Leverage the technology
I notice in a recent Age Newspaper report that the Northern Territory Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET) is piloting some laptops from the OLPC to decide whether to go ahead with a trial program involving a whole class of Australian students for an extended period. From the extended pilot project they are keen to establish the learning benefits and identify the associated teaching strategies and resources required.
Perhaps we should not be suprised to read that some Australian indigenous children are exposed to conditions typical of those expected in developing countries. Although we contacted the Australian United Nations office about their knowledge of the OLPC project last year, nobody got back to us. At least now from the news report I have a real person to contact and try again.
ITWire reports (6 Jan 2007) that Google's Open Source Program Office donated to some notebook computers to schools in Fiji. The 10 Lenovo Thinkpads were delivered with Edubuntu, Open Office, Gimp and other specialist education software preinstalled. In the post, MIT staffer Jonathan Proulx indicated that the use of Free Open Source Software was critical to the sustainability and adaptability of the project. "Since it's free, there's no additional software cost when the project expands, or if community groups wish to further leverage the technology."
I raised the article with the KhmerOS team to gauge their thoughts of this Linux distribution.