OLPC Aus­tralia had a strong pres­ence at linux​.conf​.au 2012 in Bal­larat, two weeks ago.

I gave a talk in the main key­note room about our edu­ca­tional pro­gramme, in which I explained our mis­sion and how we intend to achieve it.

Even if you saw my talk at OSDC 2011, I recom­mend that you watch this one. It is much improved and con­tains new and updated mater­ial. The You­Tube ver­sion is above, but a higher qual­ity ver­sion is avail­able for down­load from Linux Aus­tralia.

The ref­er­ences for this talk are on our devel­op­ment wiki.

Here’s a bet­ter ver­sion of the video I played near the begin­ning of my talk:

I should start by point­ing out out that OLPC is by no means a niche or minor pro­ject. XO laptops are in the hands of 8000 chil­dren in Aus­tralia, across 130 remote com­munit­ies. Around the world, over 2.5 mil­lion chil­dren, across nearly 50 coun­tries, have an XO.

Invest­ment in our Children’s Future

The key point of my talk is that OLPC Aus­tralia have a com­pre­hens­ive edu­ca­tion pro­gramme that highly val­ues teacher empower­ment and com­munity engagement.

The invest­ment to provide a con­nec­ted learn­ing device to every one of the 300 000 chil­dren in remote Aus­tralia is less than 0.1% of the annual edu­ca­tion and con­nectiv­ity budgets.

For low socio-​​economic status schools, the cost is only $80 AUD per child. Spon­sor­ships, primar­ily from cor­por­ates, allow us to sub­sid­ise most of the expense (you too can donate to make a dif­fer­ence). Also keep in mind that this is a total cost of own­er­ship, cov­er­ing the essen­tials like teacher train­ing, sup­port and spare parts, as well as the XO and char­ging rack.

While our prin­cipal focus is on remote, low socio-​​economic status schools, our pro­gramme is avail­able to any school in Aus­tralia. Yes, that means schools in the cites as well. The invest­ment for non-​​subsidised schools to join the same pro­gramme is only $380 AUD per child.

Com­pre­hens­ive Edu­ca­tion Programme

We have a respons­ib­il­ity to invest in our children’s edu­ca­tion — it is not just another mar­ket. As a not-​​for-​​profit, we have the free­dom and the desire to make this hap­pen. We have no interest in vendor lock-​​in; build­ing sus­tain­ab­il­ity is an essen­tial part of our mis­sion. We have no incent­ive to build a depend­ency on us, and every incent­ive to ensure that schools and com­munit­ies can help them­selves and each other.

We only provide XOs to teach­ers who have been suf­fi­ciently enabled. Their train­ing pre­pares them to con­struct­ively use XOs in their les­sons, and is form­ally recog­nised as part of their pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment. Bey­ond the min­imum 15-​​hour XO-​​certified course, a teacher may choose to undergo a fur­ther 5–10 hours to earn XO-​​expert status. This pre­pares them to be able to train other teach­ers, using OLPC Aus­tralia resources. Again, we are redu­cing depend­ency on us.

Train­ing is con­duc­ted online, after the teacher signs up to our pro­gramme and they receive their XO. This scales well to let us effect­ively train many teach­ers spread across the coun­try. Par­ti­cipants in our pro­gramme are encour­aged to par­ti­cip­ate in our online com­munity to share resources and assist one another.

We also want to recog­nise and encour­age chil­dren who have shown enthu­si­asm and aptitude, with our XO-​​champion and XO-​​mechanic cer­ti­fic­a­tions. Not only does this pro­mote sus­tain­ab­il­ity in the school and give invalu­able skills to the child, it rein­forces our core prin­ciple of Child Own­er­ship. Teacher aides, par­ents, eld­ers and other non-​​teacher adults have the XO-​​basics (formerly known as XO-​​local) course designed for them. We want the child’s learn­ing exper­i­ence to extend to the home envir­on­ment and bey­ond, and not be con­strained by the walls of the classroom.

