Tabitha Roder's contribution to One Laptop per Child

Your Nomination
Title for nomination: 

Tabitha Roder's contribution to One Laptop per Child

Nominee's name or organisation: 

Tabitha Roder

Overview of your nomination: 

Tabitha Roder is leader of the New Zealand Sugar labs. this nomination comes from: Adam Holt, OLPC Community Manager holt@laptop.org Alastair Munro OLPC NZ volunteer alastair@catalyst.net.nz Brenda Wallace, OLPC NZ volunteer shiny@cpan.org Callum O’Hagan, OLPC NZ hardware guy callum@ohagan.net.nz Ian Thomson, RICS Coordinator, Secretariat for the Pacific Community ithomson.nz@gmail.com

Reasons for winning this award: 

New Zealand’s One Laptop per Child test group (aka Sugar Labs) is the largest OLPC volunteer group in the world. Tabitha created the popular group that meets weekly in Wellington and now Auckland, for over 2 years, testing all manner of things for OLPC. Originally Wellington only, when she moved to Auckland in late 2009 she started another group there. Auckland at first meet monthly, then fortnightly, and now weekly. Tabitha liaises with the main OLPC project and activity developers from around the world. She creates the test schedules, writes the test reports, keeps track of the where-a-bouts of the XO laptops and supports the NZ volunteers who work on the project. She is also active on voice conference with the OLPC HQ in Boston at uncivilised hours of the day, and frequently on irc talking to OLPC activity developers, educators, translators, and giving out tech support. Tabitha tracks bugs through the projects's multitude of different bug trackers and version control systems, and arranges when things are ready for re-test, and/or certification that they are ready for deployment to the children of the world. Tabitha is in Samoa this week for a OLPC deployment into two schools.

Supporting Information
Use and benefits of open source: 

From the OLPC NZ website: We are a group of New Zealand educators, technologists, polyglots, and more who contribute to the One Laptop Per Child project. Our goal is to get a laptop loaded with educational tools into the hands of every one of the world's poorest children. OLPC has shipped to millions of children around the world, given laptops to every child and teacher across entire countries. The work continues. We write software, test other people's software, design educational activities, and translate text. We are part of a global effort of professionals, volunteers, students, and people like yourself. We also are deploying pilots into New Zealand schools. Come talk to us about the olpc hardware and the Sugar educational software. We meet once a week in Wellington and Auckland. Everyone is welcome to join us. We have brunch, drink coffee, and enjoy conversation while continuing the good work. Tabitha also contributes to Moodle, and is a successful advocate of open source in New Zealand’s education sector. She has introduced universities and schools to wordpress, moodle, mediawiki, opensource and much more.

Recent achievements: 

Deployment of application fully tested by New Zealand group, to school children in Northern Territories of Australia. The deployment in Samoa in August 2010. Tabitha also organised the Education miniconf at this year’s Linux.conf.au conference.

Plans for future work: 

OLPC NZ has plans to deploy this laptop to every child in pacific nations. Tabitha has great involvement in this project lead by Ian Thomson.

Websites and other information: 

http://laptop.org.nz