Rollout and community building ideas

Rollout and Community Building Ideas

Common Rooms idea

When a specific problem area is identified where we need to get a community together to discuss possible solutions, let's set up a wikipage as a Common Room. In Common Rooms you can find a list of available common rooms.

Ideas

Note that there are several common mechanisms for "supporting" internationalization and localization; the most common being gettext, which makes use of template files. We are looking into the use of an emerging standard, xliff, that supports more than just translation of strings and is generally both more robust and extensible. Of course, all of this presumes that there is someone to do the trsanslation or localization of images, etc. --Walter

When you refer to the localization of images, what does that mean please?

For example, if someone authors some learning material in English, and the laptop project wants copies in, say, Spanish and Portuguese, does localization of images refer to all images or only those where there is some text in the image?

Would use of the full stop lock and key technique in the following article help, with an initial master diagram, with no text upon it, being prepared and then the English version as a layout example.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/pai04100.htm

The Spanish and Portuguese versions of the text could be supplied in text files and someone skilled in preparing images, though not necessarily a linguist, could use the master diagram and the text from a text file, and, guided by the layout example, produce a localized image.

If someone wanted that done, the request could be made in the Artwork Common Room.

However, I am wondering whether I am missing something here and wonder whether localization of images implies more, even perhaps far more, than what the above suggestion would provide.

In relation to the localization of images, could someone possibly supply an example image and such other information as is necessary (for example, some text in two or more languages) for someone who is learning the system to try localizing please? That could perhaps be a valuable learning experience in trying to build an infrastructure of how learning material authors, people doing translations and people who can produce images can interact so as to produce learning material localized into a number of languages.

The following article could perhaps help with some characters, such as those from Unicode code points of U+0100 and greater.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/pai04200.htm

William Overington

28 March 2006

Localization Common Room idea

Suppose that someone, whose native language is English, is interested in producing learning material which could be used on the laptop in various countries once that learning material is localized into the local language, yet that person knows only a little of languages. There are many languages into which content would need to be localized.

In that one needs to start somewhere I have thought that an approach which might be worth trying, in the context of rollout and community building, would be to have such pages in this wiki as a "Common Room" type environment where people who can write in at least one of English, Spanish and Portuguese and people who can write in two or more of those languages, can interact and observe what happens.

For example, there are various language translation packages, both as programs for PCs and as web utilities. Yet what is the quality of translation? Can a system evolve whereby someone can, say, prepare something in English and then it be machine translated into, say, Spanish, then both the original and the clearly designated machine translated version placed in the Localization Common Room and then maybe someone who knows Spanish can read it through and correct it as necessary and comment?

This may or may not be workable in practice. If it is workable, then maybe it could be part of the community building infrastructure.

William Overington

24 March 2006

English, Portuguese and Spanish Localization Common Room

Here is a link to such a Localization Common Room and we can observe what, if anything, happens with it.

http://wiki.laptop.org/wiki/English_Portuguese_and_Spanish_Localization_Common_Room

Artwork Common Room idea

It would be useful to have an Artwork Common Room where a learning material author who needs an illustration file to include in a document which he or she is authoring can go and request that such an illustration be produced.

People interested in the laptop project who are not learning material authors yet who are interested in producing illustrations to support learning material authored by others could also go there and find a project.

Company Sponsored Software/Other Creative Projects Writing Scheme

small entries, the best of which win small monetary prizes, after all that is what the majority of people work for, its not for the love. This would have two effects it would get company's interested in the project and the students who are learning to use these laptops. It would show these students and their families the direct relation between them learning IT and other skills and the outside world.

Small pilot for all countries, all languages, all age and all climates

see Pilot_Projects

Education and promotion through existing media

In the UK, in the 1980s there was a project set up by the BBC (the national broadcaster) called The Computer Literacy Project. The BBC had commissioned the design of a home computer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro , which most state schools purchased. There were many TV programmes and some radio programmes shown to explain how computers work, how to program them, and the benefits of their use. The TV shows had a great impact on school children of that age, and I think something similar could be set up using the BBC World Service. Radio programmes in the local language could be used first to inform about the aims of the project, then to explain how to get involved, then a longer series could be made explaining basic computer skills - maybe with interviews with children in different countries discussing the different uses they have found for their OLPCs.