There’s a reason why I’m wear­ing a t-​​shirt that says “No, I won’t fix your com­puter.” We’re on a mis­sion to develop a pro­gramme that is self-​​sustaining. We’ve set high goals for ourselves, and we are determ­ined to meet them. We won’t get there overnight, but we’re well on our way. Sus­tain­ab­il­ity is about respect. We are tak­ing the time to show them the ropes, help­ing them to own it, and devel­op­ing our tech­no­logy to make it easy. We fun­da­ment­ally dis­agree with the atti­tude that ordin­ary people are not cap­able enough to take con­trol of their own futures. Vendor lock-​​in is com­pletely con­tra­dict­ory to our mis­sion. Our schools are not just con­sumers; they are pro­du­cers too.

As explained by Jonathan Nalder (a highly recom­men­ded read!), there are two primary notions guid­ing our pro­gramme. The first is that the nom­inal $80 invest­ment per child is just enough for a school to take the pro­gramme ser­i­ously and make them a stake­holder, greatly improv­ing the chances for suc­cess. The second is that this is a schools-​​centric pro­gramme, driven from grass­roots demand rather than being a régime imposed from above. Schools that par­ti­cip­ate genu­inely want the pro­gramme to succeed.

Tech­no­logy as an Enabler

Enabling this edu­ca­tional pro­gramme is the clever devel­op­ment and use of tech­no­logy. That’s where I (as Engin­eer­ing Man­ager at OLPC Aus­tralia) come in. For tech­no­logy to be truly intrinsic to edu­ca­tion, there must be no spe­cial­ist expert­ise required. Teach­ers aren’t IT pro­fes­sion­als, and nor should they be expec­ted to be. In short, we are using com­puters to teach, not teach­ing com­puters.

The key prin­ciples of the Engin­eer­ing Depart­ment are:

• Tech­no­logy is an integ­ral and seam­less part of the learn­ing exper­i­ence – the pen and paper of the 21^st century.
• To elim­in­ate depend­ence on tech­nical expert­ise, through the devel­op­ment and deploy­ment of sus­tain­able technologies.
• Empower­ing chil­dren to be con­tent pro­du­cers and col­lab­or­at­ors, not just con­tent consumers.
• Open plat­form to allow learn­ing from mis­takes… and easy recovery.

OLPC have done a mar­vel­lous job in their design of the XO laptop, giv­ing us a fant­astic plat­form to build upon. I think that our engin­eer­ing pro­jects in Aus­tralia have been quite innov­at­ive in help­ing to cover the ‘last mile’ to the school. One thing I’m espe­cially proud of is our instance on open­ness. We turn tra­di­tional sys­tems admin­is­tra­tion prac­tice on its head to com­pletely empower the end-​​user. Tech­no­logy that is deployed in cor­por­ate or edu­ca­tional set­tings is typ­ic­ally locked down to make admin­is­tra­tion and sup­port easier. This takes con­trol com­pletely away from the end-​​user. They are severely lim­ited on what they can do, and if some­thing doesn’t work as they expect then they are totally at the mercy of the admins to fix it.

In an edu­ca­tional set­ting this is dis­astrous — it severely lim­its what our chil­dren can learn. We learn most from our mis­takes, so let’s provide an envir­on­ment in which chil­dren are able to safely make mis­takes and recover from them. The soft­ware is quite res­ist­ant to fail­ure, both at the tech­nical level (being based on Fedora Linux) and at the user inter­face level (Sugar). If all goes wrong, rein­stalling the oper­at­ing sys­tem and restor­ing a journal (Sugar user files) backup is a trivial endeav­our. The XO hard­ware is also renowned for its rug­ged­ness and repair­ab­il­ity. Less well-​​known are the amaz­ing dia­gnostics tools, provid­ing quick and easy indic­a­tion that a com­pon­ent should be repaired/​replaced. We provide a com­pletely unlocked envir­on­ment, with full access to the root user and the firm­ware. Some may call that dan­ger­ous, but I call that empower­ment. If a child starts hack­ing on an XO, we want to hire that kid

Eval­u­ation

My talk fea­tures the case study of Doomadgee State School, in far-​​north Queens­land. Doomadgee have very enthu­si­ast­ic­ally taken on board the OLPC Aus­tralia pro­gramme. Every one of the 350 chil­dren aged 4–14 have been issued with an XO, as part of a com­pre­hens­ive pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment and sup­port pro­gramme. Since com­men­cing in late 2010, the per­cent­age of Year 3 pupils at or above national min­imum stand­ards in numer­acy has leapt from 31% in 2010 to 95% in 2011. Other scores have also increased. Think what you may about NAPLAN, but nev­er­the­less that is a stag­ger­ing improvement.

