OLPC Learning Club - DC

OLPC Learning Club DC member Mike Cariaso popped up on my Google Talk last night to tell me he had arrived at the Elaine & Nicholas Negropnte School in Reaksmy, Cambodia. This is the school featured in the May 2007 60 Minutes report on OLPC. He made the eight-hour drive north with Elaine from Phnom Penh the day before in great weather. After settling in, Mike was naturally eager to document his surroundings to post online. The school has a satellite uplink and generators, so I was chatting with Mike as he uploaded some fantastic photos to Flickr. He even ran back outside to get a better picture of the kids using the laptops in sunlight. Cambodia is exactly 12 hours offset from Washington, D.C. So while I was yawning in my easychair, it was the height of the day’s learning for the kids in the school. Mike’s first observations (as a technologist) were that the kids were still having lots of problems with the XO trackpad and none of the machines were currently accessing the satellite internet due to technical problems. Those sound like great first challenges to which Mike can apply his considerable skills as he begins his several-month stay as a volunteer. We’re looking forward to many more dispatches from the learning fields.

First, please note that Wayan and I will be doing a meetup this Tuesday night at the Looking Glass Lounge in Petworth. Please read the post over on OLPC News.

For the Learning Club, we thought we’d end this drama- and social-change-filled year with a showing at the Gallaudet Student Union of the best of ALL the previous meetings. We’ll also do a raffle again. Here’s the 411:

What: Family XO Mesh Meetup
When: Saturday, December 20th, 2008, 10 am to 1pm
Where: Gallaudet University [map], Student Union Building, Lower Level [floorplan], Flexible Room L040 and L041, Washington, D.C. 20002

Some of the things we’ll have on hand to demonstrate:

• New Software Release 8.2.0
• Official 10 watt solar panel
• XOview Camera Viewfinder
• LEGO Camera Viewfinder
• Camera Periscope Prototypes
• XO-compatible Car chargers
• Zowii USB-Ethernet Adapter
• Third party AC adapter
• Freeplay Weza Foot Treadle Charger
• MIT Media Lab Scratch Board
• FLOSS Manuals for the XO and Sugar
• Products from iLoveMyXO.com and XOExplosion.com
• Set of official repair parts
• Alternate OSes: Fedora 10, Ubuntu 8.04, Ubuntu 8.10
• Sugar Live CDs
• OLPC XO Postage Stamp
• Asus Eee PC 701
• Intel Classmate 2
• Interesting XO carrying bags

The Learning Club does not stock merchandise to sell. Most of the things listed are either freely downloadable software or are hardware items that can be purchased from one of a number of vendors.

We are also excited about “Teapot’s” new adaptation of Ubuntu 8.10 that boots off an SD card without affecting the Sugar user interface on the internal memory. Teapot’s Ubuntu brings an adult-friendly user interface that works with the XO’s wifi antennas, power management and special features such as screen rotation. You can see photos of my testing on Flickr. Jeff, Kevin and I will bring copies of the SD card to copy for you if you are interested. We recommend a factory fresh 4gb, class 6 SD card. Avoid Sandisk and A-data brand.

If you just received your OLPC XO as part of Give One Get One (G1G1) on Amazon, you likely have an outdated user interface. If your laptop doesn’t show a ring of 28 activity icons when it starts up, you are advised to have one of our members do the 15-minute clean install of software build 767 (a.k.a. Release 8.2) for you. I’ve collected screenshots so you can see the difference.

Please don’t hesitate to email in advance of the meeting if you have a special request. Email addresses are at top right of the home page.

The next meeting is scheduled for January 17, 2009 at 10am at the Arlington Career Center. We’re planning a special hands-on volunteer “jam” in cooperation with NASA and the Career Center to revise some pre-OLPC eToys lessons so they are usable in the latest version of eToys on the XO.

You might be wondering what laptops and bees have in common. Perhaps you think we’re talking about the busy-as-bees OLPC staff and volunteers that are getting ready for the return of the Give One Get One offer through Amazon. Or you might envision hundreds of thousands of children around the world joyously buzzing around their XOs. Those are realities to be sure, but laptops and bees have found each other locally.

