Overview

Contacts Made

• Dogi (Stefan Unterhauser) <dogi@laptop.org>
• David and Anarag: BU steam
• Pat, BC student: <patrickcapello@gmail.com>
• Seth
• Deborah Donohue, educator--would like to be contacted about developing educational curriculum. <donohued@worc.k12.ma.us>

Other people to Contact

• Dianne (in OLPC) Sells the solar panels to power XOs. <olpc.auntie.mame@gmail.com> and <Xo@xoexplosion.com>
• John Maloney (media lab group that could help us)
• Nicky Gomez at Sloan
• Paul Commons-- conference call
• To get laptops on loan to play with: Kaitlyn Foley (owen has email) and Mckinsey (set up the list)

Organizations

• Peacecorps in Malawi (through Dogi)
• Cambridge friends school
• Americans Friends Service School
• instedd.org
• Olin University

Minutes

In attendance:

• OLPC Boston Group
• BU OLPCorp team
• Pat from BU
• OLPC employee Seth
• OLPC Community Support Manager Adam Holt

BU Team

• BU team contacted Paul to find out about meeting--another MIT team that might have been going to Ghana was supposed to be there?
• Team: David and Anarag
• Rural area near Nairobi Kenya--2 schools in rural areas
• NGO: Fred Auta Foundation
  • Fred Auta is doing his own project
  • don't really know demographics of area
• 100 students 6-12
• Contact with them- letter of support within the next 2 days
• Need new funding?
  • What other things do we need to know about? Technical details
• Want to work with BU--how to teach the children
• Schools' objectives: to get kids to pass the high school exams
• If they pass the tests, they can move on to higher education: How do we use the laptops for practical objectives (like tests. If they do not pass the tests, they do not move on to higher education, as high school education in Kenya is not mandatory.
• These laptops can serve as a tool: 2 members in the team

• Issue: power is random (not very reliable in most places)

Boston College

• One interested individial Pat
• patrickcapello@gmail.com
• found out today about the project
• major: Faith, peace, justice at BC. Is senior. Thesis is on the digital divide

OLPC Boston Group

Dogi

• has contact with Peacecorps in Malawi-if there are OLPCorps there, she would want to work with them-another contact

Collaborators

• Cambridge friends school
• Americans Friends Service School

Organizations we can contact

• instedd.org
• Prevent disease spreading
• specialties: technolgies in austere environments: solutions that they've found so far

Seth

• works with OLPC
• web resources and tools
• OLPC is a volunteer community
• works in media management (give one get one campaign)
• will be involved with OLPCorps in the future

Another meeting with OLPCorps

• XOs-get access to XOs? Some are on loan-administered by the Harvard Computer Society. Some went to Ghana. Each team should get at least one laptop.
• Getting the laptops to play with: Kaitlyn Foley (owen has email) and Mckinsey (set up the list)

Other student groups?

• Harvard team: 6 different groups. A lot of people doing different things
  • A lot of things happening in Kenya
    **working with Negroponte in Kenya

Jumpstart on training and hardware: just look around Boston

• OLPC in Boston list
• MIT: talk to John Maloney's group in media lab
• A good foundation on goals and educational initiative
• Nicky Gomez at Sloan--a few meet-ups, no serious
  • Contact him to get contacts within MIT

Olin--very involved with Boston OLPC in a broad sense

• New college, just accredited
• a lot of interest--especially technical
• creating repair centers in the US: know a lot about the hardware

Educational Curriculum

• Deborah Donohue donohued@worc.k12.ma.us
  • teach teachers how to utilize computers
  • discovery education streaming

Solar Panel

• Dianne--sells the solar panels
• works in OLPC office

Talked to Dave: very involved with OLPC. Not official spokesman

• Question about whether or not it would hurt our application to work in an urban area
  • Urban should be fine: take care of Africans
• As long as we have a solid, sustainable NGO that we are collaborating with
• Urban deployment should be fine as long as we think through our plan:
  Proposal Details to Include:
• How are we going to work with these children? And get them to interactive
• Computers break, thought about a couple options
• What is support? A lot of things go wrong--consider all the bad things that oculd happen
• Nepalese deployment
• itemize the accounting--what we will spend money on
• real demonstration that we know what: put resume (hyperlinks)
• youtube
• wiki
• Write up needs to be solid--we need to show them that we have a plan that has been thought through
• Director of program is still being recruited
• June 8-18th Training Period should not be the only time you think about the project
• Teams will use the 10 weeks between now and then to plan out their deployment: show them that you will be involved with the project even then
  • What we plan on doing in the 10 weeks up until summer
  • everything we can do to plan on doing
  • To get a better proposal: Mentoring--two groups critiquing each other's proposals
    • someone else look at grants and proposals
    • peer mentoring within OLPC
    • good internet and support
    • city with good internet
• Uruguay and Peru--two biggest deployments
  • Uruguay--great
  • State explicitly that we have 2 separate proposals: but different--be innovative in different
    • have a plan to build educational content
    • step up the plate--share the results
    • We can split the team up if we want and write two proposals

Additional Resources:

• Paul Commons--will reschedule the conference call