OLPC UK/Pilots/London2009/Proposal

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The UK members of the OLPC UK group present the below proposal for joint discussion with OLPC Boston to advise on its merits and areas of improvement:

In developing OLPC (UK) we aim to establish a 100% volunteer organization and platform for OLPC in the United Kingdom. The intent of OLPC (UK) is to support the deployments of XO computers towards solving defined needs in UK schools paired with schools in developing countries.

Project Particulars

Name of Project

OLPC UK Pilot London 2009

Overview and significance:

The value of this project to the UK community and OLPC UK is significant because it:

  • Is the initial focus of the emerging OLPC organisation in the UK; vital to the establishment of a strong OLPC UK organisation
  • Will generate valuable fundraising and publicity opportunities for OLPC and OLPC UK; to be exploited by the organisation with the assistance of the Racepoint Group who have already involved themselves in OLPC UK activity and planning
  • Precedes a variety of domestic and international projects OLPC UK will be able to promote and market using the pilot success
  • Will provide access to technology that a vast % of pilot class students, due to their economic background and family circcumstances, would not have received otherwise

Signficance for OLPC includes:

  • OLPC UK will be facilitating significant activity that will encourage developer and educator contribution to applications and curriculum avaliable to the OLPC community
  • OLPC UK intends to increas the awarenes of OLPC here in the UK; further increasing support for the endeavours of the OLPC community
  • Co-ordination and funding of international projects will be driven by the publicity generated through the pilot, and further through the fully funded deployments planned for the following school year.

Web page

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_UK/Pilots/London2009/


Shipping Address

Warren Pimm's address here

Loan Length—How Many Months

  • 1 Year - August 2009 to August 2010

Team Participants

  • Stephen Boatright, Headmaster for St Cuthberts & St Matthias Primary CE

The team will be ably supported by all OLPC UK participants; details of all contributors can be found in the Members section of the OLPC UK wiki.

Objectives

1. to successfully deploy the XO Laptops in a pilot class of 30-35 students, partnered with the deployment of 30-35 XO Laptops in a developing country school;

2. to enable extension from the initial success of a class pilot into a full school deployment in either January 2010, and/or September 2010;

3. to create general educator, press, developer, and corporate support for OLPC (UK) in the United Kingdom.

The aim of OLPC (UK) is to work with schools that are interested in integrating the XO and the Sugar learning platform into childrens' education as structured in the UK.

This pilot will enable OLPC UK to effectively demonstrate the community benefit gained from the program to interested and potential supporters.

It will also enable OLPC Uk to contribute a variety of resources to OLPC worldwide, through collaborative activities and curriculum and application development.

Plan of Action

We have prepared:

  • Pilot School - St Cuthbers and St Matthias, Headmastered by Stephen Boatright


We have in progress a plan to ensure teachers are fully prepared for the pilot:

Teacher Training Plan

Technical - Peter Robinson and Amir Ansari to provide detailed training, guidance and support to teachers, IT professioinals and head teachers on the XO operation and use prior to pilot launch. This to include:

  • Reference Material: A one or two page document to be provided to the teachers with the basic instructions and links to all of the most relevant and important information sources that a teacher would require
  • Phone Support (IT Personnel): Peter to provide ongoing support throughout the process to the IT team responsible for maintenance and management of the school system
  • Training Sessions: A detailed training plan and related timeline are currently being constructed for teacher training for the pilot covering both use and operation of the XO


Lesson Plan Development

Educational – Peter and Amir to collaborate with the teaching staff, and draw on the knowledge and experience of OLPC UK devotees to identify lesson plans and curriculum suitable for the pilot class

  • Lesson Plans – a batch of grade 5 lesson plans need to be collated to ensure that the teacher has much to base their lessons on; this will be done in conjunction with the pilot teacher and will add to the body of curriculum content available to the OLPC community
  • Application Training – peter and amir to hold a one on one training session to ensure the teachers are fully conversant in the applications that are being used to complete the lesson plans for the pilot


Defined plan, written and uploaded to the wiki proposal sight following the next meeting with the school on June 30, 2009


Still a work in progress:

For a detailed timeline, see the Timeline section.

Needs

To ensure pilot success we need sufficient laptops for a full Year TBD 5 class (9/10 year old students), laptops to form a pool for interested teachers in the school to assist in preparing teachers for the next phase of OLPC UK, full school deployment, and a small number of spares to cover for damaged and malfunctioning XOs until the Repair Centre can repair the originals. The exact numbers are detailed in the following section.

To ensure pilot success we need sufficient laptops for a full class to ensure that:

  • Every student has a laptop
  • Every teacher involved int he pilot class has a laptop
  • The IT department at the school has one
  • That sufficient XOs are available to cover damaged units
  • That sufficient XOs are available that content for and knowledge of the XO and OLPC is generated among other teachers at the school


Hardware

We have a firm commitment from school XYZ for a Year NNN class of 30 kids, so we are requesting laptops for:

  • Teachers - 1 class's teachers - 3 laptops
  • Students - 1 class's kids - 30 laptops
  • In-class spares - 1 class's worth - 2 laptops
  • Teachers support - to use by teachers to create/test lessons during the project - 15 laptops

This is a total of 50 laptops.

