XoPhoto, Environmental Mapping & Sensors, Beyond Measure!

Nick Nick Doran, studying at Carnegie Melon U in Pittsburg. Deployment in summer, western Uganda. Very rural. Got laptops a year ago. What can they do with the laptops beyond the basics they learned last summer? How can they go beyond words, to “here is your school on a map,” and the computer responding depending on whether it is in the light or dark. A modified version of Measure. Pulls in data from microphone port, but you can hookk up a sensor to be aware of light. Slowed down the measure activity with some programming. Learn abourt graphs because they are creating it. Clausia from OLPC sid it would be helpful if they can make their own sensors. In Paraguay, whe connected the wires to silve foil. Sensor if connect one clip from OLPC to one piece of foil and the other to another piece, and will get a response when the circuit can be completed when they touch. Can be used for more sophisticated sensors such as barcode readers. Create a map pack of maps you download from the Internet. They could see their own school and buildings on a map. Students can take photos with their XO camera and add them to the map. They took pictures all around campus and added them, and also added some text. Last month I went to Maker Fair in NYC. Homemade inventors. Nick: Squishy Circuits. Two typs of playdoh, one a conductor and one an insulator. Can make ciruits yourself with playdoh. Recipes online. Use sugar instead of salt for the insulator playdoh.

XOPhoto, George. Request from Adam, to enable students who have images on the XO postable to social media sites. Got first G1G1 in late 2008, had to learn Python, did video editing, got to command line, not on Sugar, no debugger. Started a debugger, worked on it for 6 moths or so. Adam requested that he shift to XOPhoto, and he has been working on it since April (now October). Objectives: pictures in journal, try to sort them, delete, put in folder on USB stick or SD card. Six months, not yet finished, still has a lot of bugs. In DC, Mike Lee now someone who wanted to use it. This is good because we’ll find the bugs. Can translate it into many languages.

Features. http://georgejhunt.com/olpc/xophoto/xophoto.html

Now that the kids in DC are going to use cameras and the slide-sorting program to create visual presentations, that will provide a lot of publicity for their programs.

Wordpress.com: indormation, FAQs, put online www.xophoto.wordpress.com

Twitter from Mike Lee will show the posters etc.

Met the photographer, a fineart nature photographer Joan Miller, through “Lubuto Library” interest. Physical libraries in Uganda. Wash your hands before, paper books. Jane is curating books, sending collections of 4000 culturally appropriate children’s books. $30,000 gant from Gates Foundation. Clickable language board, bridge to reading for illiterate children, (like Distar Reading etc). Met Joann at one of Jan’s events, talking to Adam about why there are not more kids projects on the website. It would be great to have a tool to be able to sort images and documents. Called George; his app works with photos up to 3 megapixels. Joann will get some old cameras that can dial back to 3 megapixels, go out around DC and take pictures. Joann: need to sort, properly label photos etc. XOPhoto: Shoot the photos, sit on the mall in a circle in DC, start with 6 machines, feature image of an XO and a camera. People will stop and ask question. Pictures running on an XO outdoors. Slide-show mode. Plug the camera in, camera mounts like a USB drive in the journal, DCIM photo folder. Can pick the whole folder if it fits into the journal, if too large, may pick some pictures at a time. Don’t tax the processor, use low resolution pix. Joann has access to funding for the canera. The external camera has a much better sensor, the internal camera works fine, 640-480 and highly compressed. “Every camera we buy means there’s a Kenyan kid going without an XO” can be deployed in Jane’s project in Zambia, meaning not funding problem. George: the XO camera is quite sufficient, no need to buy another canera. Jane’s Zambian photos are printed in a paper calendar which Mike has in his hotel. Mike will do shoots in DC and augment Jane’s photos. Can have a critique of photos. In full sunlight, can see the pic in silver black&white, then go into the shade, turn on the color and add to the the form appreciation. George: if can take lots of pics and delete the ones you don’t want, can select much better pictures. So SOPhoto enables much easier delete: drag to trash, empty gtransh. Very liberating to see thumbnails instead of arcane file names. Stack, re-arrange, shows as a slide show. Name the stack, use the output tab, take this stack and output to a USB stifck, puts the pics in a folder with the kid’s name, so Jane can export to a USB stick, each folder with the kid’s name. Jane and Mike can export real-time from DC mall. Now the Mall has wifi, just installed last month. Can also upload to flikr or twitter. Now can put in etoys, scratch, augment with sound and text. Very much improved. George: High school kids will want to edit, will want to use Gimp and gnome to edit photos, will be able to find them in a folder and import them.