In fed­eral par­lia­ment, Robert Oakeshott MP has been very sup­port­ive of our mission:

Most import­antly of all, quite simply, One Laptop per Child Aus­tralia deliv­ers res­ults in learn­ing from the 5,000 stu­dents already engaged, show­ing impress­ive improve­ments in clos­ing the gap gen­er­ally and lift­ing access and par­ti­cip­a­tion rates in particular.

We are also engaged in lon­git­ud­inal research, work­ing closely with respec­ted research­ers to have a com­pre­hens­ive eval­u­ation of our pro­gramme. We will release more inform­a­tion on this as the eval­u­ation pro­cess matures.

Join our mission

Schools can register their interest in our pro­gramme on our Edu­ca­tion site.

Our Pro­spectus provides a high-​​level overview.

For a detailed ana­lysis, see our Policy Doc­u­ment.

If you would like to get involved in our tech­nical devel­op­ment, visit our devel­op­ment site.

Cred­its

Many thanks to col­leagues Ran­gan Srikhanta (CEO) and Tracy Richard­son (Edu­ca­tion Man­ager) for some of the inform­a­tion and graph­ics used in this article.

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.

I am speak­ing next Thursday at the Open Source Developers’ Con­fer­ence 2011 in Can­berra. The title is Australia’s Toughest Linux Deploy­ment. Yes it’s a play on the rug­ged­ness and flex­ib­il­ity of the XO’s design to meet the needs of remote communities.

Here’s the talk abstract:

A 300,000 seat Linux deploy­ment is noth­ing to sneeze at. What if those seats were actu­ally children’s laps? By provid­ing a flex­ible learn­ing plat­form, OLPC Aus­tralia aims to cre­ate a sus­tain­able and com­pre­hens­ive pro­gramme to enhance oppor­tun­it­ies for every child in remote Aus­tralia. What’s more, we plan to achieve this by 2014.

In focus­ing on the most remote areas of the con­tin­ent, the mis­sion is by no means easy. These areas are typ­ic­ally not eco­nom­ic­ally viable for a busi­ness to ser­vice, hence the need for a not-​​for-​​profit in the space. Expert­ise for hard­ware and soft­ware is vir­tu­ally non-​​existent. Set­tle­ments are small and spread very far apart. Envir­on­mental con­di­tions, cul­tures and life­styles vary wildly. They are very dif­fer­ent worlds from the coastal cit­ies where the bur­eau­cra­cies are based.

Even within com­munit­ies, dif­fer­ences abound. Schools often stand in stark con­trast to their sur­rounds. Gov­ern­ment and busi­ness interests have also made their marks.

This talk will out­line how OLPC Aus­tralia has developed a solu­tion to suit Aus­tralian scen­arios. Com­par­is­ons and con­trasts will be made with other “com­puters in schools” pro­grammes, OLPC deploy­ments around the world and cor­por­ate IT projects.

For example, stand­ard sysad­min prac­tice typ­ic­ally man­dates tight, cent­ral­ised con­trol over all sys­tems and infra­struc­ture. The OLPC Aus­tralia approach is the exact oppos­ite. By pro­mot­ing flex­ib­il­ity and ease of use, the pro­gramme can achieve sus­tain­ab­il­ity by enabling man­age­ment at the grass-​​roots level. The XO laptops them­selves are built espe­cially for edu­ca­tion. They are extraordin­ar­ily rugged as well as being inex­pens­ive. They are also totally repair­able in the field, with min­imal skill required. Train­ing is con­duc­ted online, and an online com­munity allows par­ti­cipants nation­wide to share resources.

Key to the ongo­ing suc­cess of the pro­gramme is act­ive engage­ment with all stake­hold­ers, and a recog­ni­tion of the total cost of own­er­ship over a five-​​year life cycle.

I’m pleased to announce two import­ant soft­ware releases from OLPC Australia.

XO-​​AU OS 10.1.3-au3 is the latest iter­a­tion of our oper­at­ing sys­tem for XO-1.5 hard­ware. It con­tin­ues our pro­cess of refine­ment on top of OLPC OS 10.1.3, to bet­ter suit Aus­tralian edu­ca­tional envir­on­ments. Details are avail­able in the release notes.

I’ve also put together a sum­mary of the improve­ments we have made to our oper­at­ing sys­tems in the past year.

