OLPC signs historic MOU with University of the South Pacific

OLPC Foundation has donated fifteen XO laptops to the University of the South Pacific (USP) as part of an historic new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) committing the two partners to work together to further research and teacher training on 1-to-1 Computing in the Pacific.



Speaking Saturday at an official handover of the laptops at a ceremony in Suva, Fiji, OLPC Oceania director, Michael Hutak, welcomed the new partnership as a breakthrough for OLPC in the region.
"This is a great day for OLPC in the Pacific," said Mr Hutak. "USP is the leading teacher training institution in the region with campuses in all 10 Pacific countries where there are OLPC projects. Governments and ministries of education will now have access to the best minds in the region for their country to using the XO laptop in the classroom. And at the Japan Pacific ICT Centre, they will now have access to the best facilities too.

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Marshall Is. leads Pacific on ICT for kids

The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) kicks off its OLPC program this week with consultations between Ministry of Education (MOE) officials and representatives from the One Laptop per Child Foundation and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community. Following the installation in 2010 of high-speed internet via fibre-optic cable, the remote Micronesian nation is rolling out OLPC as part of the MOE's wider "Comprehensive Technology Plan" for education.

OLPC is a key plank in the MOE's broader vision that will see RMI "schools becoming an environment where all students and staff have ready access to the best available range of current technology, software tools, and applications." The MOE is planning an innovative rollout of OLPC that will incorporate a teachers' professional development program to ensure teachers are well prepared when the laptops come to their communities.

"The Marshall Islands' investment in technology infrastructure is being matched by investment in its people too," said OLPC's Oceania director Michael Hutak, "With the rollout of OLPC in schools taking shape with meticulous planning, RMI is ensuring the next generation will not be left behind. "

Read the RMI OLPC Project document here.
Read the RMI Comprehensive Technology Plan here:

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OLPC Oceania at UN Asia Pacific Forum, Bangkok

APAC Regional Forum on ICT Applications, Bangkok, hosted by ITU, UNESCAP and the Government of Thailand.

View more presentations from One Laptop per Pacific Child

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OLPC calls for Australia’s Aid Program to Bridge the Digital Divide

The OLPC Foundation has made a submission to the Australian Government's Independent Review of Aid Effectiveness.
While other agencies scale up their commitment to innovation in aid delivery, we note in our submission that Australia's contribution to global efforts on bridging the digital divide has been insufficient. We make the case that:

"From the perspectives of humanitarian aid, human development and human rights, contributing to global efforts to bridge the digital divide needs to become an urgent and central priority of Australia’s aid program."

We argue that Australia’s aid agency needs to develop a substantial, coherent, and overarching digital strategy with respect to the delivery of its programs and the conduct of its activities.

• Read our submission to the review here, or download the document here:
  http://www.aidreview.gov.au/publications/sub-onelaptop.pdf

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New Solomons study puts hard evidence of OLPC's positive impact

An independent evaluation commissioned by the Solomon Islands Government (SIG) of the OLPC pilot projects in the remote Western Province has boosted calls to expand the program in the country and across the Pacific.
The study, conducted by the Australian Council for Educational Research(ACER), evaluated OLPC deployments in three village schools in the Marovo Lagoon and found the impact on students, teachers, parents and communities undeniably positive.
"OLPC must and should be given the opportunity to expand in Solomon Islands," the report quotes a school principal involved in the pilots. "It must be realised appreciated and embraced."
For students, the big pluses were access to new knowledge and the opportunity to learn independently. Children said the program helped them master the basics of reading, writing and mathematics but also opened up the world by enhancing learning through discovery: "To help me to learn many things I did not know before" as one Grade 5 boy told the researchers.
The SI government has welcomed the report, citing "clear potential benefits for schools and based on the positive outcome of the report the Ministry of Education is now focusing on the way forward".
The report was commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MEHRD), which will now investigate options for scaling up the program in the country. The study fills a gap in local evidence on the global OLPC program and offers a crucial local perspective. OLPC projects are now up and running in 7 Pacific countries, with 8 more countries seeking support from international donors to introduce OLPC in their education systems. The SIG/ACER study now provides valuable evidence for Pacific countries to support their policy and program plans.
ACER undertook the evaluation in September 2009, some 15 months after students first received their “XO” laptops. The key requirement was to identify the impact of the OLPC program, both positive and negative, on the three Marovo schools. ACER conducted interviews with teachers, students, parents and community members, and surveyed MEHRD officials and other key stakeholders. ACER identified the improvements and published recommendations in the report. (ACER is the publisher of the OLPC Global Literature Review, the only comprehensive account of evaluation of the XO.)
The Solomon Islands is one of only a few countries to develop its own Monitoring and Evaluation Framework for the program. ACER’s evaluation focused on the impact of the OLPC program on teaching and learning, among other objectives stated in the framework. Three trial projects began in July 2008. The schools in the trial were Sombiro, Batuna and Patukae Primary Schools in Marovo, Western Province.
The evaluation indicated that the impact of the OLPC program has been very positive and while there have been some technical challenges, the new technology has been enthusiastically embraced by the schools and communities. The evaluation was carried out over two months in late 2009. Local interviewers were trained in workshop sessions as part of the evaluation. Interviews were conducted with students, parents, teachers and community members. Consistent interview questions, tailored for each group, were used.
The report’s highlights include:

• evidence to date indicates that the trial has largely met the objectives of the program as outlined in the MEHRD framework.
• Parents, students, teachers and community members see major benefits in the program.
• The provision of the laptops has been greatly appreciated as a step in improving learning for students. This appreciation was repeatedly expressed in interviews.

The report recommended that the program will be strengthened by:

• the provision of more technical and preferably local support;
• further training for teachers, and also for parents and community members
• an ongoing program of training
• continued attention to monitoring and evaluation.