Sharing Deliverables

Progress will be reviewed monthly throughout the program as per the timeline above, and the details of those reviews will be updated to OLPC and OLPC UK by email and the above wiki page. Formal quarterly reviews with school staff will also be conducted on the success of the pilot and issues and improvements that are identified.

Progress reports will be archived here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_UK/Pilots/London2009/Progress

Quality/Mentoring

Education

Amir Ansari will co-ordinate curriculum requirements of the pilot school; working with Stephen Boatright and the pilot teacher with St Chuthbert & St Matthias primary, are committed to contributing to the curriculum development and enabling the school to maximise the impact of the pilot.

The OLPC community will benefit from:

  • Further demostration of the value XO deployments have for students; no matter the background or type of education system they fall into
  • A diary of the progress of the pilot - successes, failures, discoveries. This will detail lessons used and how the children responded as well as how those lessons meant curriculum requirements.
  • Continuous updating and formal reviewing of the progress of the pilot; impact on learning for the pilot class

Management

With Warren Pimm’s exceptional pedigree managing IT programs within education organisations we have the knowledge to manage the programme

Technical

Both Martin Dengler and Peter Robinson have significant experience both with the XO and generally in IT projects and will be able to professionally manage the deployment resources


Warren Pimm

L. Warren Pimm joined SDCL in 2009, with a focus on financial advisory and capital markets. Prior to SDCL, he worked with the corporate finance group of Canaccord Adams Limited (UK) in London, where he focused on global capital markets and mergers and acquisitions across the diversified and sustainable sectors. He is a former principal and co-founder of Berkshire Securities Inc. where he established and led its Capital Markets Group, and was responsible for leading the development of Berkshire Securities into a leading independent Canadian investment bank, growing the organization from start-up to over 2,200 professionals, $12.5 billion in client assets, and 200 offices. Warren has completed on over 80 separate underwriting transactions collectively raising over $9.8 billion in total equity capital. Warren earned a Masters in Business Administration from the Segal Graduate School of Business, and a B.A. (Economics) from the University of Calgary. He is a CFA Charterholder and a Member of the CFA Institute, and the CFA UK.

Amir Ansari

Amir Ansari has worked in education for over ten years both as an IT consultant with the London Borough of Waltham Forest and also as a teacher of Mathematics, Science and ICT. He is an Open Source developer, specialising in embedded Linux systems, and has been employed by companies in Italy, Canada and the UK. Amir holds a BSc (Hon) in Theoretical Physics from Queen Mary & Westfield College, University of London, and a PGCE in Mathematics from the Institute of Education, University of London.

Peter Robinson

Peter Robinson is a Systems Engineer that's been working in the IT industry for 13 years. Initially starting in Small Medium Enterprise market he now works as a Senior Engineer in Enterprise hosting dealing with large solutions in Linux, Solaris and Windows and associated network, storage and security requirements. During that time he's been an avid user of linux including initially RedHat Linux and later Fedora and RedHat Enterprise Linux. He's been a Fedora contributor for 2 years including assisting with maintenance of the OLPC XO remix of Fedora including many of the OLPC related packages and the testing of Fedora on the XO platform over the last year or more.

Martin Dengler

Martin Dengler is a software engineer with 13 years of experience in the banking and hedge fund industries. His programming language skills include Python and Java, and he is equally experienced with Linux (Fedora), Solaris (sparc), and Windows platforms. A keen free / open source hobbyist, he has contributed code to OLPC and Sugar Labs. He graduated Dartmouth College with a degree in Computer Science, moved to the UK ten (10) years ago and continues to live in central London.

Daniel Drake

Daniel Drake is a known OLPC contributor. He has carried out an internship developing software at OLPC's offices, provided technical training and assistance to the Ethiopian deployment, spent over 4 months as a volunteer on the Paraguayan deployment, and is currently developing the operating system for the next generation XO-1.5 laptop. He will soon be volunteering on OLPC deployments in Nepal and in other countries while this pilot is underway, but intends to keep open communication with the OLPC UK deployment team, helping wherever possible.

Timeline

Month Actions
July 2009 PR and Marketing Plan Finalised
August 2009 Teacher Training. Curriculum and Infrastructure plans signed off.
September 2009 Pilot launch
December 2009 Initial Pilot Assessment
March 2009 – Second Pilot Assessment
June 2009 Third Pilot Assessment
September 2010 End of Pilot & Final Assessment

Laptop Return

We agree to pass on the laptop(s) to a local OLPC group or other interested contributors in case I do not have need for the laptop(s) anymore or in case our project progress stalls.


Colophon

Format adapted from: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program/Project_proposal_form , but as this request has some distinctive attributes the format was modified to enhance the clarity of the proposal.

The proposal has been discussed on the OLPC UK mailing list.

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