Past Week in Review

Just wanted to give everybody an update on the administrative work that got done in the past week. We've made a lot of progress in department collaboration as well as working with the teacher involved in our pilot program - Marvin Reynolds.

John and I had an in-person, and phone, conference on Wednesday with Dr. Forbes and Professor Duvall about getting the CS department's help with software development. They've offered us a place to meet weekly, storage space for extra laptops, professor sit-ins on meetings, and access to undergraduate computer science majors through list-servs and otherwise.

Even more exciting was our meeting with Mr. Marvin Reynolds, the teacher at Carter for our pilot program. We gave him a laptop loaded with our customized operating system, and showed him around the entire laptop. He was really excited about all of the possibilities for supplementing his curriculum. For example, he saw the audio recorder as a fantastic way to have students record their reading habits and hear mispronunciations.

One final very interesting tidbit is that it looks like we're going to have some extra laptops (left over from the pilot program). We're working out the details, but it looks like we may be able to loan out the laptops to OLPC@Duke members for the year - or until they're needed for other initiatives. Having these laptops in hand will aid those students who are working with the XO curriculum or software development.

Design the OLPC@Duke T-Shirt - Win $50

So we decided to open up the design of our t-shirt (to be printed free thanks to the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership) up to everybody at Pixish. If you follow that link, you'll have the chance to win $50 if we like your design the most. Get to it.

An Evaluation Example of the NYC Pilot

With our own pilot program fast approaching (deployment is targeted for 9/12), we've started thinking a lot more about the evaluation of the program. I found this 30 page evaluation from the NYC XO Pilot done by the Institute for Learning Technologies. This is what we should aspire to for our own evaluations.

At the moment, we're planning on evaluating on community/family criteria (you can check it out here), as well as hopefully testing computer ability. At the end of the program, we also hope to evaluate the usage of the laptop. This needs to happen by the time we deploy the laptops.

September seems like its going to be pretty hectic between the administrative tasks of ramping up interest in the organization and getting the laptop deployment right. Good luck to us.

OLPC@Duke's GrassCon Presentation

Below you'll find OLPC@Duke's presentation that was made at GrassCon (an OLPC@Duke initiative). The video is archived is from the live streaming conference, and the slides were created to accompany the talk. Below both of the embedded players, you'll find a transcript from the conference during our presentation.

Click here for more archived video on the GrassCon Channel

14:16:56 gabey8: Shoot, I thought the lamp was causing backlighting. Pic's still a bit dark even w/o lamp 14:24:03 teefal: sounds great! how are you doing educational analysis for your pilot ... specifically, now to establish a baseline and measure long-term impact? 14:24:13 teefal: now = how 14:24:33 jak1229: Q: Do you think there is enough interest at the university level to be using them in this endeavor? 14:24:38 object404: hey guys. how many XO units have you been working with and what process did you go about obtaining them for the pilot program? 14:24:46 culseg: have you made any contacts with OLPC in South Carolina? 14:24:49 daworm: Q: did you guys any volunteers outside Duke? 14:25:53 curiouslee: You can mention the professor's name! 14:26:53 jonathancross87: regarding OLPC in SC consult http://laptopsc.org/ 14:26:56 curiouslee: Dan Ariely 14:26:59 daworm: thanks! 14:27:01 johnpena: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely 14:27:06 chie_ph: thanks alex 14:27:58 daworm: echo on skype 14:28:08 jak1229: Thanks Alex - very informative - good job 14:28:12 etla: Sounds good. 14:28:16 daworm: good

Update: Mike Lee of the OLPC Learning Club DC just posted up some Flickr shots of the conference.

GrassCon is Go

We're about to start broadcasting the GrassCon on our Justin.tv channel. We've got a great list of presenters joining us from around the world to talk about their OLPC-related projects. We hope you can join us, and if not, the videos from the conference will be archived and posted later.

See you on Justin.tv.

Update: Mike Lee is posting some screenshots from the GrassCon

Another Summer Update

We've still been working hard on a number of things. GrassCon is of course coming up, we're getting some free t-shirts for everybody, and coordinating the first few weeks of the semester. The good news is that we're confirmed for the Activities Fair.

Also, we're going to be contacting both the CS and Education departments at Duke this week for more collaboration with faculty members including

• Faculty Sit-Ins
• Faculty Lectures/Presentations
• Guidance with the pilot program
• Other collaborations

We'll keep you updated.

[OLPC@Duke] Get Prepared - Test an XO

Hey guys,

For those of you basking in the summer sunlight and trying not to move too much, there's still a way that you can help OLPC@Duke out.  You can get prepared for the work we're going to be doing this Fall by messing around with the software on the XO laptop.  This way, you'll be prepared for the pilot program, and you'll be able to help familiarize new members after the interest meeting.

So here's what you can do without an actual XO - you can run the software off of a CD (no installation required)!  Here's how to do it.

1. Go here and download XO-LiveCD_080321.iso (it should be around 400M).  This will take a little bit to download
   
2. Next use your favorite CD writing tool (Nero, Roxio, etc.) to write the CD image you just downloaded to a CD-R (or +R, or -RW...).  If you have CD writing software installed, you should be able to just double click the iso you downloaded
   
3. Turn off your computer, insert the CD, and boot it back up.  You should see some crazy text scrolling down your screen - this is pretty normal.  Finally after a couple of minutes you'll be greeted with the Sugar operating system (it looks like this)
4. You can mess around and test out the default applications.  If you need an idea of how to get started, see OLPC's Quick Start Guide
   
5. You can even download new activities.  They're all free!  Just go to the Activities page in the XO web browser, and download the ".xo" file corresponding to the application you want.  Hit open when the option is given to you, and it should appear in the bottom menu bar.  If you want to download some of the applications that will be on the Carter laptops, go here and find some of the applications listed.

Just know, everything that you do with the CD in the drive will not get saved.  Nothing on your computer is actually changed/stored.  If you're having trouble burning the CD, email me and I'll send you one ASAP.  Thanks for getting involved.

-Alex Keybl
OLPC@Duke Chair