University program
Support and enthusiasm from student communities has been immense for OLPC and is greatly appreciated. This is the page for you if you are interested in getting involved, want to learn about other student communities or want to share your story.
How to Use This Page
This is a wiki page which allows you to edit or add information. We do this because we want to hear from you! If you have a comment, feel free to leave it on the discussion page. But if you want to add your group to our growing university list or share your story go ahead and add it in! Just hit edit on the tab menu above.
Featured Student/Student Group
Want to be featured? Send us a short story about your work to: students@laptop.org and/or university-chapters@lists.laptop.org
David Sengeh, a junior at Harvard University, and his colleague, Paul Commons, from Indiana State University, are taking 30 XO laptops to Sierra Leone during their Christmas vacation. They are forming a team to coordinate the implementation in the country. Keep track of their progress through their blog!: http://www.gmin.org/blog/
A new group comprised of both Harvard & MIT students is fast proving as a force to be reckoned with. The group was started by a number of motivated individuals who were interested in bringing the XO laptop to Kenya. They had their first meeting this week in which over 20 people attended!
Upcoming Events
add an event you know about!
Ways to Participate
Contributors' program
For those who are tech-savvy we encourage you to participate in our Contributor's program. Through this program you are able to request an XO laptop for software development. Please visit the Developers Program page.
Change the World program
The Change the World Program allows the public, for the first time ever, the chance to send laptops to the country or classroom of their choice. With a donation of 100 or more XO laptops, any group can give children in a specific place the chance to learn, share, dream and connect to each other and to the world. For more information please visit the Change the world page. Again, many groups have fundraised to deliver laptops to a classroom/school in their community.
Grassroots community
OLPC has a tremendous grassroots network and college-aged students make up a large majority of this community. Check out some of the current college grassroots groups and learn about all the great promotion they have done for OLPC here: "University program" aka look below!
Many in our grassroots community have developed groups that advocate for laptops in a particular country region, and active diaspora communities have been pivotal in bringing the XO laptops to many countries. You can also join the grassroots mailing list: grassroots@lists.laptop.org
Create a university chapter
The process of forming a University chapter is very informal. University chapters are really just good excuses to get groups of interesting people together to do interesting things... that happen to be related to OLPC. Forming a chapter has some suggestions on how to start your chapter.
Fundraise
You can always raise money for the OLPC Foundation, which is a great help! You can do that by sending a check to:
OLPC Foundation One Cambridge Center, 10th Fl. Cambridge, MA 02142
Note: We are working on creating a fundraising kit! More soon!
Request a visit from the OLPC demo team
If you have an event at your school and would like to put OLPC on the agenda, please let our team here know by emailing: students@laptop.org
- Date/Time
- Location
- Expected Number of Attendees
- Is there Internet Access
- Date/Time
We will respond to your email within a few days to let you know if an OLPC demo team can attend the event. Learn about the demo team and check out events where they have been here: Demo Team
If you are thinking of coordinating a larger OLPC-specific event and would like a speaker please include that in the request.
Get your own XO for demos
Lastly, if you have a well-organized group that would like to perform your own demos or feel that having an XO would greatly enhance your efforts, please send a request to students@laptop.org, stating: PLEASE NOTE: WE ONLY HAVE TWO XO LAPTOPS PER/MONTH, SO ONLY REQUEST A LAPTOP IF IT IS A DEFINITE NEED.
- Your Group/Background
- What you intend to do with the XO
- Shipping Information (including phone number)
- Your Group/Background
If at any point during your fundraising, promotion, etc. you would like to share your stories or reach out to other University groups (who could also help with demos!) please email our mailing list: university-chapters@lists.laptop.org
Some Cool Links
OLPC FAQ: Official OLPC FAQ
An XO manual: http://www.laptop.org/8.2.0/manual/
Learn about current partner countries and their XO deployments:
University Groups
Below is a list of OLPC chapters at universities across the globe. Check out their stories and please feel free to add your own. We want to hear about your great work and all you have achieved. Please update us all with your stories, be sure to send updates to: university-chapters@lists.laptop.org as well!
