[LINK] OLPC deployment in Australia

[Tom Worthington]

Sridhar Dhanapalan will talk about the recent deployment of OLPCs in 
Yirrkala in East Arnhem Land, at the Sydney Linux User Group Slug 
meeting, at Google Sydney on 30 April 2010: <http://slug.org.au/node/128>.

I have been sceptical of the value of the One Laptop Per Child project: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/10/olpc-in-australia.html>.
But OLPC Australia appear to be doing good work on providing computers 
for education in remote aboriginal communities <http://www.olpc.org.au/>.

My main worry was that too much emphasis was on revolutionary hardware 
and software, not on educational content, training and support. But then 
I guess it is gadgets that get the attention.

There is a very glossy advertisement about the project being broadcast 
on TV. This doesn't necessarily help the credibility of the project, 
making it look like a marketing exercise to promote the corporate sponsors.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/user/3890