Last year, Telstra worked with OLPC to develop a media campaign promoting OLPC in Australia, and raising money for 500 XOs to be sent to aboriginal communities. This month they took home an award from the Cannes Lions festival for media, in recognition of the excellence of that campaign. See the Cannes entry for images and screenshots of their designs.
Rumour has it that the followup this year will be astonishing — I can’t wait to see it.
As noted on the OLPC Oceania blog last week, the Marshall Islands is the latest nation to receive new XOs through OLPC Oceania.
Oceania continues to be a model for solid deployments. The Marshall Islands project has a clear project document and technology plan, and is moving steadily towards implementing them. Last week the national team held an educators workshop with teachers from across the region, and Mike Hutak and Ian Thompson.
Acting Minister of Education Mattlan Zackhras encouraged all teachers to take advantage of the workshop so that everyone in the islands could benefit from the program. As he said at the opening ceremony,
“By bridging the digital divide to an inclusive global community, our students here in the islands can share ideas with other students in the Pacific and from around world“.
Penelope @ OLPC Australia just created a short video which is an on-the-ground account of the OLPC program from a remote Australian teacher’s perspective –you can see it online here.
Clinton Roy of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland recently gave an Ignite talk about OLPC.  He touches on collaboration, the musicpaint activity, and OLPC’s projects in Australia and New Zealand.
Rob McCrae, ICT Director for Auckland’s Diocesan School for Girls, shares a conversation he had with parents at his school about why laptops are a fundamental platform for children learning. Via Scott McLeod.
What has become important is the “just in time†model. A model which sees essential habits and attitudes of learning being the focus. A model which sees the ability to think about our own thinking as a focus.
And expect to see traditionally-held beliefs challenged. Here is a model of the human brain showing the areas that are being engaged as the same person (an experienced Web surfer) reads a book and, at a separate time, is browsing the Web…