NOTES OF 10/29/01


                     LAPTOP SUPPORT GROUP MEETING


                           George Markowsky


I thought that it would be useful to circulate some notes based on the
10/29/01 meeting of the Laptop Support Group (LSG). This is not a set
of minutes, but rather a summary of important announcements and
decisions.


The next meeting of this group will take place on Monday 11/5/01 at
2:10 PM in room 227 Neville Hall. This e-mail will come with a full
list of the e-mails of all people who are interested in participating
in the efforts of the LSG. Normally, I suppress long e-mail headers, but
this time it might be useful for all of you to have the complete mailing
list.


We will be able to use both www.laptop.maine.edu and
www.laptops.maine.edu for our websites.


Seymour Papert is featured in the October 29, 2001 issue of Newsweek
in an article called "The Future of Learning."


After some discussion it was decided to focus on the creation of some
workgroups. Here are the groups as they have been constituted. Please
correct the following lists, or if you would like to be affiliated
with different groups, please let me know. Each group has been
instructed to meet and to pick a leader who will represent the group
and facilitate its meetings. Where a leader has been selected, I have
put an asterisk next to the name.


Not everyone on the mailing list has joined a workgroup, so if you would
like to be in a particular workgroup, drop me a line.


WEBSITE GROUP
This group is to work on creating a support network (a Teach Buddies
site), a Student Pen Pals site, a Spearhead Center, a Doubting Thomas
site, and an advocacy site. It should look to evolve the site into a
full-fledged portal.


MEMBERS (Leader not selected yet)
ACM Student Chapter
      Prashanth Chandrasekar
      Jonathan Beal
      Wenyu Zhu
Gerry Alden
Steve Philbrick
Mike Scott


LEARNING UNITS GROUP
This group is to work on the content of the various units to be
prepared for the teachers. In particular, they should work on
developing a Technology Studies unit that will teach students about
computer technology. This group will also worry about the software to
be offered in support of the Laptop Initiative.


MEMBERS (Leader is Larry Latour)
Larry Latour *
Sally Coppus
Rick Eason
Steve Philbrick
Peter Rottmann
Eva Szillary
Kate?
Molly?


PILOT WORKSHOP GROUP
This group is to organize the workshop that we hope to offer in
January for the Pilot Schools with an auxiliary session for all 7th
grade Maine teachers. The main workshop is expected to last 4 days,
and the auxiliary session to last one day.


MEMBERS (Leader has not been determined yet)
Max Crain
Larry Latour
Steve Philbrick
Eva Szillary



MONITORING GROUP
This group is to work on the educational framework and the assessment
of the results of the laptop initiative.


MEMBERS (Leader has not been determined yet)
Pao Hsu
Eva Szillary



INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE GROUP
This group is to organize a large conference/workshop that is
projected to run 3 days, with a tentative date of May 13-15, 2001.
This group will also work with the State to position this conference
as the premier annual event in support of the Laptop Initiative. So
far, Alan Kay has indicated that he will speak at the conference.


MEMBERS (Leader is Seymour Papert)
Seymour Papert*
Tom Bickford
Sally Coppus
Lilian Karadakova
George Markowsky
Lael Stegall