Contributors

NEWS

Check back this site often! You will need to fill in more details and an official submission again later. For now it is ok to collect information project descriptions below. This will change as we move the whole thing into a DB.

Who?

The community of OLPC contributors includes many people working on

• outreach,
• testing,
• usability,
• content and
• software development, and
• hardware development and hacking,

which are improved by access to laptops. Software and hardware developers have long been able to get laptops through the software developers program; we are opening this process up to all projects from the community aimed at furthering OLPC's mission.

Contributors laptop program

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Developers_program/tmp. (Discuss)

To apply for laptops for your project or proposal, please add a brief project description below, and list the contributors and participants working on the project, and how laptops would be helpful. Indicate any relevant experience or collaborations (Sugar emulation, education, usability and interface design, work with children; research partnerships, school partnerships, &c.).

UK Digital Divide with a G1G1 dimension

Project: UK Digital Divide with a G1G1 twist. Proposer: Mike Kiely Other Contributors: programmers from Predictable Network Solutions Audience or Impact; Our initial audience is BECTA, the UK GOV IT provisioning department for all Gov funded schools and colleges in the UK. Brief Descriptions; Two objectives. 1) Get the OLPC on BECTA assessment list for the £30m project to help poor uk kids to get connected to the internet, with a proposal that any purchase would also purchase an equivalent number for a developing country. 2) We also wish to assess the OLPC as a communication devicee for other disadvantaged groups, by loading and testing the ekiga sip client on several UK Broadband connections. The notion is to support other disadvantaged groups to get connected. Relevant expeience and other projects; 20 years creating and launching communication services in the UK. if needing Xo; 2 XO's needed for 6 months, happy to purchase.

To propose a new project, create a section with the following:

==== [[Projects/<projectname>|<projectname>]] ====
; Project:
; Proposer:
; Other contributors:
; Audience or impact:
; Brief description:  (link to a full description at [[Projects/PROJECTNAME]])
; Relevant experience & other projects:
; Contact information (wiki, email, &c):
; [If requesting XOs] # of XOs needed, and their use: 

When requesting laptops through the Contributors program: include the last line above. Some questions to answer:

• Have you tried emulation for this purpose?
• Could you use laptops for a limited time borrowed from a local community pool of machines?
• Similarly, would other projects be able to share these laptops, or would they be in constant use?
• What power supply or keyboard do you need?

Be sure you have a valid email address for your wiki account as one way to reach you.

Current applications

Note: please create an account on this wiki and sign your application below with four tildes: <tt>~~~~</tt>

Customizing Moodle to include efficient Examination Processes

Note

This was a GSoC proposal

Project

Customizing Moodle to include efficient Examination Processes

Proposer

Abhishek Tiwari

Other contributors

-

Audience or impact

- School Administration (Can easily conduct examinations, view statistics - a total examination / statistical management system)

- Teachers (Ease out and standardize teaching processes with efficient examination support)

- Students (Can give exams online/offline, get question banks, practice papers, etc)

Brief description

Examination process is an integral and a very important part of academics and Moodle (being planned to be installed

on school servers under OLPC) as of now is only related to E-Learning processes but does not deals with any activity regarding

Examination processes. The scope of this project is to extend Moodle to provide an easy customizable environment for faculty and

examination controllers to form a database of questions over a Distributed Network (or may be Intranet as well at School under OLPC)

which could thus be used to generate examination papers for conducting examinations as well as for practice of students.

A detailed proposal can be seen at: Customizing Moodle to include efficient Examination Processes

Relevant experience & other projects

Mentioned on Project Page (portfolio of previous work available as external link mentioned

on project proposal page)

Contact information (wiki, email, &c)

Shipping Address & Other contact information on user page: Abhishek Tiwari

1 XOs needed Usage

Testing the reliability, performance and compatibility of system over XO environment and configuration with

each development step.

Abhishek Tiwari 16:02, 24 April 2008 (EDT)

Preparing a Pilot Leiden, The Netherlands

Project

2012 Leiden

Proposer

Marten

Other contributors

a local team

Audience or impact

- Teachers (Training)

- University Leiden (research)

- Content Owners/Builder

- Childern, building cases of experiential learning

Brief description

Currently Preparing a pilot and infrastructure, setting the Train Teachers, Test Content/XS/Backups.

To get an impression presentation

Relevant experience & other projects

Read more here more about me

Contact information

Marten I have tested emulation and still use it. If have asked grassroot_nl to use these. However the 3 XO's are sufficient for all grassrooters in NL. When not in use I will share these XO's with Grassroots_nl and other XO-projects.

