inexpensive way to get it done.

Their current list of projects includes:

• A Universal Nut Sheller
• A simple fish trap
• A plastic-bag glove for handling chemicals
• An easy way to do animations with a whiteboard and camera

Engineering how-tos

There are many great do it yourself projects for budding engineers. Please add to the list below, with links to available freely-licensed how-to collections where possible.

• A simple flywheel
• A rotor
• A wheel[barrow]
• ...

Beverage-can stove

Wikipedia has a lovely article on the topic, could easily be made into a how-to.

wikiHow addition

• wikiHow has selected an article on a beverage can stove that may be useful; see How to Make a Simple Beverage Can Stove.

Information Technology how-to documents

MediaWiki tricks

protecting pages - probably just a link into the mediawiki wiki

wiki hints on an OLPC machine

this should include a plan for ongoing support, probably within the local language on a shared wiki

Nitpicker 18:14, 16 October 2006 (EDT)

Make making How-to narrations into class projects easy and fun

Teach the problem to solve itself.

We have had chalk talks for a long time, but now they tend to be live, vocally narrated PowerPoint presentations. With the XO we have enough infotech to let students take photos, video clips, diagrams, drawings etc. and add narration. These can then be watched, and edited, on any student's laptop. Students can be expected to learn some of the content as they create one, but also skills of cooperation, presentation, and especially self expression.

This should also be a rich resource for sharing both within a village or country and around the world. Wikipedia on steroids! Everyone can celebrate the accomplishments of their own and their neighbors children and learn important stuff as well. Win, win, win.

So, who can construct a convenient method for building and editing narrations? Naturally, the very first how-to is how to use the application itself. Close after that are the ones involving successes in educational deployment of the laptops. Those might be created by the teachers, administrators, and advisors rather than the students. Or maybe not.

Nitpicker 16:26, 7 January 2007 (EST)