XO-​​AU USB is a soft­ware ‘Swiss Army knife’ for XOs. It provides a boot menu to make import­ant XO oper­a­tions eas­ily access­ible, without the need to type any com­mands. It is our offi­cial means of installing our oper­at­ing sys­tems. Ver­sion 3 con­tains XO-​​AU OS 10.1.3-au3.

In my last blog post, I made the sug­ges­tion that Sugar integ­rate HTML5 more closely to allow for the cre­ation of activ­it­ies in stand­ard Web tech­no­lo­gies. The Karma Pro­ject has since been poin­ted out to me, and the demos look impress­ive. Unfor­tu­nately, its pro­gress looks to have stalled. There is now con­sid­er­a­tion hap­pen­ing in the com­munity about mov­ing Browse to a WebKit-​​based altern­at­ive, pos­sibly Surf.

It seems like now is the time to revisit the notion of integ­rat­ing HTML5 into Sugar itself. I feel that this can achieve a far more power­ful out­come than just swap­ping Browse with Surf. The primary weak­nesses of HTML5, its imma­tur­ity and dearth of good devel­op­ment tools, are being addressed. Microsoft and Adobe are con­tinue to move towards HTML5, which can only be a good thing.

We have the chance to tap into the cur­rent rush of developers cre­at­ing Web applic­a­tions. We don’t need to (and can’t afford to) go to the extreme always-​​online level of Chrome OS, but I think the devel­op­ments in that space are really show­ing what HTML5 can do in terms of applic­a­tions devel­op­ment. Take the Chrome ver­sion of Angry Birds, for example. Writ­ten (almost) entirely in HTML5/​JS (I think the “almost” part could have been imple­men­ted in HTML5 as well), it’s a fant­astic example of what can be achieved. More than a mind­less game, the phys­ics engine is real­istic enough to become a fun edu­ca­tional tool. It’s so much fun that most kids won’t even real­ise that they’re learning.

Adobe is drop­ping Linux sup­port for their Adobe AIR devel­op­ment plat­form. To be hon­est, I don’t really care. Why? Because I’ve been care­ful enough to not tie my efforts to a pro­pri­et­ary platform.

I’ve had sev­eral groups offer to write applications/​activities for OLPC Aus­tralia using pro­pri­et­ary tools like AIR. I’ve dis­cour­aged them every time. Had we gone with the ‘con­veni­ent’ route and acqui­esced, we would have been in quite a spot of bother right now. My pre­cious resources would have to be spent on port­ing or rewrit­ing all of that work, or just leav­ing it to bit-​​rot.

A beauty of Sugar and Linux is that they are not depend­ent on a single entity. We can develop with the con­fid­ence of know­ing that our code will con­tinue to work, or at least can be made to con­tinue to work in the face of under­ly­ing plat­form changes. This embod­ies our Core Prin­ciple #5, Free and Open.

Free and Open means that chil­dren can be con­tent cre­at­ors. The tele­vi­sion age releg­ated chil­dren (and every­one, for that mat­ter) to just being con­sumers of con­tent. I have very fond child­hood memor­ies of attempts to counter that, but those efforts pale in com­par­ison to the pos­sib­il­it­ies afforded to us today by mod­ern digital tech­no­lo­gies. We now have the oppor­tun­ity to prop­erly enable chil­dren to be in charge of their learn­ing. Edu­ca­tion becomes act­ive, not pass­ive. There’s a reason why we refer to Sugar applic­a­tions as activ­it­ies.

Grow­ing up in the 80s, my recol­lec­tions are of a dynamic com­put­ing mar­ket. Machines like the ZX Spec­trum and the early Com­modore mod­els inspired a gen­er­a­tion of kids into learn­ing about how com­puters work. By exten­sion, that sparked interest in the sci­ences: math­em­at­ics, phys­ics, engin­eer­ing, etc.. Those machines were afford­able and quite open to the tinkerer. My first com­puter (which from vague recol­lec­tion was a Dick Smith VZ200) had only a BASIC inter­preter and 4k of memory. We didn’t pur­chase the optional tape drive, so I had to type my pro­grams in manu­ally from the sup­plied book. Along the way, I taught myself how to make my own cus­tom­isa­tions to the code. I didn’t need to learn that skill, but I choose to take the oppor­tun­ity presen­ted to me.

