Here’s a brief version of our Contributor Program proposal. We are pleased to announce that we were awarded two OLPC XO 1.5 units for Tuva!
Name of Project
OLPC Tuva
Number of Laptops (or other hardware) You Request to Borrow:
2 XO 1.5 laptops.
Loan Length—How Many Months:
12 months.
Team Participants
- Khürgülek “KK” Ondar
- Olga Budu
- Stacey Borsody
- Ralph Leighton
- Sameer Verma
Employer and/or School:
- KK Ondar: Student, College of Marin, CA and Tuvan State University, Kyzyl, Tuva, Russian Federation
- Olga Budu, native Tuvan and student at UC Berkeley (International development studies).
- Stacey Borsody, Drupal and Media wiki contributor for Tuvan translation
- Ralph Leighton:- Founder, Friends of Tuva http://www.fotuva.org/
- Sameer Verma is Associate professor at San Francisco State University and organizer of OLPC San Francisco.
Past Experience/Qualifications:
- Khürgülek Ondar is a student majoring in English at the Tuvan State University in Kyzyl, Tuva, Russian Federation. In May of 2011 she completed a semester of the Intensive English Program at College of Marin in Novato, California. Her father, throat-singer Kongar-ol Ondar, is a national artist of Russia and has many contacts in Tuva.
- Olga Budu native Tuvan speaker and translator, who lives and goes to school in San Francisco.
- Stacey Borsody, translator for Tuvan in Drupal and Mediawiki projects.
- Ralph Leighton became interested in Tuva in 1977 through his association with the late physicist Richard Feynman. Leighton has been a teacher in elementary- and secondary education. http://www.fotuva.org/
- Sameer Verma is the chief organizer of OLPC San Francisco (http://olpcsf.org) and OLPC Jamaica (http://olpcjamaica.org.jm). He also runs projects micro deployments in India, and Madagascar. He has contributed to language translations in Hindi for Sugarlabs and helped start the translation project on Armenian, in conjunction with San Francisco State University and the American University of Armenia. He is the current “placeholder” admin for Tuvan on translate.sugarlabs.org
Objectives
Primary project will be: Translation of the Sugar learning platform into Tuvan (where appropriate)
Secondary project will be to incorporate Measure activity into the study of throat-singing tradition from Tuva.
Plan of Action
Plan and Procedure for Achieving the Stated Objectives:
- KK will travel back to Tuva in May and will take the two XO 1.5 laptops with her.
- KK will form a team with two teachers in Tuva.
- Olga and Stacey will continue with translation in San Francisco
- We will also reach out to another translator team in San Francisco, that is active in Drupal and MediaWiki translation from English to Tuvan. Note: Tuvan translators are hard to come by!
Needs
Why is this project needed?
Overall goal is to expand the reach of information into remote Tuvan communities.
Locally?
- Introduce Sugar to Tuvan schools and children in resource-constrained environments.
- Documentation and presentation of Tuvan culture and heritage of music and singing
In the greater OLPC/Sugar community?
Assist with translation of Sugar into Tuvan. It appears that Drupal and MediaWiki are the only projects that have attempted to translate a few strings into Tuvan. Translation talent is rare, but we have access to it in San Francisco and in Kyzyl, Tuva.
Outside the community?
Continue education and demystification of Tuva and its culture.
Why can’t this project be done in emulation using non-XO machines?
The measure activity works best on a XO machine and we would like to incorporate the frequency measurements of throat-singing into class activities.
We are asking for two laptops to jumpstart the project. We could do with one, but as in the case of Armenia, we learned that the radio on one of the machines died in two weeks, so we want some redundancy built into the proposal. We would prefer new XO 1.5 machines.
Sharing Deliverables
How will you convey tentative ideas & results back to the OLPC/Sugar community, prior to completion?
Blog, mailing list and OLPC SF.
How will the final fruits of your labor be distributed to children or community members worldwide?
Translations will be up on translate.sugarlabs.org All other materials will be on the blog and wiki.laptop.org
Will your work have any possible application or use outside our community?
Some translations will overlap into Drupal and MediaWiki. Maybe even GNOME, eventually.
If yes, how will these people be reached?
Blog, mailing lists, translate.sugarlabs.org
Have you investigated working with nearby XO Lending Libraries or Project Groups?
Yes, and we may use the SFSU lending library to assist with work done in San Francisco. There are no lending libraries in Tuva.
Quality/Mentoring
Would your Project benefit from Support, Documentation and/or Testing people?
Teachers’ input into Usability?
We plan on working with a group of teachers in Kyzyl, Tuva.
How will you promote your work?
Blog on https://olpctuva.wordpress.com/
We will be working with Sameer Verma, who is an experienced volunteer with OLPC and Sugar communities. He will provide mentoring to this project.
Timeline (Start to Finish)
Please include a Proposed timeline for your Project life-cycle: (this can be in the form of Month 1, Month 2, etc rather than specific dates) Include a couple milestones, even if tentative.
- KK will travel back to Tuva in May and will take the two XO 1.5 laptops with her.
- KK will form a team with two teachers in Tuva.
- Olga and Stacey will continue with translation in San Francisco
- We will also reach out to another translator team in San Francisco, that is active in the Drupal translation from English to Tuvan.
[X ] I agree to pass on the laptop(s) to a local OLPC group or other interested contributors in case I do not have need for the laptop(s) anymore or in case my project progress stalls.
olpctuva 