Talk:Summer of Content 2007/Archive

Questions/comments

What is "Summer of Content 2007 Application Organization Student Name" meant to represent? Sj talk 20:19, 10 July 2007 (EDT)

Sign Up

Admissions are on a rolling basis for this round of the Summer of Content program. Individual mentor organizations may have their own application deadlines (July 20 is suggested), but the program deadline for mentor-intern-organization matches is at the project kickoff on July 23, 2007.

What to Do

If you want to be a Mentor Org

• Add an organization profile to the Mentor Org section of this page, including a description of what you do, a link to your homepage (if applicable), and any requirements that mentors or applications must fulfill. Make sure you include a main organizational contact so SoCon knows who to get in touch with.
• Contact Mel Chua to notify the program of your sign-up - we'll help you get started and answer any questions you might have.
• Recruit mentors from your organization - send out emails, post on your website or blog, and so on.
• Recruit interns for your organization - send out emails, post on your website or blog, and so on.
• Secure funding. Intern stipends are $500 for the 5-week program, and you are responsible for paying for the interns your organization takes on for this round, including arranging payment (and associated paperwork) with the interns.
• Select interns. Once you have approved a project with a committed intern and mentor, and committed to fund that project, post the project description (link to the application and contact information for the intern and mentor) under the Accepted Projects section of your organization profile. SoCon can arbitrate between organizations, mentors, or interns if needed. (if two organizations want the same intern, for instance).
• On July 23, the list of accepted projects under your organization profile will be taken as final; SoCon will email you to confirm so we know where to send t-shirts, publicity, moral support, and other useful things.

If you want to be a Mentor

• If your organization doesn't have a mentor org section, make one.
• List your name, contact information, and interests under your organization.
• Talk with the main contact for your organization about how final selection will work; some organizations may give mentors a certain number of funding slots to choose any intern they wish for, others may have mentor-intern pairs apply for funding spots together with a final project proposal. (If you're willing to fund your intern's stipend, let your organizational contact know!)
• Students will contact you with projects they would like to work with you on. Help them refine their proposals and get them through the final selection process for your organization.
• If you're selected, make sure you're on the Accepted Projects list for your organization on this page by July 23, 2007. We'll use that as the final roster for Summer of Content 2007 participants.

If you want to be an Intern

• Look at the list of organizations, mentors, and sample projects, below. Think of projects you'd like to do and people you'd like to work with.
• Create a profile for yourself under the Potential Intern Pool section.
• Write an application in a wikipage below your profile (or applications, if you have multiple ideas). Each application should describe a specific project for a specific organization and should be less than 500 words. You may supplement your application with external links, but the application should include a standalone abstract of who you are and what you'd like to do. We suggest that you include a description of the project (timeline, how you'll go about it, why it's important, list of deliverables), why you'd like to execute on this particular project, and the reason you're the best individual to do so (include details of your academic, industry, and/or open content development experience and other details as you see fit). Check to see if the organization you're applying to has a specific proposal template or criteria.
• Email your proposal to the mentor you want to work with and collaborate with them to develop and refine your proposal for selection. If you don't see any mentors you'd like to work with, email the organization main contacts and ask them to help you find one. If you don't see any organizations you'd like to work with, email Mel Chua and ask her to help you find one.
• To participate, you must have a final project proposal with a confirmed mentor who has agreed to work with you, and have received confirmation of funding and support from the organization you're working with, before July 23, 2007. If you're selected, make sure you're on the Accepted Projects list for your organization on this page by July 23, 2007. We'll use that as the final roster for Summer of Content 2007 participants.

Mentor orgs / Mentors

Organization

Main contact

Brief description of what you do

Any special notes applicants (or mentors) should know (particular types of projects you're interested in, what you're looking for, requirements for projects, special formatting for applications)

Mentors

• Mentor Name (contact information) - interests
• Mentor Name (contact information) - interests

Accepted Projects

• Summer of Content 2007 Application Organization Student Name

One Laptop Per Child

Mel Chua is the main SoCon contact for OLPC.

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is an education project developing sub-$100 laptops designed for children in the developing world along with educational content (games, books, music, activities) and a network of volunteers to support it.

Interns can work either at the OLPC office in Cambridge, MA or remotely from wherever you'd like. To apply for an OLPC SoCon Intern slot, send your proposal to the mentor you'd like to work with. We strongly suggest that you talk with the mentor about your application before the deadline; they can help you design your proposal. If you have project ideas that don't fit any of the mentors, contact Mel Chua (the first mentor on the list, below) and she'll try to find you one and work with you on your proposal.

Anyone can sign up to be a mentor. Applications for projects are on a rolling basis; the final deadline for OLPC apps is July 20, 2007. Once you have a student-mentor pair that has agreed to work together on a specific project, the mentor should email the student's application to Mel Chua for funding approval. Once you get that, you're good to go.

OLPC Mentors

• Mel Chua (contact info on user page) - Developing a frontpage and supporting materials for volunteer coordination and community-building, running a local Curriculum Jam or overall OLPC Jam development, non-conventional textbooks.
• Lauren Klein (contact info on user page) - Developing activities, lesson plans, and curricula emphasizing OLPC design features and learning principles.

Commonwealth of Learning

Wayne Mackintosh is the main SoCon contact for COL. SJ Klein or [Patricia Schlicht can be contacted when Wayne is travelling or difficult to reach.

The Commonwealth of Learning (CoL) is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. COL is helping developing nations improve access to quality education and training. In particular, they are the group behind Wikieducator.

COL will sponsor stipends for five successful project submissions for SoCon 2007. Applicants must be Commonwealth citizens or residents. You can work remotely (actually, we'd prefer to have people outside Vancouver join us) or in the Vancouver office if you live in the area, subject to available physical space at our offices.

