Today, Shakthi and I visited KMR Foundation [1], co-founded by the chairman of Sreenidhi group of institutions. One of the aims of KMR foundation is to promote education in rural and backward areas. They plan to achieve this by bringing technology within the reach of these students.
The foundation launched a pilot project in a government school at the Aziznagar village (adjacent to Himayath Sagar lake) near Hyderabad to distribute OLPC XOs [2] to school kids. The pilot project seems to have delivered encouraging results and as a next step, want to integrate the usage of the laptop with the curriculum so that students can derive maximum benefits. One accusation against our group has been that we don't promote group activities or go beyond our monthly meets. So this is our chance to silence the critics. We need volunteers to help us write some sugar [3] applications, develop course content based on the AP Govt syllabus, help test and assist in whatever way possible. The work doesn't require you to know any high-end programming skills and would offer a great learning experience apart from a much needed change from our week day '9 to 5' job and the satisfaction of contributing to a noble cause. It also offers exciting opportunities to work closely with other like-minded groups like Swecha. Every attempt will be made to push all work upstream to the OLPC project and credit given to every contributor. For further details, you can either reply to this email or talk to Shakthi at the meet next week. [1] http://www.kmrfoundation.org/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO-1 [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_(desktop_environment) -- Cheers Theju
