Resumen en español al final del artículo
In early January Sameer Verma (Web site, Twitter, Google+), who is a professor at San Francisco State University and one of the heads behind the OLPC San Francisco community, announced that his university and OLPC Association signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
Article I of the MoU (full PDF) reads:
OLPC and SFSU will use their best efforts to establish a long-term cooperation and collaboration in the field of 1:1 computing in certain primary schools in California and around the world. OLPC is interested in pursuing opportunities in the areas of Education, Technology and Outreach.
The Parties agree to work together to support the San Francisco Bay Area volunteer community through its monthly meetings, lending library and annual summit. Further, the parties agree to support faculty research, community service, student projects and internships in the OLPC context. These may include, but are not limited to pedagogical approaches, content generation, software development, hardware testing, network analysis, community outreach and other related topics that go towards ensuring the sustainability of OLPC in different parts of the world.
As SJ Klein (OLPC Foundation's Director of Outreach) explains in a blog post it's possible that we'll see more such MoUs in the future:
This may be just the first of many MOUs with universities in the US, as we develop a network of supporting organizations working with OLPC on international projects.
Here's to more MoUs such as this one! After all other universities and professors (and not just in the United States) such as for example Stephen Jacobs from Rochester Institute of Technology and his students have also done some great work related to OLPC. Having a more formalized process for universities, faculty, and students to establish working relations with OLPC can only help such efforts.
Resumen en español: La Universidad Estatal de San Francisco (San Francisco State University) y OLPC Association firmaron un memorando de entendimiento sobre los esfuerzos actuales y futuros proyectos en cuanto a OLPC.
Noting that OLPC signed an MOU with The University of the South Pacific last year... see: http://bit.ly/r3ATjL
The focus for USP is teacher training and research. With campuses spread across 13 Pacific island nations, USP is setting up a permanent XO lab at the School of Education its Suva, Fiji, campus where all trainee teachers will have access to the little green machine that could!
Michael, thanks a lot for the heads-up, I had totally missed that blog post!
What kind of research is being undertaken at USP? Is their work being documented somewhere or available somewhere? Are you planning to expand such MoUs also to other universities in the region?
Thanks for mentioning that, Michael.
Our effort to sign a MoU was in part due to what Michael Hutak had already done with Univ. of the South Pacific.
I hope to see more collaborative work with universities in the near future.
Cheers Sameer, though I wasn't fishing for compliments!
USP will be conducting research measuring impact of OLPC on core educational goals such as literacy, numeracy and "information literacy".
Michael, great, please keep us posted on that work - and I'll make sure to keep a closer eye on the OLPC Oceania blog in the future;-)