OLPC Lending Lab Project

Update: Friday, 26FEB10 - Later in the day I got a phone call from Elisabeth Swanson who is a faculty member in the Dept. of Education at MSU-Bozeman asking how to buy 10 OLPCs for a pilot project on the Crow Reservation. I emailed Caryl Bigenho to see if she had a clue who to talk to see if that would be possible. She said that the pilot project could have the potential to grow to 32 elementary schools on two reservations. Wow, I hope this works out!

Update: Friday, 26FEB10 - Did a presentation / discussion with the several members of the MSU-Bozeman Education Dept. over lunch. They seemed interested in the OLPC and possibly getting a pilot project together with a Crow Agency school. We'll see how that pans out over the coming months.

Update: Thursday, 11FEB10 - Got an email from Betsy Palmer, who is in the Education Dept. at MSU-Bozeman, about scheduling a presentation she and I would do together for her department in an effort to see who might be interested in getting involved. Will report back when a date is set. Right now it looks like Feb. 26th.

Update: Thursday, 28JAN10 - Loaned out OLPC #2 to Douglas Williams who is a Graduate Masters in Computer Science at MSU-Bozeman. A few days later, also loaned Doug OPLC #1 so he could have two of them to try out some of the networking and collaboration features provided by the Sugar environment and the activities.

Update: Wednesday, 27JAN10 - Loaned out OLPC #5 to Scott Wahl who is a Graduate Doctoral student in Computer Science at MSU-Bozeman.

Update: Friday, 15JAN10 - Not a whole lot going on. I was told by the Education Department at MSU-B last semester that they were in the middle of an accreditation review and wouldn't be available to talk about OLPC stuff until this semester... which just started back this week. I hope there will be some additional action soon.

Update: Monday, 02NOV09 - I did a seminar presentation for the CS Department at MSU-Bozeman on the OLPC Project and showed off three of the OLPCs.

Update: Thursday, 29OCT09 - It just so happened that my wife Shelly was going to Billings for a doctor appointment so I had her take 5 of the OLPCs with her and drop them off with Andrew at RMC... so now Billings has 5 laptops to lend out.

Update: Tuesday, 13OCT09 - Two boxes (5 OLPCs each) arrived via FedEx. I've only had time to open one OLPC and it appeared to be in new condition. I'm not sure if all of them are in the same condition or not. The software on it was quite outdated so I checked out the OLPC wiki and got both the firmware updated as well as the activities. I got it connected to my local wifi. Seems to be working well. Will have time to open the rest when I get back from vacation. I'll probably not update them all in order to save the learning experience for the other LUG members who will be responsible for some of them.

Update: 04OCT09 - The project proposal has gotten approved by the OLPC folks... and we should shortly receive 10 semi-refurbished XO Laptops for lending out in the state of Montana. In the coming week, the Montana LUG leaders will be discussing how to best distribute the laptops among the LUGs and come up with a plan for outreach to the community in the promotion of the OLPC project over the next 36 months with the end goal of getting one or more pilot projects started for rural Montana grade schools.

As the situation unfolds this page will be updated and expanded to provide a running report on the success of the project. Stay tuned.

The Past - Learning about the OLPC Project

On June 25th, 2009 OLPC community member Caryl Bigenho gave a presentation about the OLPC project to the BozemanLUG. There were approximately 20 people in attendance (which is pretty good during summer in Montana). The presentation was video taped and made available online as were a number of pictures from the event and Caryl's slidestack.

Caryl then lent out 5 OLPC units to BozemanLUG members for approximately 1 month. At the end of that month, the OLPCs were shipped to the BillingsLUG and a LUG member gave a presentation to the BillingsLUG group. BillingsLUG members would have liked to be able to borrow the OLPC units but they needed to be returned to Caryl.

The Present - Applying to become an OLPC Lending Lab

Upon further discussion with Caryl and the leaders of the various LUGs in Montana about how we could get involved in the OLPC effort, it was determined that we would like to start an OLPC Lending Lab project to spread the word about the OLPC in Montana and to grow interest in and facilitate the creation of one or more OLPC pilot projects at rural schools in the state.

As a result we have applied to become an OLPC Lending Lab.

The Future

LUG members would volunteer their time to maintain the OLPC Lending Lab, keep the machines updated, loan them out to interested education institutions, and give presentations about the OLPC project and Sugar on a Stick.

MontanaLinux.org is the primary website / online community that coordinates activities among Montana area Linux user groups. Members also attend and present at various regional Linux conferences (Linuxfest Northwest and the Utah Open Source Conference for example) so it seemed natural that MontanaLinux.org could lead the way in coordination of any OLPC Lending Lab Project.

BozemanLUG member Scott Dowdle works as the computer system administrator fo the Computer Science Department at MSU-Bozeman. BillingsLUG member Andrew Niemantsverdriet works as a computer systems administrator for Rocky Mountain College in Billings. Scott is a frequent presenter at the Unix Users Group on the MSU-B campus. It is hoped that the work connections of these two members could be leveraged and spread to the education departments at their respective institutions.

MontanaLUG leaders would make the OLPC Lending Library an agenda item for their monthly LUG meetings and discuss the progress of the project every three months.