Like­wise, I remem­ber (and still have in my pos­ses­sion, sadly without the machine) the detailed tech­nical bind­ers sup­plied with my IBM PC. I think I recog­nised early on that I was more inter­ested in soft­ware, because I didn’t spend as much time on the sup­plied hard­ware schem­at­ics and doc­u­ment­a­tion. How­ever, the option was there, and I could have made the choice to get more into hardware.

Those exper­i­ences were very defin­ing parts of my life, help­ing to shape me into the Free Soft­ware, open stand­ards lov­ing per­son I am. Being able to get involved in tech­nical devel­op­ment, at whatever level of my choos­ing, is some­thing I was able to exper­i­ence from a very early age. I was able to be act­ive, not just con­sume. As I have writ­ten about before, even the king of pro­pri­et­ary soft­ware and vendor lock-​​in him­self, Bill Gates, has acknow­ledged a sim­ilar exper­i­ence as a tip­ping point in his life.

With this in mind, I worry about the super­fi­cial solu­tions being pro­moted in the edu­ca­tion space. A recent art­icle on the BBC’s Click laments that chil­dren are becom­ing “digit­ally illit­er­ate”. Most of the solu­tions pro­posed in the art­icle (and attached video) are highly pro­pri­et­ary, being based on plat­forms such as Microsoft’s Win­dows and Xbox. The lone standout appears to be the wonderful-​​looking Rasp­berry Pi device, which is based on Linux and Free Software.

It is dis­ap­point­ing that the same organ­isa­tion that had the foresight to give us the BBC Com­puter Lit­er­acy Pro­ject (with the BBC Micro as its centrepiece) now appears to have dis­reg­arded a key bene­fit of that pro­gramme. By provid­ing the most advanced BASIC inter­preter of the time, the BBC Micro was well suited to edu­ca­tion. Soph­ist­ic­ated applic­a­tions could be writ­ten in an inter­preted lan­guage that could be inspec­ted and mod­i­fied by anyone.

Code is like any other form of work, whether it be a doc­u­ment, art­work, music or some­thing else. From a per­sonal per­spect­ive, I want to be able to access (read and modify) my work at any time. From an eth­ical per­spect­ive, we owe it to our chil­dren to ensure that they con­tinue to have this right. From a soci­etal per­spect­ive, we need to ensure that our cul­ture can per­severe through the ages. I have pre­vi­ously demon­strated how digital pre­ser­va­tion can dra­mat­ic­ally reduce the longev­ity of inform­a­tion, com­par­ing a still-​​legible thousand-​​year-​​old book against its ‘mod­ern’ laser­disc coun­ter­part that became vir­tu­ally unde­cipher­able after only six­teen years. I have also explained how this prob­lem presents a real and present danger to the freedoms (at least in demo­cratic coun­tries) that we take for granted.

Back in the world of code, at least, things are look­ing up. The Inter­net is head­ing towards HTML5/​JavaScript, and even Microsoft and Adobe are fol­low­ing suit. This raises some inter­est­ing con­sid­er­a­tions for Sugar. Maybe we need to be think­ing of writ­ing edu­ca­tional activ­it­ies in HTML5, like those at tinygames? Going even fur­ther, per­haps we should be think­ing about integ­rat­ing HTML5 more closely into the Sugar framework?

I’ll fin­ish with a snip­pet from a speech given by US Pres­id­ent Obama in March (thanks to Greg DeKoenigs­berg for bring­ing it to the atten­tion of the community):

We’re work­ing to make sure every school has a 21^st-​​century cur­riculum like you do. And in the same way that we inves­ted in the sci­ence and research that led to the break­throughs like the Inter­net, I’m call­ing for invest­ments in edu­ca­tional tech­no­logy that will help cre­ate digital tutors that are as effect­ive as per­sonal tutors, and edu­ca­tional soft­ware that’s as com­pel­ling as the best video game. I want you guys to be stuck on a video game that’s teach­ing you some­thing other than just blow­ing some­thing up.

The video of my talk at linux​.conf​.au is online. You can watch/​download it online.

Over­all, I think it went quite well. A per­sonal cri­ti­cism is that I need to ser­i­ously cut back on my use of ‘um’ and ‘ah’ sounds. Sug­ges­tions on com­bat­ing this prob­lem and/​or gen­er­ally improv­ing my speak­ing skills are welcome.

