OLPC United States

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United States

 Country Information
 ISO Country Code US
 Wikipedia Article Wikipedia Link
 Government Support Low and OLPC Priority
 Deployment Wide adoption (over 5000 machines)
 Languages
 Keyboard Layout US Layout
 Written English (en)
 Spoken English (en)
 Secondary Written None
 Secondary Spoken None

The United States (U.S.) presents a special case to OLPC deployments.

  • Most software is initially localized to the United States and so requires no additional localization.
  • Most laptops deployed in the United States are from the 2007 and 2008 Give One, Get One programs and not from school or government programs.
  • The U.S. spends significantly more than many countries on education and has been a lower priority for deployment.
  • Each of the fifty United States, plus associated territories, has great discretion on which tools it uses for education.

News and Rumors

  • 9 Jan 2008 The OLPC announced the foundation of a group, OLPC America, to bring XO laptops to American students. Details are unavailable until a launch later in 2008.

3. OLPC added a new country this week: the USA. This move will engage a wider developer community, impacting and improving software and content. Please note that such a move into schools and learning in the USA is not necessarily a commercial machine.

Deployments and Trials

A prerequisite for wider deployment in the States is better compliance with the Children's Internet Protection Act.

Give One, Get One (G1G1)

The 2007 Give One, Get One Program allowed people in the United States and some other areas to purchase laptops from the OLPC Foundation at cost in return for donating a laptop for a deployment to be named later. About 80,000 units were purchased in the United States with a matching number earmarked for future deployments outside the country (cite?). Logistics marred the program's success causing delayed deliveries and far more support calls than anticipated.

Government and Official Groups

  • OLPC America will be the official organization within the OLPC Foundation providing support to U.S. deployments.
  • The OLPC Foundation is located in the United States.

States and Territories

US Virgin Islands - Waveplace

Alabama

California

  • July 6, 2007 rumor that assemblyman Ira Ruskin has a bill to fund a pilot project to encourage use of Free Textbooks in CA junior colleges.

Georgia

  • Some rumors that Georgia had a program requiring some sort of laptop, followed by several students denying such.

Maine

  • Said to have program requiring conventional notebooks in schools.
  • Said to have a program using Apple iBooks.

Massachussetts

  • Mitt Romney, then Massachusetts governor, proposed giving every middle and high-school student an XO in 2003. The proposal did not pass the legislature.

User groups and unoffical groups

  • There are many, many regional groups. See the list below or the OLPCNews forum to find a local one.
  • There are various unaffiliated groups promoting OLPC in the United States. Waveplace is one that is actually running pilot projects. One is Earth_Treasury, which is at an earlier stage.

USA groups by state

Alabama

  • OLPC Birmingham
    • OLPC Birmingham has both a Grassroots group and a planned full scale implementation of 15,000 machines. On the grassroots side, their team of volunteers is experimenting with the School Servers and and recently took part in BarCampBirmingham
We are a local group of XO laptop enthusiasts committed to co-learning, hacking, and expanding the One Laptop Per Child computational experience community.
Our members include
  • Software developers interested in working on software for the XO.
  • People interested in seeing what all the XO can do (and trying out all of the cool features.)
  • Kids and parents who want to meet other kids and parents and do cool things together with their XOs.
For more information about this group and news about upcoming events, visit http://groups.google.com/group/birmingham-olpc-userinterest-group-al

Alaska, interior

Lylah Caldwell is interested in helping start a user group in the Fairbanks/North Pole area for XO users. She has started a Yahoo Group for that purpose at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/XO_interior


Arizona

  • AZ XO
    • The Arizona XO user group has been meeting since February of 2008 and has over 10 members. They have their own forum, mailing list, and are starting to work with the local Global Literacy Foundation.

California

1/1/08 I'd like to start an OLPC group meeting around Mountain View, perhaps weekly for the short term while everyone gets up to speed, and then monthly later on. We'll likely meet at the Dana Street Cafe. It will be informal chit chat in the beginning. Send me your email address, and I'll add you to the list. -- carllinde the_usual_at_goes_here gmail.com
I'm hosting a hacking at my house on Saturday, December 22. A group will likely form off of the Bay Area Python Interest Group (BayPiggies) --CharlesMerriam 16:42, 19 December 2007 (EST)
    • Los Angeles is starting to form a local group at [1].

Connecticut

Florida

Listen in Tally, FL would like to find out if any others in the area have gotten an XO laptop. It would be great to see how the XO works when there is more than one around.
I would like to help contact the govt about getting involved in the OLPC program and supply these machines to kids/schools in FL. In fact I have just found a page that helps you do this: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC4USALobbying. We need more sample letters on here so that more people will write to their Reps.
Let Love Flow
affiliatelinks(at)goct.net

Georgia

  • Atlanta has a small ad-hoc user group. An elementary school in Fulton County is piloting a lending program with 10 XO laptops that arrived August '08. http://www.creekview.org, image
Tat Au is interested in forming an XO Learning Club in the Atlanta, Georgia area to allow young XO owners to get together, explore and have fun with XO and learn about OLPC.