Deployment Suggestion

I believe that the deployment of the $100 laptops will engender a social movement that will dwarf the vision, technological achievements, and business acumen that went into its creation. This is going to be big ~

And yet, deployment will not be without hurdles. I have been pondering some of those hurdles and would like to make a suggestion to facilitate the use of the $100 laptops.

I would like to suggest that Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs), and people working in other development agencies, be used as intermediaries for the initial deployment of the laptops.

My idea is neither that PCVs be used to distribute computers nor to stand in the front of classrooms and teach children ways to use them, but rather that they be tapped as local resources when questions arise.

Why Peace Corps Volunteers?

• They already espouse, at the core of their beings, the ideal of equity. They will not have to be convinced that the value of the $100 laptop is actually infinite. Many will have read Pedagogy of the Oppressed and will see the potential encased within the laptops for a shift in the balance of power. • They have all been trained to function as facilitators rather than as providers of knowledge. • There are 7,800 PCVs in the field today, serving in 75 developing nations. As a group they are highly educated, highly motivated, accessible and free.

As a former Peace Corps Volunteer I can attest to the fact that people in developing nations know what they’re missing; they desire the gadgets of the developed world. But I also witnessed a young man putting a handheld television to his ear thinking it was a phone. And, more significantly, the people with whom I worked defined leadership as dictatorship. They looked to their teachers, their employers, and their presidents to tell them what to do and to do for them. The people with whom I worked had very little experience in relying on themselves as sources of information or power, which could create a bump in the road when deploying the $100 laptops.

This is where Peace Corps Volunteers can be of use to the OLPC foundation. They can mentor. They can demonstrate use. They can make suggestions and offer guidance when questions arise. PCVs will have come of age with the egalitarian nature of Linux and open-source software and they can promote that sort of self-reliance to others who have little exposure, even conceptually, to a level playing field.

Peace Corps Volunteers work where local communities have asked for their assistance. Many work in education-related fields but all function as informal educators. Certainly a PCV in either a healthcare or agriculture related position could sit with neighborhood children and help them learn to connect to a server so that they have access to the WWW.

It is my belief that with a minimal exposure to the technical capabilities of the $100 laptops as well as to the philosophy/education methodology of constructivism, Peace Corps Volunteers could be a useful implementation tool to the OLPC foundation.

Judy Belletti Aug. 26, 2006

Avoiding misusage

Limiting the user's age

Corruption is a major problem in most parts of the 'third world'. We may not asume that governements are reliable partners. On a first clue I had the idea to avoid misuse of the OLPC by means of biometrical data. Only humans under (let's say) 25 years may be able to turn it on. This could be carried out by a sensor which scans the childs hand. It would rise the price but corruption and egoism is the reason why development aid fails.

Open source developers may tend to overestimate the goodwill of governments. Bringing 1M laptops to China or Brazil has nothing to do with success as long as they don't reach their destination. Financing and technology is one side. Psychology is the other.

The current model of the OLPC already has biometrical capability built-in. Here's how it can be exploited. Children and teenagers are capable of hearing higher frequencies of sound than adults. If a program asked for a key to be pressed when the sound is heard and let go when the sound stops, then you could have a challenge response system. It would ask for a random number between 2 and 5 keystrokes. The length of each keystroke and the length of the pause between them would vary randomly between 1 and 4 seconds.

>I believe that the "childish" design was created to prevent these sorts of goings on. People may not feel bad purchasing a stolen laptop, but purchasing one that is so obviously created for a child is a different story. I believe the best method to cutting back corruption is spreading the image of the laptop. If everyone in an area knows about the project, a 30 year old working on the laptop is going to get some social stigma and is probably going to be asked some questions.

>>Isn't the laptop becoming a part of the kid's community, one of the reason kids will bring them home? I.e., be used by their family, and friends? I think putting too much of a social stigma on _any_ adult using the laptop will decrease the value (not economical) of the laptop.

Economic Models

Little interference with local markets

The project should be able to absorb charity money without screwing up the local economy. Sometimes giving food aid depresses the prices for local farmers to uneconomic levels for example. This laptop project is pure information and access. It is however a deeply political project and will have enormous results bringing millions of people into the “net”. My thought is to find some way to channel money to the purpose of providing laptops to children to governments. It seems foolish to send $50 to the government of Brazil, but maybe if a lot of us wanted to do this...

