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From WorldWideWorkshop-OLPC wiki

1 Welcome to the MaMaMedia Creative Center Developers Wiki
2 Project Overview
3 Activities in Development
4 General Notes
5 About the World Wide Workshop Foundation
6 About OLPC

Welcome to the MaMaMedia Creative Center Developers Wiki

"I HAVE A GREAT IDEA!" The Idea Child is our Logo and core theme - a lovable, curious, active and imaginative character. A thinker and a doer. It represents our vision and mission for OLPC learners and educators, our child-centered educational philosophy, and our Constructionist Learning design principles for the MaMaMedia Creative Center in particular, and the XO Laptop features in general. Our goal is to empower children worldwide, and, at the same time, support their teachers and families in OLPC communities.

Project Overview

The XO Laptop featuring the MaMaMedia Creative Center

The World Wide Workshop Foundation has partnered with OLPC to create a set of original Constructionist learning activities.

Visit our Latest Release page to learn more about the activities in developemnt and download the .xo bundles to test them on your XO.

The MaMaMedia Creative Center is based on our award-winning, kid-tested, and "hard-fun" puzzles, digital toys, and creativity tools from MaMaMedia.combuilt especially to highlight the valuable edu-design principles of the "3X's" and leverage the unique operating system and technological features of the XO Laptop, including the laptop's built-in camera, drawing and writing tools, and the mesh network. Children learn to invent, make, and share their own puzzles, stories, cartoons, polls, quizzes and more. Easy to follow lesson plans and related tutorials are also offered for teachers and parents who have little or no previous experiences with computers, the Internet, and programmable media technology.

"If the world's children will grow up using activities of the 3Xs kind, they will become less of media consumers and more of a media creators," Says Dr. Idit Harel Caperton, President and Founder of MaMaMedia and the World Wide Workshop Foundation.

Based on her MIT Media Lab research with Seymour Papert in the 1980's and 1990's, Dr. Idit Harel Caperton, author of the book Children Designers, believes that "if young children see their technology as a pencil, right from the start, and if they see the Internet as paint, beads, sand, or clay, they will learn the 3X's skills -- i.e., how to eXplore the world around them, eXpress themselves clearly, and eXchange their ideas using digital media and tools on their laptops. Equipped with the 3X's skills, children also gain the tools and self-confidence to build their own worlds using digital technology, and lead others in their communities."

The World Wide Workshop Foundation is dedicated to narrowing the divide by empowering children with the life and technical skills to create media, explore the web to cull information, and contribute to informational communities around the world, using web-based and wiki media and tools. We know these skills will not be honed in a day, it takes time to become an effective blogger, wiki-writer, and games programmer; but with commitment, support and access to opportunities and suitable learning environments -- we believe this can be a reality for all children and youth in the near future.

"It's not that they're not going to be media consumers anymore, but we want them to grow to expect to go one level above and beyond media consumption, and become media technology leaders for educational and social causes that are relevant to them and people in their communities," says Idit Harel Caperton.

Our criteria for OLPC activities: 1) best quality and well produced; 2) impact the XO users' learning; 3) engaging and fun; 4) Sugarized (UI, Journal, Internationalization, etc.); 5) integrating other XO core activities, libraries,and resources; 6) fully open; 7) expandable and transformable by the user community; 8) add several new experiences and features to the XO Core; 8) suitable for children, teachers, and families worldwide, as well as G1G1 and other OLPC initiatives; 9) afford a low barrier to entry yet empowering and encouraging complex activity, learning and growth.

Activities in Development

Click on an activity name to get detailed information about its design and development status.

Activity Name	Description	Current Status
MaMaMedia Creative Center	Interface Design Activity (Make Your Own Menu Page)	included in Beta Release 1.3
Learning Center	XO Orientation for Teachers and Students	included in Beta Release 1.3
Slider Puzzle	Picture Unscrambling Puzzle	included in Beta Release 1.3
Jigsaw Puzzle	Picture Assembly Puzzle	included in Beta Release 1.3
Cartoon Builder	Cell Animation Tool	included in Beta Release 1.3
Poll Builder	Build and Vote in Polls	included in Beta Release 1.3
Flipsticks	KeyFrame Animation Tool (Intro to Programming)	NEW in Beta Release 1.3
Story Builder	Graphical Story Constructor (Imaginative Writing)	included in Beta Release 1.4
Joke Machine	Joke Telling and Joke-Book Making Tool	will be included in Beta Release 1.4
Quiz Machine	Kid-to-Kid Quiz Creation Tool	Planning stage
e-Card Builder	e-Greeting-Card Constructor	Planning stage
BotBlox	Build and Program a Block World and Program Your Bots to Move in it	Planning stage

General Notes

All MaMaMedia/OLPC applications are programmed in Python and designed to run optimally on the XO laptop and in the Sugar interface. Developers use software languages, libraries, and tools that are supported and recommended for the XO and Sugar. Applications' size will be light to ensure efficient loading and satisfactory technical performance and user experience on the XO laptops used throughout the OLPC deployment locations (rural communities in developing countries).

MAMAMEDIA CREATIVE CENTER menu page, is in itself a creative activity. The page introduces all the World Wide Workshop Foundation developments for OLPC. At the center, we feature our playful Logo of the Idea Child and it is surrounded by Idea Bubbles -- buttons for the learning activities -- filled with creative ideas for how to use the XO laptops for learning and teaching, and lesson plans for students, educators and families in the OLPC communities. One of the bubbles is the Learning Center which includes an overview of our educational philosophy and design principles, a glossary, a summary of activities and lesson plans, as well as links to our Educators Wiki. In addition, the Creative Center is an intreface design activity, teaching students how to make their own designs, backgrounds, and buttons to look and feel the way they want it to be!

This is an open source project, in spirit and practice. As such, all development work will be regularly documented on this wiki, in the Activity area. Documentation will include version status reports (weekly, if not daily) and a complete, cleanly organized and well commented set of source code files for each version (so that future developers may review, use or even complete it.)