Speak­ing of talks, I found this one by Sir Ken Robin­son to be espe­cially illu­min­at­ing. It’s sum­mary of how and why tra­di­tional edu­ca­tion meth­ods are fail­ing us, and what we can do about it. I think it goes some way towards explain­ing the kind of think­ing behind OLPC.

I’ll be at linux​.conf​.au fly­ing the OLPC Aus­tralia flag. In addi­tion to giv­ing a talk, I have plans for a whole range of other things, includ­ing:

• run­ning a Birds of a Feather session
• host­ing a stand at Open Day
• con­trib­ut­ing XO-1.5s to win as door prizes

Any assist­ance you can offer is more than welcome!

That’s not all. On Fri­day we made our most sig­ni­fic­ant soft­ware release, XO-​​AU 10.1.3-au1.

This is an import­ant mile­stone for OLPC Aus­tralia. It is the first XO OS build inten­ded to be installed onto all XO-1.5s in Aus­tralia, includ­ing those in the field. XO-1.5s ordered from the fact­ory will have at least this build installed by default. Many improve­ments have been made to make the soft­ware more appro­pri­ate for Aus­tralian children.

If you want to be kept updated and take part in OLPC Aus­tralia tech­nical devel­op­ment, see our par­ti­cip­a­tion page.

I will be speak­ing at linux​.conf​.au 2011 in Bris­bane about OLPC Aus­tralia, with a focus on the tech­nical side. We have been doing some amaz­ing stuff, but thus far we have been very quiet about it in the tech­nical com­munity. It’s time to fix this oversight.

My talk is titled, Enabling Con­nec­tions to Oppor­tun­ity: OLPC Aus­tralia. If you’ll be at the con­fer­ence, watch me talk on Thursday at 14:30. If you won’t be, grab the video once it is out.

Also speak­ing with me is Ian Cun­ning­ham, who works for the North­ern Ter­rit­ory Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and Train­ing. Ian is heav­ily involved in the deploy­ment of OLPC tech­no­logy in North­ern Ter­rit­ory Schools, and will be able to deliver accounts from an educator’s perspective.

Here’s a copy of the abstract:

Sec­ond­ary speaker: Ian Cunningham

Aus­tralia is offi­cially a developed coun­try, but that status hides inequit­ies that exist within. In par­tic­u­lar, chil­dren in remote Aus­tralia typ­ic­ally have far fewer oppor­tun­it­ies for edu­ca­tion and com­mu­nic­a­tion than their coun­ter­parts in met­ro­pol­itan regions. Recog­nising that their situ­ation is not dis­sim­ilar to those seen in the devel­op­ing world, One Laptop per Child Aus­tralia was founded.

The mis­sion is ambi­tious: to enhance learn­ing oppor­tun­it­ies for the 400,000 chil­dren, aged 4–15, liv­ing in remote Aus­tralia, by 2014. OLPC Aus­tralia are on track to rep­lic­ate suc­cess stor­ies such as Uruguay to have a com­pre­hens­ive edu­ca­tional pro­gramme out to each and every one of these children.

The centrepiece is a learn­ing device, known as the XO. Through lever­aging FLOSS, the XO provides unpar­alleled con­nectiv­ity and oppor­tun­it­ies for chil­dren to learn.

Under­pin­ning the pro­ject are seven core prin­ciples. The gestalt of these prin­ciples form an import­ant found­a­tion to the edu­ca­tional goals of the pro­ject. The fifth prin­ciple, Free and Open Source, will be dis­cussed in prac­tical con­text of the Aus­tralian circumstance.

Aus­tralia presents some inter­est­ing chal­lenges that are less com­mon in the envir­on­ments that the XO was ori­gin­ally designed for. On one hand, we have a vast, geo­graph­ic­ally isol­ated con­tin­ent, sparsely pop­u­lated with some of the most ancient cul­tures in the world. On the other, there is mod­ern tech­no­logy and Western-​​style governance.

This talk will present how OLPC Aus­tralia have been innov­at­ive and respons­ive to meet the Aus­tralian situ­ation. Some examples include:

• the world’s first deploy­ment of the new XO-1.5 models
• a stream­lined ver­sion of the XS School Server
• an eco­nom­ical and prac­tical rack­ing and char­ging sta­tion for XOs

It will dis­cuss how the use of tech­no­logy under­pins a hol­istic edu­ca­tional pro­gramme, and how OLPC Aus­tralia works with depart­ments of edu­ca­tion, schools and com­munit­ies to build a sus­tain­able operation.

