OLPC Learning Club - DC

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.