Author: Pockey Lam

Upcoming Greenboard deployment

Posted on by Pockey Lam

fossasia-group-sOver the past few months we have been busy introducing the Greenboard project in a few places, namely at Teach for China in Shantou and at FOSSASIA in Phnom Penh to name just two places. Both have been very interested in the concept, its flexibility, past deployments and more importantly using it within their environment.

greenboard-teamWe are now working on refurbishing a classroom of sixty computers in a school not too far from Shantou, classroom which was installed ten years ago and has never ever been used. Of course not all the machines start (in fact only 15 out of 60) but the room is properly set up and looks like a very nice place to start in the region. The people we are working with from Teach for China are very motivated as well which brings a lot to the equation.

usaidOn the Cambodian side, the discussions we had with USAID and the representative from the Ministry of Education were very positive too. We will have further discussions during April and need to start checking the translation status of all the components we use. Luckily the person in charge of packaging Greenboard happens to be Cambodian too!

All in all we are pretty excited about what’s coming ahead of us and will work hard to make it happen. Stay connected to learn more as the projects move forward!

Promote OpenClipart on Culture Freedom Day!

Posted on by Pockey Lam

As Culture Freedom Day preparation is ongoing I got the chance to meet up with Jon Philips from the Open Clipart Library during FOSSASIA.I actually got to know Jon since about 2007 from the Beijing LUG and we have been doing quite a few things together. CFD events is of course something he definitely cares about. While at the Digital Freedom Foundation we make extensive use of all the great graphics from OpenClipart for our design needs, it is important to help others discover such a useful resource. So Jon kindly authored a video to support us and encourage participants to take a closer look at the Open Clipart Library new website design and functionalities. So without further ado I will let Jon do the presentation and thank him and the Open Clipart Library team for their support! And of course don’t forget to use and showcase the Open Clipart Library at your CFD event!

Celebrate Free Culture with us on May 17!

Culture Freedom Day Registration is on!

Posted on by Pockey Lam

Register your CFD event now!

We have just announced that for its third edition Culture Freedom Day‘s registration is ready and awaiting all the passionate organizers to come and be known! As usual the event is planned for the third Saturday of May (the 17th) and appearing on the events map only requires to create an event page under the CFD wiki and fill up the registration form. Then of course you’ll be challenged between finding Free Culture artists in your area and presenting their work, or selecting one of the many projects published under a Free License and showing it to your audience. We are sure a lot of passionate discussions will follow and you’ll be delighted to explain the ins and outs of Free Culture! As Free Culture is indeed one of the most accessible form of art and development issued from the Free Software philosophy, one also used by million if you think of WikiPedia or indirectly Creative Commons, and those are just a few obvious examples!

So all the best for CFD 2014 and see you in two months to party!

Today is Hardware Freedom Day!

Posted on by Pockey Lam

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For its second edition Hardware Freedom Day is happening with over 40 registered teams and one more sponsor in the name of LulzBot offering 8x3D printers for the event, product which has been RYF-certified by our partner the FSF. Canonical, Google and Linode are of course still part of our long term sponsors and we are trying to reward all our supporters as well. You can find more details on that by looking at the HFD website. So what could you do today? Quite simple, you’re either organizing an event and then you probably hardly have the time to read this message, or you are interested by the concept of Libre/Open hardware and should direct yourself towards our global map to see if there is anything happening in your area. If all the events are too far, then you can check the hackerspaces website and locate a Libre/open hardware hacking place near you. Hopefully you will be able to find something to satisfy your thrust and we wish you the best possible Hardware Freedom Day!

Speaking at FOSSASIA 2014 tomorrow!

Posted on by Pockey Lam

fossasiaI will be giving a talk tomorrow at FOSSASIA 2014 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia about my work in Open Education. The talk (entitled “Let’s Raise Kids Up”) will be part of the opening keynotes. It will give a quick introduction of the Greenboard project and all the works done around Beijing since 2007. I will also be joining the panel discussion about Women in IT together with Hong Phuc Dang (FOSSASIA), Cat Allman (Google), Sindhu Sundar (GNOME), Sneha Priscilla Makini (GNU Mailman) and Richa Jain (Mediawiki).

If anybody is interested in deploying free and open source projects in schools, I am running a workshop on 1st March (10am) too. I will present all the tips we discovered the hard way from running our own open education project ranging from hardware donation, curriculum design to using Free Software and customizing or translating the possible solution. It will of course talk about GNU/Linux, some of the GNOME and KDE educational applications we are using as well as putting it all together and allowing teachers to control the classroom.
Thanks for Mario Behling and Hong Phuc for hosting such a great event! And of course thanks for FOSSASIA sponsoring my trip to participate!