The Obscure Organization

The Obscure Organization is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that promotes community and creativity through technology. We provide free resources and training to people and organizations hoping to advance their use of technology in non-commercial creative works and community-building efforts.

We give away free Obscure user accounts to anyone who asks politely. You can use an Obscure user account for email, web hosting, programming, and other non-commercial purposes. People have used their Obscure accounts to host web sites for non-profit organizations, to further their own education, to host their personal web sites, and to collaborate with other Obscure users on projects.

We try to help connect Obscure users with one another. People in the Obscure community often help each other, both by teaching each other effective uses of technology, and by providing constructive feedback on creative projects. This furthers learning both by those seeking help and by the informal mentors who provide help.

Recent News

Third Scratch Seminar Announced

(posted May 8th, 2008)

We are proud to announce the third session of our newest program, to be held at Campbell Elementary in Arlington, Virginia, from May 7th to June 4th, 2008. This session is an intermediate class, following on the two beginner classes we held earlier this school year, again using Scratch to teach kids about design, programming, animation, and math.

Intermediate Scratch: Creative Computer Exploration (3rd-5th grade)

In this class, students will build on the skills they learned in the "Introduction to Scratch" class to design and implement larger and more complex computer games, animations, stories, and art. We will work on strategies for collaboration and add sounds and photos we record to our projects.

Obscure support for the One Laptop Per Child project

(posted April 28th, 2008)

We are pleased to announce that we are providing operational support to the OLPC Learning Club D.C., by running a Jabber server. This should help foster communication among XO laptop users and developers in the Washington, D.C. area.

If you have an XO laptop, and you are in the Washington, D.C. area, you can connect to our chat server by issuing this command in the Terminal activity, and restarting your XO:

sugar-control-panel -s jabber dc.olpc.obscure.org

For more information on this service, please see the OLPC wiki entry on this topic.

New Server Migration In Progress

(posted April 20th, 2008)

We have just switched to our new server hardware, and migrated all user accounts, web sites, and programs to the new machine. Right now we are still configuring the server software, so things might still be a bit broken. Please send mail to Richard Bullington-McGuire if you notice problems.

Second Scratch Seminar Announced

(posted Feb 3rd, 2008)

We are proud to announce the second session of our newest program, to be held at Campbell Elementary in Arlington, Virginia, from February 20th to March 26th, 2008. We are using Scratch to teach kids about design, programming, animation, and math. Here is the announcement that will go out to parents soon:

Introduction to Scratch: Creative Computer Exploration (3rd-5th grade)

In this class, students will explore how to create games, animations, stories, and art using Scratch, a computer learning tool that teaches programming and design skills. Students will draw pictures, add sound and movement, and share their projects with the class. Admissions preference will be given to students who have not taken this class before. We are planning an Intermediate Scratch class in the Spring term for students who have taken the Introductory course.

Obscure account holders can help help plan the class on our private Wiki and review our progress notes from our first session.

We are interested in finding volunteers who would like to propagate this program to other schools and settings. Please contact Richard Bullington-McGuire if you have questions about this program.

Richard Bullington-McGuire
President of The Obscure Organization

New Obscure Officers for 2008 Selected

(posted Feb 3rd, 2008)

At the first meeting of the new board, on January 13th, 2008, we chose new officers for 2008:

2005 Obscure Organization Officers

Richard Bullington-McGuire
President of The Obscure Organization

For older news, see our News Archive.

Warning!

A visit to The Obscure Organization
may cause you to think.
Thinking has been known to cause severe pain
in the heads of the close-minded.