Boston pilots
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This article is a stub. You can help the OLPC project by expanding it.
This is a stub page for discussion of a (yet to be formally announced) Boston-area XO pilot, and for discussion of Boston-area XO pilot resources in general.
Details
- small-scale; probably saturation in one or more grades instead of the entire school
- teacher-run; not owned by the IT department, but by classroom teachers from the grades in which the laptops are deployed
- launch date Jan. 2009, with prep during fall 2008
Workshops
We are putting together biweekly workshop sessions to help the pilot teachers get ready to run their own deployment, and to provide teachers with a forum to share their expertise on how to integrate technology into their existing classroom plans. These workshops will be open to the public. Scheduling will be announced closer to the actual dates. Some workshop topics:
- A hands-on introduction to the XO and how it's used in other pilots
- Peer production, open content, and open curriculum; how to get, make, use, and get your students to produce and share it
- Community resources and tools for getting grassroots help with your deployment
- Example classroom demos of how to incorporate Activities into your classroom (multiple sessions)
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.
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.