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Tag your dootronic before donating it.
Donors of dootronics (laptops, tablets, etc.) are always encouraged to tag their devices before passing them on to the next person or hub. If you tag them first, you will receive automatic email notifications of their status and location, helping increase the transparency and accountability of the Labdoo platform. -
Clean your dootronic from any possible dirt.
Devices tend to unavoidably get dirty with time, specially when it comes to certain parts, such as keyboards and screens. Labdooers are encouraged to clean the devices as much as they can. Think about how much this act will be appreciated by the people who will receive them in a destination school. To clean a dootronic, use a smooth cloth mildly wet with a solution of 50% water and 50% alcohol. -
Don't forget to provide the power adapter.
Sometimes we get so excited about the donation of a laptop or any electronic device that we forget about an important item: its power adapter. Without it, we can't really boot up the device and, while many hubs keep small inventories of spare adapters, it can sometimes get tricky to find them. If you are a donor, remember to provide the AC adapter as well. -
Keep a healthy inventory of spare components.
If you are carrying out your own dootronic sanitation activities (whether from home, from school, at work or from anywhere) it is a good habit to keep a well organized small inventory of spare gadgets such as hard drives, RAM memories or power adapters. You can easily get them from broken laptops and they may help fix other laptops donated in the future. -
Ask relatives and friends for unused dootronics and possible dootrips.
Hundreds of millions of people in the world have unused laptops and tablets at home and, if you live in the richer regions of the world, it is very likely that a friend or relative of yours has one or more dootronics. Whenever you are socializing, find good excuses to ask around and tell people about the Labdoo project. Small acts like this can really make an impact in bringing education to a child somewhere in the world. -
Remember to print and attach the 'Dootronics Welcome Package' to your dootronics.
When putting together a package of multiple dootronics to deliver them to a school, remember to print and include the 'Dootronics Welcome Package' that you will find in this link. -
Use post-it notes to visually mark dootronics when you have a good number of them stacking up.
Although the Labdoo platform provides all the online tools you need to manage your inventory of dootronics in real time, when it comes to physically moving them around, it is often handy to stick a post-it or some type of note to each device with some quick pointer information such as its status or destination project if already assigned. This helps to quickly visualize their status and organize them. Remember also that you can always scan the QR code of the device's Labdoo ID to get a full online description of its status. -
Update the status of the dootronics and the dootrips as soon as you can.
So how do we keep the information in the Labdoo platform as up-to-date as possible to ensure transparency and agility? Via your frequent updates. For instance, every time a laptop is delivered at a school, the database needs to be updated (by both uploading new pictures and changing the state to "S4: Deployed and being used") as soon as possible so that the donors and all the volunteers that were part of that mini-mission get to know about the success of their work. But not only that, every time a new action that involves a change in the state of any of the Labdoo's steps (dootronics, dootrips, edoovillages, or hubs) is carried out, it is very important to update that information in the Labdoo platform as soon as possible so as to keep the system most up-to-date, which is very important to keep the transparency of the platform and to help make efficient decisions. -
The party is not over once a dootronic reaches status S4. Recycle!
We cannot stress enough the importance of properly recycling devices that no longer work. This is indeed a key element in the Labdoo workflow, because devices that are not properly recycled can potentially end up in eWaste landfills polluting our planet with dangerous contaminants. See for instance this article.
It is also very important that you bring your broken devices to a recycling factory that performs recycling activities in a proper way. A good number of recycling factories do not carry out actual recycling tasks and may end up selling those devices to poorer regions of the world where there are no proper recycling facilities. -
Rescue as many dootronics as you can.
It's fun and easy to get people motivated to throw a party, but what about cleaning things up once the party is done? Think about not only how to bring educational devices to schools in need, but also about how to rescue them once they are broken. If you travel, check if there is any Labdoo school with laptops near the place you go. If so, consider visiting the school and offering your help to rescue a broken device. Pick up any broken device and take it to a place where you can find a proper recycling factory. By doing so, you will be making a big contribution as part of a collaborative network that not only brings computers to needy schools, but also helps eliminate global electronic waste by rescuing broken devices.