XO's needed

3, European Standards, 220V | desired keyboard layout : US English

- Train teachers,

- Content testing at the Content Compagny

- Demonstation Model when talking Government, Sponsors, University

-- Marten 16:18, 13 March 2008 (EDT)

lx700video

Project name

LX-700 hacking

Projekt proposer

Thorsten Haas

Other contributors

-

Project audience or impact

OLPC proper - new functionalities in the XO

Project description and relevant experience

See Projects/lx700video

Need for laptops

1

Status

handed out on 30th Dec 2007

Software Defined Radio

Project name

Software Defined Radio

Projekt proposer

Thomas Kleffel

Other contributors

-

Project audience or impact

OLPC could be used as shortwave data/audio receiver in remote areas

Project description and relevant experience

Projects/SDR

Need for laptops

1

Have you tried emulation for this purpose? Doesn't work for assessing OLPC's performance (Sound IO / Processing Power) Tk 07

04, 30 December 2007 (EST)

Status

handed out on 30th Dec 2007

Internet via GSM

Project name

GSM 4 XO

Project proposer

Olaf Emcke

Other contributors

-

Project audience or impact

Use a mobile to access internet via GSM

Project description

Projects/gsm4xo

Need for laptops

1

Budget Robotics Kit

Project name

Robotics Kit

Projet proposer

Willibald Palatin

Other contributors

Chris

Project impact

Possibility to play with sensors and actuators

Project description

Build a budget robotics controller, based on the ATMega series (possibly use an arduino board). Connected via USB, open source and easily assemble- and programmable, with a simple GTK interface. At least 10 pins to read sensor values or send/pulse +5V DC.

Develop Teaching the Teachers to teach with OLPC

Project name

Teach Teachers to teach

Projet proposer

B-Ranger (@web.de)

Other contributors

Project impact

If you want Teachers in OLPC-Use-Areas to use the olpc in class you first need them to know what

they can do. That for you may want to develop ideas for them and a introduction that makes the teacher enthusiastic
about the olpc so that she/he can 'infect' her/his pupils. And for developing that "teach-the-teacher" you may want
to have a presentation, test and try-object.
The idea is to develop a program that teaches german/austrian (teaching) students, so they can take the olpc to a
foreign country and tell the ppl (esp. the local teachers) about it and show them the benefits.

QKD project

Project name

EntangleMe

Project proposer

National U. of Singapore

Project impact

show off XOs being used for science

Details

see projects/EntangleMe

MoinMoin wiki

Project name

MoinMoin

Project proposer

ThomasWaldmann

Other contributors

Project audience or impact

all users wanting to use a wiki (e.g. for notes, knowledge base, ...)

Project description and relevant experience

see http://moinmo.in/

Proposer is project admin of MoinMoin project and a long term Python developer.

Need for laptops

2 (to test wiki sync and collaboration)

Low cost microcontroller experimentation kit

Project

Low cost microcontroller experimentation kit

Proposer

User:deBaer

Audience or impact

Giving children the possibility to build their own stand-alone hardware projects on a breadboard with a microcontroller.

Brief description

Developing a low-cost open source kit with a breadboard, a microcontroller, a few simple components (buttons, LEDs, ...) that is in-system programmable from the XO. Make an easy-to-use activity that shows the board setup and allows developing and programs the microcontroller code. Allow editing and sharing of those projects. See Projects/MicrocontrollerKit)

Relevant experience & other projects

Information Technology engineer, teaching in higher education, Linux developer since 1995

Contact information (wiki, email, &c)

deBaer æt gmail døt com

XOs needed

1 for getting into SUGAR development and testing microcontroller programming methods

Integration with CMS back-end storage

Project

Use OLPC laptopts to create digital storage of lectures in elementary and secondary schools

Proposer

User:dpavlin

Audience or impact

Students of elementary and secondary schools (age 6-18)

Brief description

We are developing portal for schools which would be ideal place to collect lectures which could be captured using OLPC camera for other students who are unable to attend lectures (sick friends, and similar)

Relevant experience & other projects

Implementation of current CMS system for the last two years with 330 schools currently connected to system (from total of 3300)

Contact information (wiki, email, &c)

dpavlin@carnet.hr

XOs needed

1 to test integration with CMS, later it will end up in one of the schools

Introduce XO to Rotterdam (the Netherlands) schools

Project

Trial of OPLC laptop in elementary schools for possible city wide deployment.

Proposer

MaartenM79

Audience or impact

Students of elementary and secondary schools (age 6-18)

Brief description

I would like to test out the XO in elementary schools in Rotterdam.

Relevant experience & other projects

As chairman of the youth political party CDJA in Rotterdam I am very interested in promoting information technology, especially for young children. Our party has the councilor of education in Rotterdam and I would like to promote the laptop to him.

