[LINK] OLPC in Australia

[Tom Worthington]

At 10:52 AM 28/10/2008, Stilgherrian wrote:
>I recently accompanied my partner to a school where the OLPC XOs had 
>been in use for 2 or 3 weeks and it was truly an eye-opening 
>experience to see 6-year-olds using them with confidence. ...

It will be good when we have reports of the educational use of the 
OLPC machines. The problem is that when you get a room full of adult 
computer people looking at them they naturally see them as little 
laptops. There is one report on an OLPC project in Nepal: 
<http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/321>.

What might be an interesting would be to see if the simplified mobile 
GUIs developed for mobile devices were suitable for use by young 
children. Something like Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) 
<http://www.ubuntu.com/products/mobile> would provide advantages of 
commonality with desktop interfaces, over the OLPC's Sugar interface 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_%28GUI%29>.

It would be easy for those used to a conventional desktop GUI to 
operate the learning computers with a mobile version of their usual 
interface. Also the interfaces could be more easily fitted to the 
current netbook computers, so there would be alternatives to the one 
model of OLPC.

Of course this assumes that it is possible to produce a usable cut 
down desktop GUI interface. Microsoft has received criticism for its 
Windows Mobile interface for trying to make it look too much like 
Microsoft Windows and therefore not easy to use on a small device.

More in my blog at: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/11/mobile-interface-for-childrens.html>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University