Indiana University (IU)
Under the auspices of One Here...One There, a non-for-profit org. served to mitigate educational disparities in sub-Saharan Africa, the Indiana University OLPC chapter is comprised of mostly liberal-arts students with an interest in alternative learning environments and international development. With technical support through the Kliptown Youth Project (KYP), the IU OLPC chapter distributed 115 XOs (15 thanks to Larry Weber) to 3 separate rural primary schools in Limpopo, South Africa from Aug-Sept '08, in addition to establishing power, internet, and the like. The team continues to support South African OLPC deployments in various ways, inlcuding its first XO Camp in Johannesburg, networking and support for future deployments, and the like. IU OLPC is now working to support Global Minimum (www.gmin.org) in distributing XOs to rural Sierra Leone. A recent pilot of 30 XOs in Dec '08 to Jan '09 proved highly successful. Contact Paul Commons (paulcommons@gmail.com) for any questions or concerns.
University of Lincoln (UK)
University of Lincoln, Department of Computing and Informatics Chapter
This chapter is associated with the Lincolnshire Branch of the British Computer Society and located within the computing department at Lincoln. We are currently working on a summer research project, CODEX, to develop resources to support students within DCI who wish to undertake project work developing software for the XO laptop.
Olin College (USA)
Olin is an engineering college, and also has large proportion of students interested in appropriate technology, education, sustainability, and developing nations (and various combinations of the three). Nearly all classes are project-based; there have been attempts by professors to find community service projects for their students to do for credit, but despite interested professors and students, good projects are hard to come by (potential need to fulfill here!) Olin has community service hours on Friday afternoons where no classes are scheduled so that students can volunteer on a project of their choice. OLPC would probably be a popular one. There is an active group of Linux users who occasionally run installfests. Professors have been enthusiastic about allowing Olin students to do OLPC-related things as schoolwork or for-credit projects, and have even pitched in on projects themselves.
Panjab University (India)
The OLPC India Student Chapter was formed on 5th February 2008 at Panjab University, India after a presentation on OLPC at a seminar among an audience of about 100 people. The OLPC project was admired by the audience and many of them joined the student chapter with commitment to bring OLPC to India. By a step by step procedure, OLPC India Student Chapter plans to spread awareness about OLPC in India, particularly in education community, i.e. Universities, colleges, schools, and Education Experts. It is hoped that it ultimately will lead to India approving OLPC project.
Yorktown High School (USA)
YHS has 3 XOs in its possession. They are currently working on GASP, and are interested in starting up a repair center.
University of Arizona (USA)
This branch is just about to form! If you have any ideas or suggestions, please visit Blaine Light's Page! Thank you, and hopefully we will update this soon.
Northwestern University (USA)
Northwestern has world-class engineering and management programs, as well as the Medill School of Journalism. NU also has a very strong activism environment. OLPC would likely get interest from a variety of student groups and new volunteers eager to achieve greater awareness and help OLPC, run Jams, and have major-specific initiatives.
Oregon State University (USA)
- Tim Budd
OSU has an active group of students working on OLPC projects. The port of the AbiWord wordprocessor used by the OLPC was made by an OSU student. Other students are working on the Helix media activity. Professor Budd teaches a course on open source development, and would like to get more students involved in projects for the OLPC.
Duke University (USA)
- Alex Keybl, John Peña
- OLPC@Duke
- Duke University Chapter
Duke University, sometimes referred to as a "Southern Ivy", has a range of strong programs that includes everything from engineering to computer science and business. Hoping to focus these skills on a philanthropic project, we are planning on creating an interdisciplinary effort to raise funds for OLPC, work with the community, raise awareness of the organization, and actually develop software/hardware for the XO laptop.
Pontificia Universidad Catolica (Peru)
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú(PUCP) is a top-quality private education institution. There are currently 16,000 students who pursue 43 different specialties (undergraduate and graduate) in 9 faculties (Science, Engineering, Education, Business, Social Science, Humanities) . The campus also features a wireless high-speed internet connection and Internet2 available to all members of the PUCP community.
E-Quipu is a special program to support students groups and there are many chapters of professional and international organizations. Cultura Libre is the FreeCulture.org chapter at PUCP. Other student chapters: IEEE, ACM, AIESEC, ASME, ACI.
Paola Lira from Cultura Libre will be visiting MIT from July 11 to August 11, 2008.