Contact information (wiki, email, &c)

m.menheere at gmail.com

XOs needed

2 for demonstration purposes (on loan is ok too), i'm looking for contacts. 20 for classroom test

Game based eVideo for XO mesh networks

Project: Evaluation of video- and game based (e)learning scenarios. 
Proposer:  Anja C. Wagner 09:02, 2 January 2008 (EST)
Other contributors: Fabian Topfstedt, Henrik Regensburg, Hans L. Cycon, WiseWoman 
Audience or impact: Teachers and students in schools, high schools, universities, and continuing 
education need dynamic learning scenarios for motivation. Some scenarios include the use of video   
and video conferencing. 
Brief description: The use of instructional video - especially with the possibility of including
localized subtitles or dubbed audio - provides an excellent platform for presenting international
open educational resources. Video conferencing allows direct, synchronous communication within 
classrooms or beyond classroom walls. We are developing new scenarios, sometimes called (e)learning
2.0, that includes video and video conferencing for educating learners using new technologies for 
personal needs. In order to motivate people to educate themselves, we are also investigating 
narrative and competitive structures from the gaming industry. We want to see if our video formats 
perform on the XO computers with their special displayes and evaluate different video conferencing 
tools to work with the wireless mesh network. 
Relevant experience & other projects: As an interdisciplinary project team in the context of a 
University for Applied Sciences, at the FHTW Berlin, we have acquired much experience in the 
area of video formats (also called codecs) and video conferencing and in their application in the 
area of (e)learning. Our most recent project is concerned with developing technical and 
methodological skills on the use of video and game based learning scenarios - using video and video
conferencing. See the eVideo Project Blog (in German). 
Contact information (wiki, email, &c): acw ÄT edufuture PÜNKT de
XOs needed: 3 for collaborative testing of new video-based learning scenarios. 
XO requirements: Power supply 220V/50Hz to use in Germany and Austria. Preferred keyboard layouts 
are 2x de_DE and 1x  intl. (or en_EN, en_US). XOs will be in constant use in Berlin/Germany and 
Vienna/Austria for communication purposes, emulation isn't possible due to the need of physical 
access to camera and microphone)

Navigation System on XO

Project: Navigation System on XO

Proposer: parabelboi

Brief description: Add Sugar support to a Linux based Navigation System. It looks like Navit is suitable for that purpose. It already has pluggable and extensible Code. A Sugar GUI backend has to be written.

XOs needed: 1

SSR on the OLPC

Project: Mesh Network Comparison

Proposer: Thomas Fuhrmann and Benedikt Elser 10

04, 8 January 2008 (EST)

Impact: Improvement of OLPC's mesh networking capabilities

Brief description: Compare the Current OLPC Mesh Networking implementation to an alternative implementation, namely the scalable source routing (SSR) protocol and the virtual ring routing (VRR) protocol. See publications

Fuhrmann, IFIP Networking 2005 and Caesar et al., SIGCOMM 2006 and SSR

XOs needed: 3 For handing out to Students and testing

Video Editing for the XO

Project: "Arrange", "Edit", and "Mix"

Proposer: Robert Ochshorn

Impact: Arrange is an addition to the "Record" activity, Edit and Mix form a new core application

Brief description: "Arrange" allows basic sequencing of media in Record, "Edit" allows advanced track-based sequencing of audio and video, "Mix" auto-generates montages. See Projects/VideoEditing)

Need for laptops

1

Pilot study Communication and Collaboration scripts for Children

Project: "Collaborate - communicate": partnerschips between kids in different cultural environments
Proposer: "Michele Notari / Martin Hofmann / Beat Doebeli Honegger" [[1]]
Impact: "Getting involved in how to use the XO as tool for learning, focussing collaboration 
   and communication in informal learning situations"
Brief description: "Collaboration": We want to analyse mechanismes and concepts 
   of collaboration and communication of kids using the Xo' in (formal and) 
   informal learning situations.
   We will formulate needs do's and dont's for using XO's in target countries. 
   We plan partnerships with teacher education universities in other countries and will connect the participating swiss children with children in the other countries.   
   Communication and collaboration might take place with non textual media (image / sound /). 
Need for laptops: 50 Power supply 220V/50Hz to use in Switzerland. 
   Preferred keyboard layouts are de_DE ).
   XOs will be in constant use in St. Gallen and Schwyz, emulation isn't possible due to the fact,
   that we want to equip two classes of children  in primary schools with the XO's. 
   Collaboration among the children should take place using mesh network. 
   We wish to compare the two classes.

PATH

Project

PATH

Proposer

Seth(isforinsects) on behalf of Path

Other contributors

Path, SeattleXO

Audience or impact

Path is a multi-national NGO health care organization. They are interested in deploying the XO as a rugged laptop for some of their workers in some of their 18 countries of operation.

