'Til All Are One

• Meghalaya, India: Where women rule, and men are suf­fra­gettes http://t.co/F0ojnKxD #
• Allow me to express my grat­it­ude to the #lca2012 organ­isers for a bril­liant con­fer­ence! #
• Sick of Sydney? http://t.co/JewJPoIv #
• Inter­view with OLPC CTO about XO-​​3
  http://t.co/zmh6VOkz #olpc #
• Fusepro­ject Unwraps The Third-​​Gen One Laptop Per Child: A $100 Tab­let http://t.co/jzuqqBSn #olpc #
• Apple, Amer­ica and a Squeezed Middle Class http://t.co/AK1b7Ogm #
• @threethirty it means a tab­let based on stand­ard Linux — Fedora, GNOME, Sugar, etc. See the talk at http://t.co/dYbj5ECb #olpc #olp­cau in reply to threethirty #
• @kat­tekrab you can prob­ably do 70, but we don’t want to push it #olpc #olp­cau in reply to kat­tekrab #
• @kat­tekrab have you seen http://t.co/IjsGlYVN ? Happy to chat if you have fur­ther ques­tions! #olp­cau #olpc in reply to kat­tekrab #

• Spilt my mocha on the key­board. Lucky it is an XO #olpc #
• @LGnome funny you men­tion that. Wait for my talk at #lca2012 #olp­cau in reply to LGnome #
• The writing’s on the wall for pen and paper (spe­cific men­tion of OLPC AU) http://t.co/ZckDOTrh #olpc #olp­cau #
• @dan­jon­har­ris happy to chat in reply to dan­jon­har­ris #
• I sup­port #wiki­pe­di­a­b­lack­out Show your sup­port here http://t.co/eHryy8Zo #

• What would a real life Bar­bie look like? http://t.co/Tv5ucc3k #
• @m_​anish @random_musings @sameerverma There is also the ques­tion of which out­comes to assess and how to meas­ure them. in reply to m_​anish #
• Ret­ro­spect­ives on the OLPC (http://t.co/EyPqRiev) and Sugar (http://t.co/6VAG0bWB) pro­jects #
• Elim­in­ate the ‘gay panic’ defence from Queens­land law #gaypanic http://t.co/LXwBIZO9 via @change #
• School com­puter labs: A bad idea? http://t.co/K7rmE2Ry #
• OLPC XO laptop powered by a solar panel (no bat­tery!) http://t.co/Ftl8JnoU #

The OLPC Aus­tralia XO-​​AU OS 12 has reached beta 1. This is based on OLPC OS 11.3.1 and Dex­trose 3.

We’d really appre­ci­ate some test­ing. Please dir­ect your feed­back to the OLPC Aus­tralia mail­ing list.

Here is the notice I sent out to teachers:

———- For­war­ded mes­sage ———-
From: Srid­har Dhanap­a­lan
Date: 24 Decem­ber 2011
Sub­ject: Tak­ing part in improv­ing new XO software

Friends,

The 2012 OLPC Aus­tralia oper­at­ing sys­tem, XO-​​AU OS 12, has reached a
beta stage of devel­op­ment. It has many improve­ments, and we look­ing
for feed­back on how it works to help us cre­ate the final product. This
beta is suit­able for test­ing, doc­u­ment­a­tion and devel­op­ing les­son
plans.

In early Feb­ru­ary, we will have a near-​​final release can­did­ate,
suit­able for tri­al­ling in classrooms. We are look­ing for clever
teach­ers to provide us with real-​​world feed­back on how the soft­ware
works with their classes.

This is an oppor­tun­ity for you to take part in XO devel­op­ment and
ensure that the device suits the needs of your classroom. We would be
espe­cially inter­ested to know how the con­nectiv­ity and col­lab­or­a­tion
works on your school’s networks.

To get star­ted, visit our release notes page:
https://​dev​.laptop​.org​.au/​p​r​o​j​e​c​t​s​/​x​o​-​a​u​/​w​i​k​i​/​1​2​0​_​r​e​l​e​a​s​e​_​n​o​tes

This page out­lines the main changes in the new oper­at­ing sys­tem. Go to
the “Beta 1″ part of the Install­a­tion sec­tion. Installing the beta is
no dif­fer­ent from installing the XO-​​AU USB 3 stable release: extract
the zip file to a USB stick and you’re ready to go.

To provide feed­back, join our tech­nical mail­ing list:
https://​dev​.laptop​.org​.au/​p​r​o​j​e​c​t​s​/​g​e​n​e​r​a​l​/​w​i​k​i​/​T​e​c​h​n​i​c​a​l​_​m​a​i​l​i​n​g​_​l​ist

Fol­low­ing this, you can send your com­ments or ask ques­tions at
olpc-​​au at lists dot laptop dot org

The OLPC Aus­tralia Engin­eer­ing team are act­ive par­ti­cipants on this
list, and we will reply. Remem­ber, the bet­ter you can help us with
qual­ity inform­a­tion, the bet­ter we can make the product for you

Regards,
Sridhar

• @richard­son­tracy it’s news to me — there’s been no dis­cus­sion in the com­munity about it. I can make some enquir­ies. in reply to richard­son­tracy #
• @richard­son­tracy what the Press omits in its report­ing is that this is just an exper­i­ment — fail­ure is recog­nised as a poten­tial out­come in reply to richard­son­tracy #

• “The Camero — the ulti­mate Amer­ican muscle car. Designed in Aus­tralia, made in Canada.” — AU National Press Club #
• There are only 13 coun­tries that can design, engin­eer and man­u­fac­ture a car — Aus­tralia is one #
• >60 car brands avail­able in AU, com­pared with ~30 in the USA and Japan #

This has been mak­ing the rounds lately and is an abso­lute gem:

Teach­ers’ hefty salar­ies are driv­ing up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It’s time we put things in per­spect­ive and pay them for what they do — babysit! We can get that for min­imum wage. That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly plan­ning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min off for lunch and plan­ning that equals 6 ¹⁄₂ hours). Each par­ent should pay $19.50 a day for these teach­ers to baby-​​sit their chil­dren. Now how many stu­dents do they teach in a day… maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day.