Retail Sale

By allowing retail sale of the laptops, at (say) twice the quantity price, the project could (a) build community, (b) encourage developers, and (c) subsidize the wholesale units. At $250 each, quite a few first- and second-world sales might be possible...

If the laptop is $100 within the project and were to raise $100 to fund another one for a child in the developing world, that makes $200. Yet there are then distribution costs, wholesaler's markup and retailer's markup, including markup so that service departments can be set up. With a one-off launch for a few weeks, such as for a charity recording of a song, businesses may give up their markups so that every penny goes to the charity, yet for a long-term project of selling the laptops to help to fund the OLPC project there may well need to be allowance for the markups so that it is sustainable.

Another problem, which maybe could be a huge problem, is that while OLPC is solely distributing laptops to children in the developing world there is potentially scope for goodwill over what is happening and exceptions to people enforcing legal rights about trade happening. However, if the laptops have a place in developed world markets, then legal rights about trade may well be enforced.

So maybe the marketing needs to be that the retail price without any subsidy is first worked out, then the laptop is actually retailed at just above the retail price of commercial laptops, with the difference going to OLPC to fund more laptops for the children. So, this could work out at "buy one - give two free" or "buy one - give two point seven free" or whatever. In that way, someone buying an OLPC laptop would be paying more than the cheapest commercial competitor would cost, so, and I am not a lawyer and know very little about the law in this area, and the law may well be different in various countries, it might be that that policy would allow sales in the developed world without any legal problems. Does that sound reasonable?

The fact is that this would have to be handled outside of the core OLPC work. That means that OLPC would have to spin out a seperate charitable organization to do that work. This costs money up front and it definitely requires some committed manpower. It could be done, but it is not likely to happen fast because the OLPC team are busy enough just getting the units built and into their first real field trial.

>The fact is that this would have to be handled outside of the core OLPC work.

Yes.

>That means that OLPC would have to spin out a seperate charitable organization to do that work.

Yes.

>This costs money up front and it definitely requires some committed manpower.

Yes. However, it need not be OLPC money and the committed manpower need not be taken from the OLPC project. For example, there was a television programme series called The Apprentice, an American version with Donald Trump and a British version with Sir Alan Sugar. How about a similar yet different television programme series called Commercializing the Laptop and the team of people have to work together and we, as viewers, watch them meet lawyers, marketing people, advertising agency people and so on as they put the laptop on the market to raise funds for the OLPC project. None of the "You're fired" ambience of the The Apprentice show. Maybe it could be a supervised group project for some Master of Business Administration degree students with the television company paying the college fees of the participants or however the television people want to implement the idea to incentivize the participants and make the show.

>It could be done,

Yes!

>.... but it is not likely to happen fast ....

Possibly.

>.... because the OLPC team are busy enough just getting the units built and into their first real field trial.

Well, there would probably need to be one or two meetings with the television programme participants, but most of the work would not be done by the OLPC team.

It may be that there will be a commercial version of the laptop sooner or later. Maybe sooner, at zero cost financially to the OLPC project, little time cost to the OLPC project, yet getting in the money from the premium on commercial sales would be beneficial. One of the sponsoring organizations of OLPC owns television channels. How about running the idea in front of them?

Some links to The Apprentice television series.

http://apprentice.tv.yahoo.com/trump/05/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/apprentice/

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Science fiction which might possibly provide a few ideas

The eutotokens of learning

Some years ago I tried writing some science fiction, science fiction in the tradition of putting forward ideas for the future in a story setting which could potentially work.

Most of what I produced is on the web.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/euto0000.htm

The items on the web are from 1997 and 1998 and time has passed since then. Some of the basic ideas in the stories are quite possibly entirely different from what is intended for this laptop project: for example, learning packages funded by advertising revenue, though the problems that that mode of working produces in the story might be of interest. So, I am mentioning the story here not as the definitive way to produce community building yet in the hope that maybe some of the ideas might be helpful in devising an opportunity creating infrastructure.

William Overington

15 March 2006

Would the idea of the optolabe be of use?

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/euto0004.htm