Dear friends, Please help us spread the word about the upcoming Story Jam in New York, held at UNICEF's headquarters in Manhattan on the last weekend of this month (March 28-30). We're hoping to get many teams of software, content, and hardware hackers working on projcets as well as a continuous stream of school groups coming in to record stories.
If you could forward this to friends, mailing lists, and students and professors at universities around your area (New York, Boston, etc.) - computer science departments, free culture groups, local LUGs, journalism/education students, prolific writers, actors, storytellers, UNICEF/OLPC fans/volunteers/activists around the area, anyone you think would be interested - we would tremendously appreciate it (and offer you prolific thanks, and cookies, if you come.) Also, if you know K-12 schools/parents/students/teachers around the NYC metro area, spread the word to them as well, and ask them to contact me - we're looking for groups, especially groups of children, to come in during the weekend and record their stories and make teaching videos and content for other kids around the world. Hope some of you will come yourselves (a few getting this email already are. ;) Thanks, everyone! -Mel ---- begin invitation ---- Story Jam Invitation Letter You are invited to Story Jam New York! UNICEF, the world's leading children's organization, and One Laptop per Child will be holding an open Storytelling Jam and Hackathon from Friday March 28 through Sunday March 30. The three-day event will be hosted at UNICEF's headquarters in Manhattan, NY. The focus of this event is to build and implement free and open-source tools for collecting stories, as well as gathering and spreading the stories themselves. UNICEF is inviting software and hardware experts of all types to create tools that enable young people to capture and share their stories on various hardware devices including the XO. UNICEF's Youth Section has been actively involved in developing various projects in this area, including a radio station on a USB stick, software to allow people to access web pages through SMS / Text messages, and ways to capture the voices of young people through their mobile phones. Developers will be working in groups to either extend existing programs or create new ones. Check the projects page to see a list of proposed projects or propose one of your own. In addition to a viewing for the attendees on Sunday the 30th, Monday the 31st will feature a public viewing at UNICEF HQ where work from the weekend will be displayed and visitors will be able to record their stories. To register or to view more information, including how you or your group can participate, see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Story_Jam_New_York. We hope to see you there! About UNICEF UNICEF is on the ground in over 150 countries and territories to help children survive and thrive, from early childhood through adolescence. The world's largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments. About OLPC One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit organization created to design, manufacture, and distribute laptops that are sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education. The rugged, Linux-based, mesh-networking-enabled, and power-efficient laptops have begun to be deployed to children by schools across the world on the basis of one laptop per child. OLPC is based on constructionist theories of learning pioneered by Seymour Papert and later Alan Kay, as well as the principles expressed in Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital. _______________________________________________ Grassroots mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/grassroots