What: Family XO Mesh Meetup
When: Saturday, November 15th, 2008, 10 am to 1 pm
Where: Arlington Career Center
816 South Walter Reed Drive,
Arlington, VA 22204
(Contact Page, Map, Bus Info)

Dr. Frank Linton, Sheng Zhao and Matt Gallagher will present a project they did this past summer to gather scientific data related to the health of bees. The project’s title is “OLPC Research Software: A Tool for the Automatic Periodic Capture of Audio Data” and is part of an interdisciplinary effort by the Arlington Public Schools STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) Program.

As always, we’ll have news or samples of the latest OLPC-related products. Anyone who wants to get the new software update for their XO can still do so. If you’re thinking about donating to Give One Get One and want to meet other XO users of all ages, our meeting is for you!

Upcoming Meetings:

Saturday, December 20, 10am - 1pm - Gallaudet University
Saturday, January 17, 2009, 10am - 1pm, Location TBD
Saturday, February 21, 10am - 1pm, Location TBD

Bee illustration by Emmanuel Boutet as posted to Wikimedia Commons. XO photo from Mike Lee and Christoph Derndorfer’s Photo Jam 1.

Location change! This month we are deviating from our plan and meeting at Nortel Networks again where we have a more convenient environment for doing software updates to the XO laptops.

What: Family XO Mesh Meetup
When: Saturday, October 18th, 2008, 10 am to 1 pm
Where: Nortel Networks, 101 Constitution Avenue, Washington, DC 20001 [Map]

As the title of this post suggests, we’re going to show things related to open source software and hardware. First, we’ll pass around the very first copies of OLPC XO Laptop and Sugar User Interface printed manuals! My copies are pictured above. They look an feel fabulous. These print-on-demand books can be ordered from Lulu.com or you can download the PDFs for free to print yourself or read on a computer screen. The manuals are the result of a team of volunteers working with the FLOSS Manuals project. FLOSS stands for “free, libre, open source software.” The FLOSS web site offers an ever growing collection of community authored manuals for various popular open source packages. More than just PDFs to download, the web site lets you build your own custom PDFs by selecting only the chapters you want. Each chapter is written in a self-contained style. Adam Holt, who called in to the last meeting from OLPC Headquarters spoke at length about the recent book sprint event in Austin during which the majority of the content of the two OLPC manuals was authored. I know many of our club members have been pining for good documentation in printed form. Be happy now! Even better, if you don’t think a FLOSS manual covers a topic you need, you can jump in and add content to benefit others.

The bulk of our meeting time will be devoted to helping anyone who wants to upgrade to the new Sugar 8.2.0 update. I’ve been using it for a while, and it makes my XO feel like a brand new laptop with speed and usability improvements as well as a raft of bug fixes. As always, there’s a small gotcha: this new release is best installed clean on your XO wiping out everything on it in the process. If you have files in your Journal you wish to keep, they should be dragged to a USB drive. Customizations such as Adobe Flash, Firefox, Opera, Java, web radio, video players will be lost. We will likely be able to help reinstall some of these customizations, so please let us know in advance (curiouslee [at] gmail.com) so we can be prepared and do post to the discussion forum. This new update is the one that will be shipped with the upcoming Give One Get One 2008 program now being offered via Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/xo.

One very pleasant surprise in this new Sugar update is that the Scratch Sensor board now works with Scratch! Scratch was demonstrated a few meetings ago by Richard Bullington-McGuire. It’s essentially a way to program animations and games using pieces of software code that snap together like Lego bricks. The sensor board, now marketed as the PicoBoard for USD$50, plugs into the XO’s USB port to provide light, sound, resistance, push button, and slider inputs to the Scratch environment. One club member suggested an alarm system for a child’s bedroom could be created with Scratch and the sensor board. I hope to demo this at the meeting.

Do try to check back here a day or two before the meeting in case there are any updates. I am only planning to send one email update. Not on our email list? Go here.

The Learning Club had a community information table set up at the Takoma Park Folk Festival today in the last blast of summer heat. We stayed hydrated all day and the steady stream of people curious about the little green laptops kept us on our feet. FFM, Kevin and Jeff helped out while also doing duty at the Ubuntu / Linux table. Between 11 am and 6pm, we gave out 40 business cards, 94 flyers and eight Sugar LiveCDs. And a big thank you to Ms. Swanee, who came out of nowhere to volunteer at the booth in the morning. Repeated here are answers to some of the commonly asked questions from booth visitors:

When is your next meeting? When are meetings?

