The Million Problems Project
… or, “Joshua Gay reports: The Widget is The Key”
My dear friend Josh has designed a widget for creating math problems and storing them in a shared public database. Except he managed to make an entire draft widget and a dozen problems of 5 different types without sharing any of it… so I don’t know how well it works. Yet.
That said, the name is awesome. And the idea is relevant to everyone who has ever wanted to study for a geography or math test, draw on raw material and question-types for quiz bowl rounds, or organize a high school math and science competition.
If you have your own favorite repositories of puzzles and problems, especially ones that are in the public domain or widely accessible to the public, let us know! This idea won’t be back-burnered for long.
More Change, More Puzzling : Solve the Global Challenges Meta
Here’s a great Wikipedia-inspired Change.org project that deserves a read : build a wiki encyclopedia of global challenges . I rather like it. It’s funny that the founder left a note about it on — wait for it — the whiteboard of the Boston Wikipedia Meetup group, not a wiki talk page. Pass it on.
OLPC focuses, lays off staff
This hurts. It is a gray week in Cambridge. We are still busily planning for the upcoming XOCamp, and the bulk of our contributors have always been volunteers. But that doesn’t lessen the impact of losing teammates…
There remains a lot to be said about our targets for the coming two years, and I will work through the list over the weekend, including both our active goals [book reader features, $0 laptops for target communities] and the projects that now need better community maintainers [server development, interface development, activity integration, testing & help-lines].
I am working on a job and bounty listings page for people with open jobs related to OLPC and Sugar deployments, and to other education projects. Please post your own leads here as you have them (hat-tip to Bryan Berry and OLE Nepal for being the first).