To find out if there is a school near the place you go, check the edoovillage dashboard where you will find a searchable list of all the Labdoo schools around the world. By clicking on each school page, you can even check if they have broken dootronics. -
Share your experiences and ask your questions openly using the various online teams.
If you learn something new, share it: there is a good chance that others can benefit from your experiences. Building an online knowledge base is key to ensure a healthy organic and sustainable growth of the project. There are plenty of ways you can share information at Labdoo, such as writing a post in any of the teams (organized by their own topics). Likewise, if you have any question, post it openly on the team walls too; good chances are that someone will know the answer and reply back to you. Moreover, your question will help build the global knowledge base too! -
Take pictures.
Pictures are key in at least three ways: firstly, they help increase the level of transparency in the Labdoo system by allowing all the donors and participants to visually see their laptops being deployed and used by children in a school; secondly, seeing the happy face of a child using your own laptop in a distant country helps you understand the value of the collaborative human chain which, in turn, helps to bring awareness and incentivizes people to donate more dootronics to the cause, keeping the wheels turning; thirdly, they are fun! Thus, remember to take pictures at any stage of the project (as you sanitize or recycle devices, as you go on a dootrip, or as you deliver dootronics to a final destination school). -
Ask for the donor's email address.
Sometimes donors don't have the time or simply don't want to be bothered with the process of tagging their own dootronic. In that case, ask the donor if they want to provide an email address where automatic updates of their donated dootronic will be sent. This way they can at least track the status of the dootronic as it makes progress to a school, which helps increase transparency, accountability and awareness. If the donor gives you their email address, you can add it in the field 'Additional notification emails' that you will find in the tagging form. -
Encourage getting dootronics from known transparent sources.
The best way to ensure the devices we receive come from trusted and transparent sources is to use our own network of known friends and relatives. The point is that almost every home and company in the richer regions of the world has unused laptops and learning devices piling up dust, so we don't have to go very far to find them. We just need to poke our local network to discover and unlock these resources. -
Test that a dootronic boots up correctly as soon as you receive it.
It's very easy to do. When you receive a dootronic, try to adopt the habit of booting it up for a quick status check. This simple check will help you make quick upfront right decisions on what to do with the device and it will also increase the level of confidence in the fact that the device comes from a trusted source. Further, if the donor is close to you, you will be able to get some insights as to the functioning status of the device. -
Detecting spam or fraudulent messages.
As you know, Labdoo operates without the need of funding. That means that all global logistical operations to collect, sanitize and carry laptops to a school happen without the need of money. This clean-cut approach also helps identify spammers: if you receive an email from a potential donor to your project asking for a money contribution, you can conclude with certainty that it is a spam activity. Please avoid replying to such or any other type of spam requests or activities. You should also avoid replying to any user that has no track record within the Labdoo system. For instance, a user that claims to have available laptops for your project should also have tagged those laptops or should have friends within the Labdoo social network who can confirm that such request is legitimate. The Labdoo Platform has been designed to be robust against spamming activity thanks to three main tools: transparency, collaboration and information sharing. The more open and transparent is the way in which our activities are reported to the Labdoo platform, the easier it is to differentiate benign activities from spam activities. So make sure to use the information collected within the Labdoo system and your close network of Labdoo friends to help you validate legitimate requests. -
Reporting spam or fraudulent messages.
If you do receive spam, we recommend you undertake two actions: (1) report the spam email to Google by following the instructions in this link, which will help anti-spam technology do its job (you can also report the spam activity to other email providers); (2) forward the spam email to contact@labdoo.org so that the Labdoo team can also investigate such activity. -
From time to time, send this list of Glits to your community
If you are a hub manager, send out this list of Glits to your local community, since this will help them remember what the good Labdoo habits are. You can also send them the informative message for regional hubs, which provides additional information on where to find the Labdoo resources to help your community spread education around the world.
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Labdoo Programs
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About Labdoo