Our next meeting is this coming Saturday, September 20th, 2008 at the Arlington Career Center in Virginia. Adam Holt, Community Support Manager at OLPC Headquarters, will call in to the meeting to give us the latest information on the upcoming Give One Get One program and also talk about how to volunteer with OLPC. Also Thomas Doggette and FFM will give an update on their repair service.

What: Family XO Mesh Meetup
When: Saturday, September 20th, 2008, 10 am to 1 pm
Where: Arlington Career Center
816 South Walter Reed Drive,
Arlington, VA 22204
(Contact Page, Map, Bus Info)

Meetings have been standardized to the THIRD Saturday of every month at either the Arlington Career Center or the Student Union at Gallaudet University. We also meet at Nortel Networks on Capitol Hill.

To find out about upcoming meetings, visit this blog or subscribe to our low traffic email newsletter.

I am having trouble connecting to wifi, so I haven’t used my laptop much since it arrived.

The best thing to do would be to update the system software from what was originally shipped. There have been several major updates over the course of the year that address an array of bugs including the wifi connectivity issues. Unless you’re pretty tech savvy and can follow the instructions on the OLPC wiki, it would be best to seek the advice and hands-on help of an expert at one of our meetings. If you do not live in our area and are not near another user group, contact one of the grassroots repair centers that have emerged. Some of them, including the DC shop, will take shipment of a laptop to perform the software upgrade or other repair.

Other options for support are the OLPC News discussion forums, the OLPC support email help@laptop.org and the support web site at http://support.laptop.org.

Will there be another Give One Get One?

Yes, Nicholas Negroponte has announced that the program will start up again around November 17th to be run by Amazon through the end of the year. The specifics are still in planning, but OLPC News has summarized what is known so far.

I want [5 - 20] laptops to take on a trip to a school in country X. How can I get some from OLPC?

Because the OLPC Foundation has limited staff resources, and given its focus on large deployments in developing countries, it is generally unable to handle these types of requests. That said, if you have a thoughtful and detailed proposal, try submitting it to help@laptop.org.

Other ways to acquire laptops are to buy them off eBay or participate in the upcoming Give One Get One program.

One group to study that is doing interesting pilots is the Waveplace Foundation.

Where can I buy the solar panel and foot treadle power pack displayed at the booth?

The solar panel shown at our booth is the 10 watt model sold by XOExplosion.com. The foot treadle power pack is a general purpose product called the Weza made by Freeplay Energy. Amazon and other dealers carry it for a few dollars less than the suggested retail price listed at Freeplay.

Feel free to post in the comments here below this post if you have additional questions or email us at the email addresses listed in the top of the right column of this site’s home page.

Here are links my photos, presentation slides and archived audio from the meeting. The automatic MP3 capture from FreeConference.com worked exceedingly well and also provided toll free numbers to those dialing in. We were, however, constrained to staying near the speaker phone at both locations, but that was workable.

The audio is stored on OurMedia.org, which offers an embedded audio player or downloading in various audio formats. I’ve posted my timestamped annotations on the page so you can advance the audio player to the portions you want to hear. With the slides open in another window, you can follow along the audio of my trip report.

Thanks again to the teams at Nortel for helping with logistics, Anna Schoolfield for calling in from Birmingham on a busy Saturday and to the new and regular attendees for bringing your energy.

Michael Connet will host us again at Nortel Networks on Capital Hill for the August meeting.

What: Family XO Mesh Meetup
When: Saturday, August 23rd, 2008, 10 am to 1 pm
Where: Nortel Networks, 101 Constitution Avenue, Washington, DC 20001 [Map]

I’ll do a trip report on my recent visit to OLPC Headquarters and the Media Lab and we’ll be calling Anna Schoolfield in Birmingham to get an update on the upcoming deployment of 14,000 XOs there. I will also bring the OLPC 10 watt solar panel, which is now being sold by XOExplosion.com.

Update: We will be doing the video conference again with Nortel’s Ottawa office where some of their staff and local XO owners will convene. I am trying out a conference call service that should be able to record the audio from DC, Ottawa and Anna’s call in from Birmingham to download later as an MP3.