NICK: Maps. Once th students have taken pics and shared them with the world as a whole. We want to be able to find each other online. A more-established network. Many people have been conferring. OLPCMp.net or .org. Mapts of deployments that are out there and online, possible not talking to each other; may have deployments close to each other, didn’t know or visit, until they were well into their own deployments. Network for sharing volunteer expertise, looking for volunteers to join them. In PA, is there an OLOPC school near Nick in Pittsburge? Thereis one in Phila, can visit and see how they can volunteer and get involved. HOLT: the outreach section is talking about the olpcMAP website as well. OlpcMAP.net website. Please add your own marker; wait a bit so they can debug the add feature. Deloyments, out there, wondering how they can connect. If hover over the marker it will name the deployment and give some information. The Australia map has some XOPeople, can put yourself as a volunteer so people can locate you. A way you can connect with the people who are most able and interested in your deployment. Most of the map has been built in the last week. Over the next weeks, will have options to list skills, requests for starting deployments near me etc.

Group of volunteer curators: Marina from Russia, Kurt from Indiana; editorial beautifiers and curators; talke to them if you want your deployment on the map. Mike Lee: Works on map project with AARP, google, etc. Once a map exists, can integrate with other kinds of data, exerpt a map and insert into your blog. Very vibrant mapping community out there.

Nick: we should have that capability very soon. Australia has many: click on their one flag and it will load all the depooyments; wil use this method for countries with many deployments. Nick: we’re interested in whatever everyone else is interested in. Try the activities, let us know what they think, good and bad.

Carol: will the curators make the information about deployments uniform data bits as well as free-form. Nick: collect all the info possible without getting anything too private, such as email. Now the email goes thourgh the website. Contact person if interested in sharing deployment, can just publish your website. What info: how many XOs? When did it start? OLPCcorps has been radiosilent?? They may not know that we are still interested and want to help them. Beth Santos went to Sao Tome and found there was a laptop deployment.

If no curators, “swampland.” Need an up-to-date and organized list. OLPC”leaks” .com. but if there is a country with many thousands of laptops that are not being discussed. Replace WIKI Pages on each country? Those pages may be good repositories of infom, but maybe we’ll supplement them.

Nick: take on responsibility of mapping groups, allow contact with someone who is interested. So happy so many people came to this meeting, can learn about what people are doing. India: sometimes so many visitors, teachers cannot get on withtheir work.

Nick: there is a huge amount of potential value to each volunteer who comes through. However, don’t need to publish the exact location. Adam Holt: landmarks are placed by one “mayor,” and can wbe wiped out and replaced by the next “mayor.” Work on the balance, “fun”.

Information search bar, google-maps. Do you want to publicize that there are new computers at a given address?

Carol: 4 schools in 4 major cities. Privacy: Major cities are cities of 100,000 plus. If youdot those cities, no problem. Shortly, I hope smaller deployments, don’t want them on the map in any form. Still someone will contact Carol if they are interested in the local school project, can . volunteers tend to be tech-savvy soldiers being deployed locally, tech savvy, can be integrated wherever they are.

Digital literacy project at Harvard has been mapped. Or can type in a place name on search bar.

‘ICT4E” is anyone, beyond only OLPC. Join the curator team?