OLPC Organizes Educational Game Jam

Non-profit group One Laptop Per Child has announced that it has organized a three day game jam from June 8-10 that will see hundreds of developers, educators, and artists collaborate to create open source educational games for its XO laptop currently being deployed in countries like Uruguay. The weekend game jam will gather game developers, educators, authors, musicians, artists, and writers from around the US to work around the clock to create the games that will then be released under an open license, and featured at San Francisco's Experimental Gameplay Workshop. The winning team will receive a production model XO laptop and free passes to 2008's Game Developers Conference. OLPC has designed the XO laptop as a low cost, low powered platform with the ultimate goal of giving every child in the world access to a modern education. The XO will be distributed to children in various counties throughout the world during the coming year, including Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Libya, Nigeria, and Rwanda. Organizers and attendees of the game jam include Serious Games Initiative co-founder Ben Sawyer, OLPC's Director of Content SJ Klein, and Boston Game Jam organizer Darius Kazemi. More information and applications to the jam can be found via hackronym.com/olpc/gamejam.