Illinois

  • Chicago is the home of OLPC Chicago and ILXO, with the IMSA campus chapter in Aurora
    • OLPC Chicago is a grassroots group backing several initiatives, including the Illinois Low Cost Laptop Act
    • IMSA is a Highschool campus chapter (Aurora), they have several XO's and are active in testing and debugging
    • ILXO was a summer 2008 office of full-time OLPC volunteers; many are still active virtual community members.
    • An XO User Group has been formed at Moraine Valley Community College (in Palos Hills, IL, a southwest suburb of Chicago). XO users from Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois (and beyond) are welcome to join. The first club meeting will be held on Saturday, January 26, 2008. Contact Larry Langellier for additional details.

Massachusetts

There is an XO Owners, Cambridge/Boston area group on Facebook
See Bug Found. See Bug Squashed. CBUG forming.. - :) Ben Nardone::My Talk::Internship::G1G1::Software::Peru::Nigeria 09:12, 22 November 2007 (EST)

Minnesota

Bill McTeer The Minnesota Chapter of the Independent Computer Consultants Association is starting a group. We would love to link up with others in the area. We have a Google Group located here: http://groups.google.com/group/icca-mn-olpc

Patrick Stein Bought an OLPC for my son Isaac, but I intend to develop some apps for it soon.

Mississippi

Missouri

  • The Grassroots projects in Missouri have two different mailing lists, but no groups yet.
Andrew Jensen is looking for others with XO laptops in the St. Louis Area, with the goal of sharing resources and seeing how they work together. Contact at PlatonicJensen(at)yahoo.com.

Montana

New Mexico

New York

  • Three areas in New York are attempting to organize Local User Groups
  • Long Island is still in the process of organizing
  • OLPC Rochester, NY is a student group that has worked on testing the XO

North Carolina

Ohio

Oregon

Jane Krauss began the group on November 16. Here's a link to our Eugene XO Users Workspace. Jane hosts an XO educator group in Classroom 2.0 also. --Mark 14:29, 21 November 2007 (EST)
    • Oregon State University has a group of OLPC users and developers who meet regularly and are developing a few XO-specific projects, including the Helix media player. Contact mburns.

Pennsylvania

  • OLPC Pennsylvania
    • This state has a couple of interested members on our wiki, but haven't yet formed as a group.
Philadelphia/Delaware Valley: Any interest in a local user group? Give me a holler and we'll set something up! Ike9898 09:48, 9 January 2008 (EST)

Rhode Island

  • Rhode Island
    • A Rhode Island group formed for a few meetings, and appears to have a couple avid contributors, but seem to not have continued as a grassroots group.

South Carolina

Texas

  • XO-Austin
    • In Austin, Texas, the local user group has a community Jabber server for it's users. At least one member of the group is an active technical writer for various documentation projects.
Contact Anne Gentle if you are interested. Three of us got together Friday January 4th, 2008. We will try to meet again, perhaps at a Geek Austin event.
Eric Van Hensbergen - technically, the OLPC is my 10-year old daughters, but I'm developing software and content for her (and others as well. I'm also running a Jabber collaboration server for Austin (see Xo-austin)
Update from Anne Gentle. I have reserved the Spicewood Springs library branch meeting room from 10-11AM Saturday February 23rd. All Austin XO owners and kids are welcome.
    • Dallas has DFWXO, Dallas FortWorth Area XO users group

Vermont

  • OLPC Vermont Vermont Development and Grassroot Group.
    • The Vermont group is focusing on emulating the [[Sugar] UI and is spreading info about OLPC locally.

Washington

  • Washington is home to two distinct XO user communities; SeaXO and OLPC Bellingham
    • SeaXO The Seattle XO User Group meets once a month to help support local users and is very active in OLPC Health
Check http://www.SeaXO.com for the latest information. As we're all waiting for our XO computers, there's not very much to announce just yet. Certainly, a meetup and a chance to try out the Mesh network capabilities will be high on everybody's list. In the next few weeks more will be added to the site.
Meanwhile if you'd like to receive any announcement and meeting information, email your contact information and interest to mailto:SeattleXO@gmail.com , or go to the SeaXO.com contact page[2].
There appear to be a few people in our community with XO laptops - we'd love to find more, so created the XOBI google group at http://groups.google.com/group/xobi

Washington, DC

  • OLPC Learning Club D.C.
    • The OLPC Learning Club has several very active members, including Mike Lee and Ian Daniher. The group gives educational demonstrations, contributes to various content projects and develops software for the XO, such as GASP.
The OLPC News team is organizing a OLPC Learning Club for the DC Metro area. We'll be having our first meeting on December 18 with guest speakers and (hopefully) a mass XO mesh. Come by and co-learn!

See also

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