Managing Edoovillages

Edoovillages are schools where laptops are deployed. Labdoo focuses on equipping schools because:

  • Schools have their own organized community.
  • Classrooms are managed by teachers which can help monitor the good use of the laptops. The role of the teachers is also important to help Labdoo recycle laptops once they no longer work.
  • Schools typically have electricity and access to the Internet (even in remote areas thanks to the expansion of wireless communications). They also provide water-proof and secure shelters.
  • Working with schools simplifies also the coordination of dootrips, as many travellers to poor communities visit schools in their trips.

In this chapter you will find information on how to create and manage an edoovillage from within the Labdoo platform. For more general information about Edoovillages please refer also to the "Information for Edoovillages Book".

How to Create an Edoovillage

Labdoo users who have the "hub manager" role assigned are allowed to create new edoovillages. (If you don't have this role and want to solicit the creation of an Edoovillage project in your school, go to www.labdoo.org and press the button "Request laptops".) If you have this role, you can create a new Edoovillage as follows:

  1. Ask the teachers and the people in charge of the school to fill in the 'Edoovillage Request Form'. Please forward to them this form so they can fill it in. Once they reply back with the form filled in, you can proceed with the next step to create the actual edoovillage on the Labdoo platform.
  2. Click on the "Schools" tab that you will find on the top bar of www.labdoo.org and then select the option "Create" (see Figure 1 below). Please notice that you will only see this option if your user account has the permissions of a "hub manager".
  3. Using the information you collected from the 'Edoovillage Request Form', fill in all the fields in the form.
  4. Make sure to also upload the 'Edoovillage Request Form' in the field 'Project application'.
  5. In the "Semaphore" field, please choose the option "Red: pictures about the project have not been uploaded yet". You will be able to set the semaphore to yellow once you get pictures of the school in the next step. You can learn more about the meaning of the 'School Semaphore' from this wiki page.
  6. Once you have filled in all the fields, click on the 'Save' button. If you already have a dootrip associated with this project, make also sure to link the dootrip to the newly created edoovillage. To do so, go to the dootrip page, edit it, and under the field "Preferred edoovillage destinations" specify the newly created edoovillage, then save the dootrip.
  7. Send an email to the school teachers and/or people managing the school providing them the URL link of the newly created edoovillage and ask them to review it. Ask them also to send you pictures of the school. This is important for transparency reasons. Once you have the pictures, upload them to your edoovillage photo album. If you don't know how to do that, follow the steps described in this wiki page. Once you have uploaded the pictures, you can now change the semaphore to yellow. The school is now ready to receive the first small batch of laptops.

Congratulations! At this point, your edoovillage is created and you are now one step closer to make a big contribution towards spreading education around the world. Please continue reading the next section for more pointers on how to manage your edoovillage.


Figure 1. Click on "Schools" and "Create" to start the creation of your edoovillage.

Managing your Edoovillage Semaphore

Each edoovillage comes with a semaphore which is displayed on the upper right part of its dashboard (see Figure below). The semaphore colors have the following meaning:

  • Red: cannot send dootronics. This is the initial state of an edoovillage. We need to ask recipients to send back pictures of the school. Until those pictures are not received, the semaphore is set to red and no laptops can be sent. Once the pictures of the school are received, the semaphore can be changed to yellow.
  • Yellow: can send the first small batch of dootronics. This color means that pictures of the school have been received and a first batch of laptops can be sent. This usually means sending a few laptops (i.e., four or five laptops), but not all the laptops solicited. Once the first shipment of laptops is successfully received by the school, and once the school sends back more pictures of the received laptops demonstrating the correct reception, the color of the semaphore can be changed to green.
  • Green: can send the rest of the dootronics. This color means that the first batch of laptops was successfully received by the school and the school sent back pictures of the laptops. At this point, we are allowed to ship the rest of laptops solicited by the school.

To change the status of your edoovillage semaphore, click on the 'Edit this edoovillage' link (see Figure) that you will find in your edoovillage dashboard (make sure you are logged in to see this link) and change the value of the field 'Semaphore'.


Figure. On each edoovillage dashboard, you will see a semaphore drawing.

Uploading Pictures to Your Edoovillage

To upload the pictures you received from the school, do as follows:

1. Make sure you are logged in to Labdoo.org. (If you are not logged in, go to https://platform.labdoo.org/user/login and enter your username and password.)

2. Go to your edoovillage. To find your edoovillage page, you can go to "My account" (https://platform.labdoo.org/user) and then click on the "Global contributions" tab. Then click on the link "[See all contributed edoovillages]". This will take you to a dashboard from where you can select your edoovillage.

3. Once you are on the edoovillage page, click on "Go to photo album". This will take you to your photo album. Now you can click on "Upload new photos" where you will be able to upload your new photos. Notice that you will only see the option "Upload new photos" if you have sufficient edoovillage managing rights to do so. If you don't see this option, contact the Labdoo team (https://www.labdoo.org/content/contact-labdoo) giving us your username so that we can provide sufficient rights to your account.

If you have any issues uploading your pictures, contact the Labdoo team at https://www.labdoo.org/content/contact-labdoo.

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Note. Before changing the status of a dootronic to S4 (deployed), it's recommend whenever possible to upload the pictures to the corresponding edoovillage first. This order is relevant (first upload the pictures to the edoovillage photo album and then update the laptops associated to that edoovillage to status S4) in order to guarantee that by the time the donors receive the email (this happens when a laptop status is changed to S4) the pictures are available in the edoovillage's photo album for the donors to visit. If the pictures are not available or if it will take some time to receive the pictures, then it is recommended to update the laptops status to S4 and then upload the pictures as soon as they are available.


Figure. Go to your edoovillage photo album and click on 'Upload New Photos' to post pictures of your project.

Who Can Create and Manage Edoovillages?

The creation of edoovillages is restricted to people who belong to a hub, long term volunteers who know how things work and help the following person in the process, this is they way we somehow work, there are allways different people in charge of every step of the process. Someone in the organization creates the edoovillage and someone else in the field is responsible at the destination: informs about the needs and about dootronics reception. It's advisable that these two roles are played by two different persons.

Often the schools can be managed by more than one person who will be able to edit and change the content of the school description and needs.