How-tos
Have a great idea for a tool, gadget, attachment, structure, or other object that laptop users might want to create? List it below, with a brief description. If the description runs to more than a couple of paragraphs, consider making a separate page for it and linking to that from this one.
Groups to get such content from include Instructables, wikiHow, and the Concord Consortium. Please add your favorite groups to this list.
Wanted:
- Basic health how-tos
- Basic sanitation, water filtration
- Construction of more useful household/daily items
- Hardware how-tos: how to take apart (and reassemble) your XO, how a computer works, etc.
wikiHow
Welcome to wikiHow's contribution to OLPC. We are proud to be a part of this important initiative and our volunteers have been keen and active to ensure that things are happening. Please take a moment to read what we're up to and to see if you can help us out.
If you have any questions, suggestions, ideas or a desire to join us, please contact the wikiHow OLPC Coordinator, Felicity. She can be reached here: Felicity (Flickety).
OLPC/wH Stage II - Update as at September 2007
Stage II of OLPC/wH is about to commence for autumn/fall 2007. This project will consist of:
- Recruiting new team of volunteers
- Assessing, gathering and editing existing wH articles
- Creation of new articles specific to OLPC needs, in liaison with persons who have offered info and assistance
- Creation of OLPC/wH mentoring scheme to provide an educational, cultural and friendship exchange between wH youth and OLPC youth
- Development and strengthening of ongoing relationship between OLPC and wH. (See "Historical Info" below)
Volunteer Team
- wikiHow will soon be assembling the new team of volunteers to undertake Stage II of the OLPC/wH project. If you are keen, please join wikiHow and send a note to Felicity requesting to be put on the team.
Can I Nominate articles on wikiHow for OLPC?
You sure can and if you do, it helps us immensely!
- If you'd like to nominate an existing and OLPC appropriate wikiHow article for use by OLPC, follow the instructions on this page.
Can I Join and Who Can I Contact?
You are definitely welcome to join. Please register an account with wikiHow and leave a message with one of the following contacts about wanting to participate. All help appreciated, even suggestions of where to research for articles.
- You can contact the OLPC/wikiHow coordinator, Felicity at first instance.
- If she is off hiking or trying to remedy the world's environmental imbalances, try our other keen OLPC fans: Nicole Wilson or Jack H.
Suggestions for Articles Welcomed
- wikiHow volunteers are available to "answer requests" and create new pages that OLPC might specifically need.
- If you have a request, please contact Flickety. She will be happy to e-mail you back if preferred, just write: "Please e-mail re:OLPC" and leave her your contact details.
Historical OLPC/wH Info
- Approximately 400 articles were sent across from wH to OLPC in late June 2007 as a result of volunteer teamwork on Stage I. The articles were curated, edited, tidied up and made ready for transferring to OLPC by a dedicated volunteer team. Special thanks go to: Dvortygirl, SondraC, Nicole Willson, Jack H and Travis Derouin - and not forgetting the many enthusiastic helpers who nominated articles, made suggestions and cheered us on. Thanks guys! ~~Felicity
- It was realised that the project was large and required a breakdown into stages, allowing for continued further provision of articles from wH over time in differing stages, as well as allowing for the development of relationships between the youth of wH and the OLPC youth.
- Felicity, Nicole and Jack met with SJ at RoCoCo, Montreal May 2007 and some ideas blossomed as to developing both the mentor scheme and an ongoing relationship between OLPC and wikiHow. We couldn't resist! So Stage II in part will consist of developing this important linkage between the two human knowledge sharing projects.
Useful Info
- The list of (currently unverified and unconfirmed) pages that have been nominated for use by the OLPC is available at: Laptop Candidates. For those with wiki-skills, you'll probably find other OLPC templates on the site but please ignore them and only leave nominations on this list - or the Coordinator gets lost!
Instructables
Instructables.com now has a group[1] devoted to building how-tos that might be interesting to OLPC. If you have a full-fledged how-to in mind, you can build it there and get feedback; if you have a design in mind but don't know how to create it, list it further down the page and hope that someone else will figure out an inexpensive way to get it done.
Their current list of projects includes:
- A Universal Nut Sheller
- A simple fish trap
- A plastic-bag glove for handling chemicals
- An easy way to do animations with a whiteboard and camera
Engineering how-tos
There are many great do it yourself projects for budding engineers. Please add to the list below, with links to available freely-licensed how-to collections where possible.
- A simple flywheel
- A rotor
- A wheel[barrow]
- ...
Beverage-can stove
Wikipedia has a lovely article on the topic, could easily be made into a how-to.
wikiHow addition
- wikiHow has selected an article on a beverage can stove that may be useful; see How to Make a Simple Beverage Can Stove.
Information Technology how-to documents
MediaWiki tricks
protecting pages - probably just a link into the mediawiki wiki
wiki hints on an OLPC machine
this should include a plan for ongoing support, probably within the local language on a shared wiki
Nitpicker 18:14, 16 October 2006 (EDT)
Make making How-to narrations into class projects easy and fun
Teach the problem to solve itself.
We have had chalk talks for a long time, but now they tend to be live, vocally narrated PowerPoint presentations. With the XO we have enough infotech to let students take photos, video clips, diagrams, drawings etc. and add narration. These can then be watched, and edited, on any student's laptop. Students can be expected to learn some of the content as they create one, but also skills of cooperation, presentation, and especially self expression.
This should also be a rich resource for sharing both within a village or country and around the world. Wikipedia on steroids! Everyone can celebrate the accomplishments of their own and their neighbors children and learn important stuff as well. Win, win, win.
So, who can construct a convenient method for building and editing narrations? Naturally, the very first how-to is how to use the application itself. Close after that are the ones involving successes in educational deployment of the laptops. Those might be created by the teachers, administrators, and advisors rather than the students. Or maybe not.
Nitpicker 16:26, 7 January 2007 (EST)