8/8/2019 OLPC Learning Club DC and Sugar Labs DC flyer for OLPC SF Community Summit 2010

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The OLPC Learning Club DC is an all-volunteer grassroots group that supports the mission of One Laptop per Child(OLPC), which seeks empower children around the world with low-cost, open source educational tools and software.Begun as a group of recipients of the OLPC “Give 1 Get 1” laptops meeting in a coffee shop in December 2007, theOLPC Learning Club DC has expanded its scope to support Sugar Labs, the Squeakland Foundation (Etoys), the MITScratch Project and netbooks are now welcome to meetings. We are promoting OLPC’s Contributors Program (apply toget free laptop for your school or personal project), offer repair services and partnered with HacDC http://www.hacdc.org to establish an XO Laptop Lending Library. Though the Learning Club is a grassroots all-volunteer effort, we do benefit

from maintaining a direct relationship with OLPC Headquarters, and have hosted events such as an OLPC Communitybook-authoring workshop to develop a new teachers’ guide for the laptop.

Membership in our club, which is free, is now 185 and growing. We meet on the third Saturday of every month at eitherthe Arlington [Virginia] Career Center or Gallaudet University. We also support our collaborators by establishingpresences at conferences such as National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) and TEDxMidAtlantic. Monthlymeetings have provided XO laptop software upgrades, guest speakers, netbook comparisons, software tutorials and theMIT Scratch Day festival.

As we continue to learn about the needs and challenges of education community in the D.C. area, a vision, more formalorganizational structure and possibly a new name for our group will crystallize in the coming months. We hope you’llfollow along at http://www.olpclearningclub.org and we are open to any ideas you may have.

Sugar Labs DC was spun off from the OLPC Learning Club by Jeff Elkner to support the innovative software learningplatform that was shipped with the OLPC XO laptop. Sugar Labs DC brings local resources to Sugar Labs’ globalmission. Jeff is a teacher at the Governor’s Career and Technical Academy in Arlington, VA. Our Local Lab’s core teamis several high school software developers under the guidance of Jeff and other faculty with over 10 years of experiencein the popular Python programming language and open source software development.

Recent projects include consulting for LEGO on their WeDo robotics product, Ubuntu Sugar Remix (USR) andTimeLapse, an activity designed to easily record, store, and display data to be used in applications that need ascheduled recording mechanism. TimeLapse on the OLPC XO was used by a beekeeper to assess the health of a hivethrough audio analysis. Graphics API for Students of Python (GASP) is a graphics application programming interfacedesigned for beginning programmers and built on the Pygame library. And the Local Lab team is beginning the Juan

Chacon Free Software Project in El Salvador aimed at using free software and access to the web for communityeducation and empowerment.

The Local Lab team stays in constant touch with Sugar Labs developers around the world via Internet Relay Chat. Ourweb site / wiki is at http://dc.sugarlabs.org and the Juan Chacon Project is blogged herehttp://proyectojuanchacon.blogspot.com/ .

Contacts: Mike Lee, curiouslee@gmail.com; Jeff Elkner, Sugar Labs DC & Arlington Career Center, Jeff@elkner.net;Kevin Cole, Gallaudet University, kjcole@ubuntu.com; Luke Faraone, DC Repair Center, luke@faraone.cc 

8/8/2019 OLPC Learning Club DC and Sugar Labs DC flyer for OLPC SF Community Summit 2010

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Sugar Labs / OLPC Learning Club DC 2010 Projects

Lubuto Library, Inc. (of Washington, D.C. and Lusaka, Zambia) and Sugar Labs DC have won a USD$30,000grant to deploy Etoys-based phonetic letter boards on OLPC XO laptops in physical libraries being built inZambia to serve street children. Lubuto is also using Etoys to capture art and stories created by children. 

Using the XoPhoto photo management activity recently developed by George Hunt, Sugar Labs DC has

aligned with fine art nature photographer Joanne Miller to use XO laptops and digital cameras on photowalks with inner city kids. The first photo walk will occur on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. onNovember 2, 2010.

Sugar Labs DC’s open source software developers and student team members have created a version ofUbuntu that includes the Sugar Learning Platform. The bootable DVD is called Ubuntu Sugar Remix.

For more information, visit the blog at http://www.olpclearningclub.org 

OLPC SF Community Summit 2010 – October 2010