Author: Karl L

Introduction – Hello World!

Karl L OLPC , , , , , ,

OLPC LogoWelcome! The purpose of this blog will be to detail the happenings and musings of the new project which I have taken underway here at Lincoln University.

The project is under the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Scheme (UROS) banner, which is part of Lincolns Centre for Educational Research and Development (CERD), where undergraduate students can participate and undertake research projects into areas of interest.

Over the summer ahead I will be working along with a fellow student, Andy, in carrying forward the baton of last years research into methods for collaborative development of the XO Laptop, the system developed by the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project.
The XO Laptop as stated by James who completed last years research “has explicit support for collaboration and sharing of activities through its SUGAR user interface and mesh view, which focuses on the activities of its networked users making real things directly supporting the evolution of knowledge as a collaborative enterprise.

Education is necessarily a collaborative enterprise with a need for both repositories and also active support for the educational processes as learners engage with one another and their teachers.”

The SUGAR interface and XO Laptop are part of the Open Source Software (OSS) community, which has been growing steadily since the XO Laptop was initially released.

The goals of this project will be to follow on from the previous research into the SUGAR software, in order to allow for easier access, understanding, and development of software for the OLPC project for future students to work from.

By doing this we will be able to gain experience from working on a live project, becoming not only consumers as students, but also producers who are able to give back to the open source community.

This post may seem a little shallow in detail on the specifics of the project, however after the first day on the job, it turns out time fly’s when you’re having fun and today ended up becoming longer than expected!
With the scene set and the base idea behind the project outlined, I’ll return soon with the outcomes of today’s work, and some more in depth discussion on what the project will entail.

Below is a selection of the links used within my post, and further information on the areas discussed:

More to come, watch this space!