Boston pilots

Introduction to the Boston pilot system

Schools

Preparing to deploy within a year

• Cambridge Friends School

Interested

If you are from a school that is interested in running a Boston-area deployment, please join the OLPC Boston mailing list and introduce yourself and how you plan to make it happen (think "grant proposal" or "business plan" format, in miniature and less formal). How many computers do you need, what kind of students are you planning on giving them to, how are you going to train the teachers, how will you find the funding? What help do you need? It is important that somebody from the school itself commit to leading the deployment; deployments are fundamentally based at schools and led by teachers. Everybody else is here to help, but the leadership has to come from the deployment schools.

Local support teams

Contact your area support teams to get involved!

Existing

• Repairs: Olin's repair center, led by User:Andreatl is acting as a pro bono Boston area Repairs shop.
• Deployment: The IMSA chapter deployment team is available to help with Boston-area deployments; they will be in Boston this January during the first week of the 2nd semester to help setup, flash, customize, and distribute XOs, setup/configure networking, server, and power infrastructures, and hold various orientation sessions for students, teachers, parents, and the local community, and will be available during this time to train and consult with local groups who want to form deployment teams. Yifan Sun is the Boston-area liason for the team. Contact information needed.
• Curriculum: Olin's chapter, led by Sandra Lam, has formed a consulting team to work with local teachers on designing and creating curricular resources to integrate the XO into their existing curriculum (including how to meet state standards). Also involved in the Curriculum team are people from the upcoming SugarLabs Boston pilots. Contact information needed.

Forming

• Fundraising: The Boston University (Lauren O'Hanlon) and Harvard (Katelyn Foley, MacKenzie Sigalos) groups are organizing a fundraising team to help interested local schools get matching funding for their XO pilots. Contact information needed.
• Server: Bill Bogstad is coordinating local Linux User Groups (LUGs) and sysadmin group volunteers to set up, configure, and help maintain school servers (and possibly networking infrastructure) for Boston-area pilots. Contact information needed.

Needed

Are you or your group interested in taking on one of these local support roles? Email the OLPC Boston mailing list with interest and a plan of execution and we'll help you get into the local pilot scene.

• Build: XO customization team to work with local teachers on choosing, testing, and customizing a set of software and activities to install on all their classroom laptops by default every school year (or semester); syncs up regularly with the OLPC development team in the Cambridge office to stay abreast of the latest software changes
• Media: Getting the word out about local Boston-area pilots to the media community and the OLPC community - and working with students from the pilot schools to get the teachers, parents, and students themselves to contribute to such media.
• Impact: Working with local schools to measure and document the impact of XOs in their classrooms (education/ethnographic studies, do test scores rise, student engagement, etc.)
• Activities: Python programming team that can take requests for Activity development of simple games/activities and give teachers a 2-3 week turnaround time in building them (monthly code sprints?)
• Workshops: Facilitating workshops at schools and around the Boston area around OLPC; helping pilot students start and run their own community outreach programs for younger children at their school and other kids around the area, museum exhibits, festivals, etc.

Meetings and events

Notes from past meetings and events

• 2008 Oct 10 - Boston area pilots structure discussion