To apply for an COL SoCon project slot, link your project proposal under the Proposed Projects section, below (as well as by your profile in the Potential Intern Pool), before June 18 and we will inform you of your status and mentor by June 20.

We strongly suggest that you talk with a COL coordinator or mentor about your application before the deadline; they can help you design your proposal. If you have project ideas that don't fit any of the mentors, email the main COL contact and let them know. If there is a particular mentor you would like to work with, contact them and/or mention it in your proposal.

To sign up to be a mentor, put your name on the list below; the main CoL contact will get in touch with you as the deadline approaches about what your status is, and what projects you'd like to work with.

COL Mentors

• Wayne Mackintosh - eLearning and ICT Policy - A free education curriculum by 2015
• Joshua Mallet - Learning and Livelihoods and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET)
• Patricia Schlicht - Programme Assistant for Joshua Mallet and Wayne Mackintosh

COL Potential Projects

• Help with the design and implementation of the Learning4Content initiative
• Helping with and preparing the support resources for a Curriculum Jam in the fall
• Example content lessons developed on WikiEducator to inspire teachers and students to develop free content for education.
• Proposals to improve WikiEducator's ability in developing a free education curriculum for all.
• Assistance with the development of the Commonwealth Computer Navigator's Certificate
• Free lesson content to support vocational education and training
• Adding to the suite of Newbie tutorials available on WikiEducator
• Great ideas we haven't thought about yet!

General SoCon Potential Intern Pool

what should this look like?

• Student Name (contact information) - interests

  Summer of Content 2007 Application Organization Student Name

  Summer of Content 2007 Application Organization Student Name

Groups to contact

Onboard for Northern Summer 2007

• OLPC
• Wikieducator/CoL

Onboard for Later (Southern Summer, etc)

• OLPC
• Wikieducator/CoL

Talking to right now

• Name.com (SJ)
• EGAP (SJ)
• OSI (SJ)

Should contact, but don't know how

• Google
• Univ. of Pisa - gave Alan Kay an honorary degree last month
• Harvard - has offered (law school) to help w/ matchmaking & mentoring in the past
• Free Culture Spaces (needs initial space maintainer)
• Content Jam / Bar Camps (need organizers)
• Jamendo / Antenna Alliance
• E.O.Wilson Foundation:
• CC Learn
• Library of Congress
• Orphaned books project (possibly w/ Library of Congress)
• Localization (possibly w/ Wikipedia, Omegawiki, Dict.info?)
• Mesh of existing collections (possibly w/ Wikipedia?)
• Existing Content archives from first release -- museums, libraries, encyclopedias of learning / for kids
• Wikimedia
• Wikipedia
• Wikibooks)
• WorldWideWorkshop? (Lesson plans, games)
• Make Magazine? (Fun/practical DIY activities)

Template email

<insert greeting here>

Would you mind if we bounced an idea off you? We'd like to get together a group of organizations to do a "Summer of Content" (SoCon) program, and we're looking for feedback, collaborators, and thoughts. In a nutshell, SoCon is a program where open-content mentor organizations are matched with interns, who work with their individual mentors either remotely or on-location to create free and open content (anything from writing textbooks to organizing free culture conferences to shooting movies to translating books, and more). SoCon provides matchmaking and a stipend to all interns who successfully complete a project (according to a final evaluation the mentor writes). And t-shirts, of course.

It's similar to Google's Summer of Code program <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_summer_of_code>, but aimed at a different demographic; with a larger number of smaller stipends, we're hoping to encourage people (both students and non-students) in the developing world to begin contributing to open content. Although a number of experienced open content contributors will probably participate, we're hoping to recruit them as mentors instead - we're aiming to give people with little to no experience in "free culture" communities a good chance and a good environment to get started in.

The proposal for the general program so far is at <http://wikieducator.org/Summer_Of_Content_Funding_Proposal> with some discussion on the talk page, <http://wikieducator.org/Talk:Summer_Of_Content_Funding_Proposal>. It's still very much a draft; we're looking for people and organizations to work with us on it so that we can run a round with projects starting in December, a "Southern Summer" (focusing on contributors from the aforementioned hemisphere).

In order to the SoCon idea out, we're doing a pilot run, with projects beginning in August. The current thoughts on that are at <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Summer_of_Content_2007> and the associated talk page, <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:Summer_of_Content_2007>, and we're moving towards solidifying them soon. We'd love your help.

The Summer 2007 round (the pilot run) of SoCon is currently a matchmaking project. To get it off the ground quickly, OLPC is coordinating matchmaking, testing, an open development community, and audiences to use the results immediately. (Note that OLPC is "coordinating" for the Summer 2007 round only - we're hoping to pass coordination duties to another group for the Southern Summer round, perhaps rotating coordination duties between the partner orgs, or having us all collaborate to start a tiny nonprofit group to handle this - it's something to discuss.)

To make things simple for this summer's trial of the initiative, no central group is providing funds; sponsor orgs provide both mentorship and a ~$500US stipend for each intern they'd like to sponsor. If you can offer only one or the other, we'll try to further match you with another half-sponsor. This should be the first of many summers of content -- two summers a year (one for each hemisphere) -- and future instances will likely involve larger stipends, more students, and better centralization of funds.

If you're interested, or have any thoughts, advice, or ideas, please let us know - we're trying to talk to as many people about this as possible, and we'd love to work with you on this. In the meantime, talk to clever students, teachers, retired folks, and anyone else who would be interested in creating open materials... and have time to work on such things this summer. Once we announce the program, we will only have a matter of a few weeks to spread the word and take in and process applications.

Thanks!

<insert closing here>