One non-OLPC goodie I will have with me is a set of Siftables from the Ambient Intelligence Group of the Media Lab. Siftables are tiny gesture sensitive information displays that can sense each other’s presence and communicate back to a desktop PC via Bluetooth. It’s hard to give a short explanation of what they do exactly, but the demo I have installed features a Nicholas Negroponte Digital Bobblehead! Here’s a slick video that really shows these things off.

I have also uploaded the Powerpoint slides containing photos for my trip report.

The OLPC Learning Club DC’s information table at the Takoma Park Folk Festival has been confirmed. Mark your calendars for Sunday, September 14, 2008.

David Rothman, editor of the TeleRead Blog on the Ebook industry, is a happy customer of the DC-area OLPC repair service.

Both of the third-party XO accessory stores, XO Explosion and I Love My XO, will soon offer replacement parts such as keyboards and batteries. XOExplosion will also carry the OLPC specified 10-watt solar panel.

LEGO recently announced that a special XO-compatible robotics system for developing countries, the WeDo, will go on sale January 1, 2009.

Students at Duke University organized OLPC GrassCon,  the first virtual grassroots web conference. The conference video was streamed live Saturday, July 19. There were some technical glitches and speaker lineup changes, but the presenters’ content was excellent in my opinion. I’ve posted a few minutes of video and screenshots on Flickr. The con organizers say the archived video and chat text will be posted soon.
Update 7/23: The archived video of the GrassCon talks are now posted.

The Waveplace Foundation has released 30 (!) new video tutorials on eToys. The tutorials are already being used for teacher training in Haiti, Florida and Nicaragua. The videos will also be released as a DVD and book. Currently, it is necessary to sign up on their web site to be granted a password (some days later) to see all the videos.

The Birmingham Alabama Board of Education has voted to accept the remaining 14,000 OLPC XO laptops after piloting the 1,000 received in the spring.

Jim Gettys’ most recent OLPC Community News Update is chock full of deployment stories, new software activities and product development progress.

TED.com now has a couple videos in its archive of Nicholas Negroponte pitching OLPC at the conference as well as some classic footage of Nicholas from 1984.

Lastly, I notice that the CBS DVD of Nicholas Negroponte’s appearance on 60 Minutes can still be ordered (for $17.95) on Amazon. I got a copy of this a while back, and it has been very useful in briefings on the OLPC mission and history.

Because we know that using an OLPC XO isn’t always a joyride, we’re going to focus our July meeting on helping club members get more out of their laptops. With the laptop piped into an LCD projector, we’ll swap tips and tricks on navigating the Sugar user interface, demonstrate new or interesting software activities and also talk about the latest accessories for the laptop itself.

There should be a little something for everyone who attends. And if nothing else, you can get help practicing the XO gang sign (proudly conceived by Edward at left). We will log the discussion points for posting to this blog or our wiki. If you want to demonstrate anything that requires installation on our projector enabled XO, please let us know during the week before.

What: Family XO Mesh Meetup
 
When: Saturday, July 26th, 2008, 10 am to 1pm

Where: Gallaudet University [map], Student Union Building, Lower Level [floorplan], Flexible Room L040 and L041, Washington, D.C. 20002

If this is your first time at Gallaudet, and you are driving, come to the main entrance of campus (see map link above) and check in at the security kiosk where you’ll be directed to the proper parking lot. This time, we’ll have balloons by the entrance to the Student Union nearest to the parking lot.

It’s also a doable walk from the nearby Metro station.

What: Family XO Mesh Meetup
When: Saturday, June 28th, 2008, 10 am to 1 pm
Where: Nortel Networks, 101 Constitution Avenue, Washington, DC 20001 [Map]

Thanks to Michael Connet of Nortel LearnIT, we’re back at Nortel Networks’ DC office this month to teleconference with Nortel’s office in Ottawa where some Nortel staffers will host some XO owners from their local area. We will also attempt to patch in some people with Teamspeak VOIP. There’s lots to report on from recent events such as the 4PC Bakeoff, OLPC Grassroots Jam NYC, OLPC Grassroots Unconference in Boston, OLPC Photo Jam 1, and more.

Nortel Networks is a secure office complex so someone will be on the lookout to let people in between 9:45am-10:15am. The building is walking distance from the Union Station and Judiciary Square Metro Stations.

Update 6/28: I emailed a few more details on the meeting agenda to our club list. No change in the location or time.

Update: 6/29: Here are some photos from the meeting.