How­ever, remem­ber they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any hol­i­days. LET’S SEE.… That’s $585 X 180 = $105,300 per year. (Hold on! My cal­cu­lator needs new bat­ter­ies.) What about those spe­cial edu­ca­tion teach­ers and the ones with Master’s degrees or higher duties? Well, we could pay them min­imum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour (but we shouldn’t get car­ried away). That would be $8 X 6 ¹⁄₂ hours X 30 chil­dren X 180 days = $280,800 per year. Wait a minute — there’s some­thing wrong here! There sure is!

The aver­age teacher’s salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/​30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per stu­dent — a very inex­pens­ive baby-​​sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!) WHAT A DEAL!!!!

Make a teacher smile; re-​​post this to show appre­ci­ation for all educators.

I don’t think the dol­lar val­ues are for Aus­tralia — our min­imum wage is higher than $3.00. The point should be obvi­ous non­ethe­less: we ser­i­ously under­value the people who are respons­ible for edu­cat­ing our children.

• 2Day and Fox FM spon­sors: Can­cel advert­ising until Kyle Sandi­lands is dumped from radio #Vile­Kyle http://t.co/rG3AQNCS via @change #
• US push­ing UN to lift ban on cluster bombs, say cam­paign­ers http://t.co/Tlo6L4Yj via @guard­ian #
• any ideas on how I can stop the text in the twit­ter box on the side of http://t.co/33dutsqm from over­flow­ing? #lazy­web #word­press #

Update: my talk has been covered by OLPC News.

Here’s the video of the talk I said I’d be giv­ing at OSDC 2011, titled Australia’s Toughest Linux Deploy­ment:

In it, I out­line our edu­ca­tional pro­gramme and how the tech­no­logy fits into it. Some key points:

• we have a bet­ter ver­sion on You­Tube of the video I show in the talk
• we main­tain a Policy Doc­u­ment, which provides an over­view of our over­all programme
• OLPC Aus­tralia have two core prin­ciples in addi­tion to OLPC’s ori­ginal five
• we have some sup­port in gov­ern­ment at dif­fer­ent levels — for example, we were praised in fed­eral par­lia­ment and the print media (pay­wall) by a prom­in­ent fed­eral Mem­ber of Parliament
• we have deploy­ments across remote Aus­tralia — a feat that can only be man­aged through build­ing self-​​sufficiency
• our pro­gramme is show­ing bene­fi­cial res­ults, and we are engaged in lon­git­ud­inal and detailed evaluation
• we have a com­pre­hens­ive edu­ca­tional pro­gramme, with online train­ing and cer­ti­fic­a­tions (such as our XO-​​cert course)
• we are break­ing depend­ence on spe­cial expert­ise and infra­struc­ture — build­ing sus­tain­ab­il­ity and grass-​​roots sup­port is key
• deploy­ments are made at the classroom level, which is more man­age­able than sat­ur­at­ing a whole school at once
• we don’t provide XOs without train­ing — a teacher must earn a cer­ti­fic­a­tion before they can receive XOs for their class
• our sup­port is focused on enabling schools and com­munit­ies to help them­selves, and each other
• we have innov­ated in the tech­no­logy space, with offer­ings such as the XO-​​AU OS, XO-​​AU USB, XOP and XS-​​AU
• con­tex­tu­al­ising learn­ing, for example through loc­al­isa­tion, is a power­ful tool to improve engage­ment from the child, school and community
• we invite people to join our devel­op­ment efforts
• there’s a nice sur­prise men­tioned towards the end, which I shall elab­or­ate upon in the near future

For those of you who have seen me speak about OLPC Aus­tralia at SLUG, this is a much more pol­ished talk.

• @chrisjrn What I was think­ing of was this: http://t.co/6wgzOkXG #olp­cau #osdc #olpc in reply to chrisjrn #
• My grat­it­ude to the #OSDC team for a great con­fer­ence! #
• Eat­ing dump­lings at Can­berra air­port, await­ing delayed flight back to Sydney #
• #osdc folk con­greg­ated at Can­berra Air­port, wait­ing for delayed flights #
• Funny how my ideas for light­ning talks form just AFTER a con­fer­ence. There’s always the next one, I sup­pose. #osdc #
• @chrisjrn yep already into it in reply to chrisjrn #
• @eley­bourn write more Android apps? in reply to eley­bourn #
• @eley­bourn or bet­ter yet, write Sugar activ­it­ies http://t.co/474St0Kx #
• @voltagex @eleybourn @Make­Hack­Void I wrote this guide to Sugar devel­op­ment a while ago http://t.co/xR0qck0I #olpc #olp­cau in reply to voltagex #
• @Claris­sa­Womack it seems to be a West­ern cul­tural thing. There’s no such stigma in many Asian cul­tures, for example. in reply to Claris­sa­Womack #
• redo­ing my blog site and redis­cov­er­ing word­press in the pro­cess #
• @LGnome indeed, con­sid­er­ing I’m doing this in response to an exploit. Though more likely my fault for not keep­ing it up to date. in reply to LGnome #
• @jeremyvis­ser yes, agreed. I’ll stick with the default until I find a theme I like. in reply to jeremyvis­ser #
• Smoker on the bus. I feel sick. They really should be banned from pub­lic trans­port. #