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.

OLPC Aus­tralia have been awar­ded a Bronze Lion at this year’s Cannes Lions Inter­na­tional Advert­ising Fest­ival, the advert­ising coun­ter­part of the Cannes Film Festival.

I think this is fant­astic recog­ni­tion for a Free Soft­ware pro­ject, espe­cially one that is focused on assist­ing chil­dren in some of the most remote parts of the world. I feel hon­oured to have been part of this success.

We’re happy for people to get involved to help us in our mis­sion. If you’d like to par­ti­cip­ate, espe­cially (for me) in the tech­nical field, please get in touch with me or con­tact OLPC Aus­tralia through our Web site.

In hon­our of OLPC Aus­tralia’s second anniversary, we have pro­duced a video reveal­ing some of the suc­cess we have achieved.

Feel free to spread it far and wide

SBS tele­vi­sion recently screened a doc­u­ment­ary about Yves Behar, the per­son behind the dis­tinct­ive indus­trial design of the OLPC XO laptop. It’s a fas­cin­at­ing insight into the mind and influ­ences behind one of the most influ­en­tial design­ers around. The doc­u­ment­ary was ori­gin­ally aired in Novem­ber 2008, so it is a little dated. For example, Yves talks about the “XOXO” XO-​​2, which has since been replaced with the XO-​​3. Nev­er­the­less, it is well worth watching.

You can view the full ver­sion at the SBS Web site. The sec­tion on OLPC starts at 14:48.

UPDATE: if you are hav­ing trouble view­ing the video, try this one instead. The atten­tion to detail and qual­ity is astound­ing. Yves rightly points out that products seen in lesser eco­nom­ic­ally developed coun­tries are nor­mally second hand or second rate. The design is rugged and func­tional. It provides scope for per­son­al­isa­tion. What was most inter­est­ing to me is Yves’ com­ment­ary on the key­board. Its one-​​piece design means that the let­ters can be prin­ted in one silk­screen­ing pro­cess. This makes it feas­ible to trans­late into lan­guages that would be uneco­nom­ical with a stand­ard key­board design.

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.

An intriguing offer came through to the SLUG-​​chat mail­ing list a few weeks ago: an Aus­tralian ver­sion of Beauty and the Geek is in the works, and they’re look­ing for geeks.

I’ll be hon­est and admit that I’m a fan of the US ver­sion of the show. The ‘geeks’ feel like humor­ous cari­ca­tures of some of my own traits, and I sup­pose I find bimbo stu­pid­ity funny in a way (although at other times I just roll my eyes).

How­ever, I dis­like that the out­come of each series is that the geeks bend over back­wards to learn to be ‘cool’ while the bim­bos simply ‘learn’ to tol­er­ate the geeks. On the epis­odes that visit the con­test­ants a few months after their ten­ure at ‘the man­sion’, the geeks have clearly changed them­selves but the bim­bos have mostly rever­ted to their pre­vi­ous state.

I’m prob­ably biased, but it seems lop-​​sided. It rein­forces the view (at least in West­ern cul­tures) that it’s okay to be an idiot but con­versely it is unac­cept­able to be socially awkward.

We see this pos­i­tion pushed across pop­u­lar media. The other prime offender at the moment that I can think of is the sit­com, The Big Bang The­ory. In that show, a bimbo with loose val­ues is por­trayed as ‘nor­mal’ while a group of intel­li­gent males are openly ridiculed.

Again, I’ll admit that I watch that show from time to time, and I do find it enter­tain­ing. I have the capa­city to laugh at myself and traits that I can identify with. At the same time, it still irks me that this is what people are being fed, not just by this pro­gramme but by the mass media in general.

What does the FOSS com­munity think?

Bill Gates was inter­viewed by the BBC’s Money Pro­gramme. As he pre­pares to sig­ni­fic­antly reduce his dir­ect work for Microsoft Cor­por­a­tion, Bill reflects upon what got him star­ted in the first place and what kept him ahead of the ‘com­pet­i­tion’. The video provides a brief glimpse into the char­ac­ter that foun­ded and guided Microsoft. Regard­less of whether you love him or hate him, he is indeed a fas­cin­at­ing character.

Skip ahead to the 40 second mark, to the seg­ment titled “How the teen­age Gates and his friend Paul Allen got access to a com­puter”. The story accord­ing to Gates was that he and his friends were allowed to hack on a company’s com­puter “like mon­keys” at night to find bugs. He spent hours read­ing manu­als and exper­i­ment­ing to fig­ure out this “fas­cin­at­ing puzzle”. How­ever, they were stuck at the “tinker­ing” stage until they stumbled across the source code in a rub­bish bin. It was only then could the mon­keys evolve.

I don’t think the pro­du­cers of the show real­ised the sig­ni­fic­ance of this admis­sion, since they quickly cut to another seg­ment. Read­ing between the lines, Gates is essen­tially con­fess­ing that he would not have pro­gressed had he and Paul Allen not found the source code. Without this know­ledge, and without this oppor­tun­ity to under­stand and exper­i­ment with how the intern­als of a com­puter worked, Gates and Allen would have been severely con­strained in their abil­ity to found a soft­ware com­pany and develop products

I would go so far as to say that Microsoft owes its very exist­ence to this access to source code.

To any­one with a passing famili­ar­ity to how things worked back then, this comes as no sur­prise. Source code was expec­ted to be free, and this in turn nur­tured a gen­er­a­tion of com­puter hack­ers. But whereas Richard Stall­man saw the amaz­ing poten­tial of this free­dom and wanted to pre­serve it for all, Bill Gates appears to have per­ceived it as an advant­age for him­self that he must deny to others.

LotD:  Gates memo shows user frustration

I prom­ised way back in Janu­ary that we’d release a video of that month’s SLUG meet­ing — our up-​​close-​​and-​​personal with Microsoft. We did just that a month ago, but I totally for­got to men­tion it here.

I know, I suck.

Any­way, you can get the video and slides here (the links in the ori­ginal announce­ment are no longer func­tional). It’s been poin­ted out to me that the slides in the video vary slightly from the PDF, but the dif­fer­ence is min­imal. It’s three months old now — so don’t expect any rev­el­a­tions — but it’s still an inter­est­ing watch.

LotD: Save money by buy­ing dir­ectly from the USA (for Aus­trali­ans only)

Two dif­fer­ent tests, one same out­come. Things that make you go hmmmm…

Which Trans­former Are You?

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LotD:  Trans­formers: The Game

“Free­dom is the right of all sen­tient beings.” — Optimus Prime

This one throwaway line in the new Trans­formers film is in fact homage to the ori­ginal Trans­formers series. As obser­v­ant read­ers of this blog may have noticed, I am quite a fan of the Trans­formers mul­ti­verse, par­tic­u­larly of the 1986 anim­ated film (amongst other things, it has an awe­some soundtrack and some great vocal work). Optimus Prime was a child­hood hero of mine, so this motto has always struck a chord with me.

It also makes me won­der, if the Auto­bots are such strong advoc­ates of free­dom, are they them­selves pro­grammed with Free Soft­ware? Con­versely, are the Decep­ticons proprietary?

LotD:  The 10 Real Reas­ons Why Geeks Make Bet­ter Lovers