South East European University (SEEU)(Tetovo - Macedonia)
http://www.seeu.edu.mk SEEU is a contemporary, young, educational institution, established in 2001, based on the goodwill of ‘friends of higher education’. SEEU is a university with five faculties, featuring quality undergraduate and postgraduate programmes within the socio-economic disciplines, business and public administration, law, communication sciences and technologies and teacher training. All programmes offered by the University are modular and follow the pattern of the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) conform the Bologna Agreement. This gives students the flexibility to specialize or take a more broadly-based programme.
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Colombia)
We have some initial experience in the building of learners networks and "communities of discourse" inside one class (Introduction to Informatics) as as way to "imitate" the communities of practice of Free Culture/Software/Content and in the process we produce free content and software (this is an experience with first semester students, so the software is not much advanced --small games, interactive books in Squeak-- and is used as a "probe of concept" of their own learning process). All the process is documented in Eduwiki (www.eduwiki.info), which, at this stage is a little messy, but it works as an organic memory for the class and new students improve it every semester. We need now to work on extended and sustained bridges with the Free Software/Content community, but the main problem is that there is still not a Spanish speaking community of practice for teaching/learning at that grade in the tools we use, so we're trying to build a Spanish Squeakers community for young people in contrast with English speaking communities for children or young programmers. Another problem at this moment is the lack of comprehensive Spanish documentation on the subjects we try. We can find plenty open content documentation in the form of small tuturials and we produce also new content in the classroom experience, but this can be as comprehensive as a textbook, so we're planning the liberation of excellent textbooks as the Stephane Ducasse's "Squeak: Learn programming with robots" under an open content license
Another place where we have been working is in differential calculus and linear algebra with computational mathematics using TeXmacs/Yacas/Maxima as the principal free software tools to produce free content. The open content at this moment are solutions of text book problems and exercises, but there is no problem on comprehensive free content mathematical books to be translated/changed or even created from the scratch on these matters as there are on themes related with new technologies (as Squeak, for example).
About the previous issues I have being planed some projects for the summer of content that I would link when they're better structured.
University of Salford (UK)
Frances Bell [1]
We are forming a chapter at Salford based on content development with a group of home and international students. Computer science colleagues are also interested so we may contribute code too. We need to do much more research into OLPC.
Illinois Math and Science Academy (USA)
We are the first high school chapter of OLPC, started in September 2007. We are currently working on a student inquiry project and an intersession (weeklong study between first and second semester) with OLPC. More soon to come about us, and feel free to email us any questions!
Moraine Valley Community College
See MVCC for more information.
Bradley University (USA)
This is a newly forming student chapter at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. Our work will hopefully include XO software and hardware development, content creation, and fundraising. More to come as the school year begins...
Carnegie Mellon University (USA)
Student Technology Outreach is a student organization at CMU that does Activity development. Its current projects are Bridge and Panorama. Meetings are held weekly on campus.
University of Wisconsin (USA)
UWOLPC is a student organization based out of the University of Wisconsin with efforts to take local ownership of the broader OLPC ideal.
SAN MARTIN DE PORRES University (PERU)
“CIXOS-FIA” is a team that includes students, faculty and graduates from the USMP whose interest is to research and develop on topics related to the OLPC Project in Peru, the creation of a developer’s organized community, including Graphics Designers, and volunteers from the university, also the promotion, through Workshops, conferences and the mail list in gmail, of all the community work. This work is directed to support the children education, developing activities focused on children to enforce their education. Our main objective is to help children from all around the world. Subscript text
Not-quite University Groups
Below is a list of individual or small groups of students with short-term projects across the globe. Check out their stories and please feel free to add your own. Also be sure to send updates to: university-chapters@lists.laptop.org
BoliviaGWU
Amanda Lilley, Chloe Feinberg, Matthew Karlesky, and Vid Nukala are second year master's candidates at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University pursuing a degree in International Science and Technology Policy. They are participating in a capstone course in Spring '09 which requires them to work with an organization and conduct a study based on their needs and our areas of interest. This research team hopes to study the diffusion of health technologies and innovations in the context of international development.
They are interested in conducting a research study or needs assessment, especially one that is focused on the innovative use of technology as a mechanism for disseminating health information and engaging local communities in health education programs.