Collaboration with Dr. Robbin Chapman

I had an excellent ideas meeting with Faculty member of Wellesley College faculty member Dr. Robbin Chapman, who received her PhD in learning technologies at MIT! We laid out a more clearer focus of the document that I will be preparing for a major Tel-Co with regards to apply their new technologies to Emerging Markets and Developing Communities. More specifically, this Tel-Co has partnered with the open hardware Maker community and has developed a low-cost GSM / GPRS Shield for the Arduino. Arduino will be selling these shields in early 2012.

Our goal is to create a document (with your help) that includes detailed use-case scenarios that can be "easily" implemented by interested companies. Ideally the company would partner with a research institution or NGOs and also create a grant to support the work.

Back to my meeting with Dr. Chapman...

We laid out the what are called the "5 most important global issues for the next 50 years" that was presented to the Wellesley College and academic community:

1. Economic
2. Social
3. Political
4. Environment
5. Education

We discussed a range of ideas and possibilities including the following.  The possibly of using the shield to aid in learning in public spaces (outside the classroom). Incorporating the important social structures and the themes discussed between peers in these social structures as a catalyst for technology development. An example is to ask a mother what are the three items/things they feel if they know more about they can make their children's lives better.

Ideally the document will have at least one use-case scenario for each of the 5 categories. Each scenario should be detailed and include the key steps to implement the creation of the technologies for each community/market. We want to develop scenarios that will include creating new markets, free and available idea sharing between markets/communities.

Finally Dr Chapman noted that she is one of the leaders of the widely successful international Computer Clubhouses. They would love to learn to use the GSM/GPRS shields and create solutions relevant their communities. This would be a great area to write a grant and potentially create a partnership between industry and the Computer Clubhouse.