So to cut a long story short OLPC Australia project has gone through various formations. Its current formation is to assist 400,000 XO’s across Australia in five years specifically in rural and remote areas. Please see http://www.laptop.org.au/vision/overview
I started doing work on this project with Pia and Jeff Waugh on OLPC Friends in 2008. So it was a pleasure for me to take on a role of Project Management and Development for the web solutions used by OPLC Australia.
In Australia we sometimes forget that in our own backyard we have harsh conditions and children living without access to the same day to day resources and privilege’s that you experience living in a city or town. The OLPC Australia project is aimed at using the XO laptops as a tool to help implement education programs for these children. The program is not just about giving a child a laptop, its about giving a child a tool to help them learn, and the teacher a tool to help the teach. Whilst this is a technology program so far as in there is technology being used as a tool, the main focus of the program is on the education. Therefore the programs focus is on training and educating people, and XO’s are the tool used.
There are also monthly meetings being held at the Sydney Linux Users Group, this is held at the Google head office in Sydney details can be found at. Anyone is welcome to come along to find out more, it is not just for technical people educators and mums and dads are encouraged to come and find out more. There are various ways you can support the program please see http://www.laptop.org.au/