If you have ever wanted a way use your tech­nical skills to bene­fit those most in need, this is the talk for you. Edu­ca­tion is a key vehicle for clos­ing the gap for the peoples in remote Aus­tralia. As a FLOSS pro­ject, your con­tri­bu­tions also bene­fit those abroad.

Here are our bios:

Srid­har Dhanap­a­lan grew up in the 1980s, as the per­sonal com­put­ing revolu­tion was heat­ing up. With only two tele­vi­sion chan­nels in his town, he turned to his com­puter for solace. He wishes he had dis­covered FLOSS before the late 1990s, because down­load­ing GNU Emacs over an acous­tic coupler would have been fun. Srid­har is a former board mem­ber of Linux Aus­tralia, and a pre­vi­ous pres­id­ent of the Sydney Linux Users Group. He is cur­rently the Tech­nical Man­ager (CTO) at One Laptop Per Child Australia.

Ian Cun­ning­ham is an IT Pro­ject Officer at the North­ern Ter­rit­ory Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and Train­ing (NTDET). He has over 20 years teach­ing and lec­tur­ing exper­i­ence in Aus­tralia and abroad. A Linux user since Red Hat 4, Ian has been act­ive in pro­mot­ing the use of FLOSS in edu­ca­tion. He provides tech­nical sup­port and ment­or­ing for the NTDET OLPC Trial.

If you want to be kept updated and take part in OLPC Aus­tralia tech­nical devel­op­ment, see our par­ti­cip­a­tion page.

Yes, this is quite belated. I’ll explain why in a sub­sequent post.

linux​.conf​.au this year was in Wel­ling­ton, New Zea­l­and. It just keeps get­ting bet­ter! It’s always great meet­ing people you oth­er­wise only know online. I was espe­cially impressed by the OLPC NZ team.

Imme­di­ately fol­low­ing linux​.conf​.au, I jumped on a plane to Christ­ch­urch to embark on a week-​​long tour of the South Island. Long story short, it was the time of my life! I made some amaz­ing friends. I also saw and did incred­ible things, including:

• awe-​​inspiring views of gla­ciers, glacially-​​formed land­scapes, turquoise-​​coloured rivers and lakes, beau­ti­ful skies and more
• heli­hike: a heli­copter trip onto a gla­cier, then hik­ing on it
• a night on a boat on Mil­ford Sound, prob­ably the most beau­ti­ful place on Earth
• every extreme activ­ity I could get my hands on, including:
  • three bungy jumps (thril­logy combo): Kawa­rau Bridge (43 metres), Nevis (134m) and Ledge (47m)
  • two swings: two of the scar­i­est jump styles — Back­wards and Gimp Boy Goes to Hollywood
  • a 15,000ft sky­dive
  • the Triple Chal­lenge: a Shotover jet boat ride, fol­lowed by a heli­copter trans­fer to raft­ing on the Shotover river
    
  • a wil­der­ness safari along the Dart River, includ­ing walks through forests and a scenic jet boat ride

I have most of my pho­tos online now:

• 2010-​​01-​​24 New Zea­l­and hol­i­day, Day 1, pt 1
• 2010-​​01-​​24 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 1, pt 2
• 2010-​​01-​​25 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 2, pt 1
• 2010-​​01-​​25 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 2, pt 2
• 2010-​​01-​​26 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 3, pt 1
• 2010-​​01-​​26 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 3, pt 2
• 2010-​​01-​​26 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 3, pt 3
• 2010-​​01-​​27 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 4, pt 1
• 2010-​​01-​​27 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 4, pt 2
• 2010-​​01-​​27 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 4, pt 3

I think what sur­prised me most was how adven­tur­ous I can be when I’m not in my ‘nat­ural hab­itat’. I’m not nor­mally a thrill­seeker at all, but in NZ I made the decision to take a hol­i­day from myself as well as from work and home. I even made a con­cer­ted effort to not touch com­puters at all. My phone was off­line for most of the trip (I was using it as a cam­era). I never thought that being cut-​​off could feel so liberating.