Brief description

Giving Path these machines would allow for them to give the XO a full trial for implementation and research further contributions towards Health projects with OLPC> (link to a full description at Projects/PATHdeployment)

Relevant experience & other projects

Contact information (wiki, email, &c)

[If requesting XOs] # of XOs needed, and their use

XO Software development in hacker spaces around Cologne/Bonn, Germany

Project

XO Software development in hacker spaces around Cologne/Bonn, Germany

Proposer

Jens Ohlig, jens@ccc.de

Other contributors

various

Audience or impact

local community of young and gifted hackers, eager to churn out new exciting software for the OLPC XO. We want to hack, learn, share, and teach software development on the OLPC XO.

Brief description

Hackerspaces in the Cologne/Bonn region in Western Germany have a tradition of bringing together young people to work on projects. We want to form a software development group for these. (link to a full description)

Relevant experience & other projects

Experience with hacker spaces for more than ten years. Running a hacking project with young people since 2002 (U23).

Contact information (wiki, email, &c)

jens@ccc.de Cologne space: http://koeln.ccc.de Bonn space: http://netzladen.org

# of XOs needed, and their use

3 (1 for the space in Cologne which already has one, 2 other for the space in Bonn. 2 XOs are needed in each place in order to do experiments with the mesh networking)

Suspend-Resume QA as well as GASP development

Project

Suspend-Resume QA

Proposer

FFM

Other contributors

Matthew Gallagher, Thomas Doggette, and various others

Audience or impact

local high school (Yorktown High School, Arlington, Virginia), would be testing builds that would eventualy be released, reducing the number of bugs found in the field.

Brief description

We would test Suspend/resume and it's effect on different activities, and also wether the XO properly compensates for losses in the mesh. We would test our own activities, as well as assue that S/R works properly in the latest builds.

Relevant experience & other projects

We currently work on GASP, and already do (albeit limited) hardware testing on our B4s.

Contact information (wiki, email, &c)

FFM

[If requesting XOs] # of XOs needed, and their use: One to two MPs (C2+), since B4s have documented suspend-resume issues. We currently have 3 B4s and could exchange some of them if needed, however we would like to allow more people at our location to collaberate on this. We would, in addition to S/R and normal HW QA, also give them to our developers to work on GASP.

Have you tried emulation for this purpose?

Since this testing requires hardware by its very nature,

Could you use laptops for a limited time borrowed from a local community pool of machines?

Yes, but see below.

Similarly, would other projects be able to share these laptops, or would they be in constant use?

They would also be able to be used by other students on the GASP project and others, and would (most likely) be returned by the studens once they discontinued their work on the project and the laptops redistributed.

What power supply or keyboard do you need?

US power supply. English keyboard prefered, but any MP laptop will do.

ffm 21:29, 23 February 2008 (EST)

Projects/TestUsabilityOLPC

Note

This was a GSoC proposal with the name "Study Web Usability of the chamber of the OLPC with Windows XP"

Project

Evaluation of the OLPC with Usability Engineering

Proposer

Carlos Mauro Cárdenas Fernández

Audience or impact

Perú and LatinoAmérica.

Brief description

Making a comparative study of usability with the OLPC Sugar and WINDOWS. Through TEST usability in a marginal urban population of Lima, Peru. With a sample of 6 boys and 6 girls. With 1 test pilot, 1 test in sugar and 1 test in windows. From 6 to 8 years. My hypothesis is that girls will adapt faster to use Sugar than boys. The result would help improve the potential problems that have graphical interfaces for Sugar. I would like to complement this with my APP Google Summer Code The tests were conducted on the use of basic programs such as text editor or webcam. Using as an activity subject recopilacion games flash project huascaran www.huascaran.gob.pe could be used in the implementation of the programme. The activity will take the recommendations of the creation of a type. Activity testing template of wiki laptop. And recommendation from Nielsen and Rubin. The Test usability will be: take a picture. send a picture to friend. record a video. send the video. search a video or picture.

Relevant experience & other projects

This project is the execution of my graduate thesis at my university. I already have two and a half years on exploring the topic of usability. I know the issue of implementation of the OLPC in Peru. Last year we made a field study in the pilot ARAHUAY for our university. The evaluation we made the with two professors of computer for children. Now i am participate into Google Summer Code for PostNuke for App Usability & Accessability Overhaul mentored by Steffen Voß I tried to participate in the season from openusability. I do not check the deadline was over

Contact information (wiki, email, &c)

unimauro@gmail.com, unimauro.blogspot.com

Projects/Fedora Ambassadors

Project

Fedora Ambassadors

Proposer

gdk

Number of Laptops

20

Number of Months

12

Description

We send ambassadors to dozens of events around the world every year. The goal is to have a Fedora pool of XOs that go from event to event, with preference going to Fedora ambassadors who give recruiting speeches for XO developers.

Experience

Many different levels of hardware experience, but all have a strong familiarity with Fedora.

Notes

Our ambassadors are highly motivated to participate in this project, and have been asking for XOs in their event kits all over the world for months now.

See also

• Projects and proposals