The OLPC program provides rugged, low-cost, connected laptops to children in developing countries. The program seeks to encourage learning by engaging students in a range of educational software undertaken both individually and with eachother via the XO laptop. The software, called “activities” in the OLPC system, come pre-installed on the laptop for immediate use, or they can be adapted to suit local needs, or supplemented by wholly local content.
OLPC Oceania is one of three programs carried out under the Pacific Plan Digital Strategy with the support of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community. The Solomon Islands trial was also undertaken with the technical and resource support of the region-wide initiative, “One Laptop per Pacific Child”.
Related Links:

• Download the SIG/ACER report here.
• Read a news item from the Solomon Star newspaper here.
• More on the OLPC programme in Solomon Islands here.
• Access the Solomon Is government's Measurable Objectives and evaluation framework.

Related blog posts:

• Solomons endorses scale-up of OLPC pilots (Sept 09)
• All eyes on Solomons as evaluation gets underway (Sept 09)
• OLPC pilot in Patukae thrives one year on (Sept 09

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Worrying impact of global economic crisis on Pacific education

A international conference on the impact of the economic crisis on the Pacific has been in underway in Port Vila, Vanuatu, this week. A key theme is the impact on Pacific education, where the crisis has affected both the quality of and access to education -- two key areas which OLPC seeks to address. The conference has been looking at evidence-based investment in education, early childhood development and child protection.
The website has many policy resources available for download including this excellent overview of the issues facing Pacific educators, prepared by Helen Tavola for the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat. Read more!

Release: Fiji government embraces OLPC

Suva, Fiji, November 15, 2009 -- The Republic of Fiji is on target to launch a One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program in 2010 to coincide with the introduction of a new primary school curriculum in the country. Following meetings in the country's capital Suva last week, OLPC's regional director for Oceania, Mr. Michael Hutak, said Fiji had ambitious plans to distribute 70,000 OLPC XO laptops in its schools commencing with a proposed roll-out to 2000 children in the first phase of the program in 2010.

"Fiji's planning is in depth and on target and I am impressed by the broad consultative approach that the government have put in place on OLPC," said Mr Hutak, who met with Fiji's Minister for Education, Mr. Filipe Bole in Suva on Friday. He also met with Fiji's Permanent Secretary of Education, Mr. Filipe Jitoko, and the Deputy Permanent Secretary, Mr. Josef Natau, who is responsible for managing the project.

DPS Natau has established a cross-sector steering committee on OLPC, based in the Ministry of Education (MOE) but with inputs from other Ministries responsible for information, finance, e-government and digital and library services, as well as non-government partners such as the School of Education at the University of the South Pacific. Central to planning is a fully scoped monitoring and evaluation framework which officials are developing with reference to the M&E logframe developed by the Solomon Islands Department of Education for its own OLPC pPilot programme. The Fiji MOE is also looking into integrating OLPC into the new distance learning project it is implementing in partnership with Telecom Fiji in Fiji's more remote islands.

"This whole-of-government approach, with a strong attention to M&E and supported by wide consultations with communities and other stakeholders is a recipe for ensuring sustainability of OLPC not just in Fiji but across the Pacific," said Mr.Hutak, "Fiji's approach is one which other countries in the region might observe and learn."

The meetings came at the conclusion of a two-day OLPC Country Planning Workshop, jointly hosted by OLPC Foundation and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and conducted with the help of the Pacific Regional Initiatives in the Delivery of basic Education, better known as the PRIDE Project, based at USP's Laucala campus in central Suva.

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The Government of Fiji announced its intention to implement OLPC in a statement in June this year. Fiji is looking for donors to support the project in its initial start-up phase, and has asked the OLPC Oceania Technical Working Group to assist in technical assistance and resource mobilisation.

Fiji is one of at least 15 Pacific island nations to announce an OLPC country program as part of One Laptop per Pacific Child initiative.

One Laptop per Child Foundation is a global non-profit initiative headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. and dedicated to realising better quality education in the developing world through the design, manufacture and distribution of rugged, low-cost laptop computers designed specifically for children aged 6-12.

RELATED LINKS:
Fiji Country Request
Country Planning Workshop
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Key dox: easy access

Key documents related to OLPC Oceania can now be accessed at our new online document repository at www.box.net/keydox. A permanent link to the repository now appears in links to resources on the right. Read more!

Pacific ready for OLPC's "quantum leap forward"

In a key acknowledgment of its growing acceptance in the Pacific, OLPC has been referenced in the region's new strategic education blueprint as contributing to a potential "quantum leap forward" in education standards in the region.

With a vision aspiring to "quality education for all", the Pacific Education Development Framework 2009-2015 (PEDF), cites the OLPC deployments around the region -- now in five countries with eight more in the queue -- as evidence that "Pacific education systems are making increasing use of the advantages [ICT] affords".
The PEDF, launched in March at the 7th Forum Education Ministers' Meeting in Tonga, will guide education policy in Pacific countries in the run up to the 2015 deadline on the Millennium Development Goals.

Citing "encouraging results" from initiatives such as OLPC's programs in Niue, Nauru and the Solomon Islands, the framework (p.19) says students were:

"...more interested and motivated, absenteeism reduced, learning as measured on test scores improved, collaboration and teamwork enhanced, and communication and computational skills improved."

and...

"There is now a potential for Pacific countries to move beyond incrementalism and with assistance of ICTs make a quantum leap forward in realising goals of access, quality and equity in education."

OLPC Oceania is now working with operational and donor partners to turn this vision into reality. Read more!

Pacific Educators get behind OLPC Oceania

OLPC won warm acceptance at the recent 7th Pacific Forum Education Ministers’ Meeting (FEdMM), in Nuku'alofa, Tonga this week with no less than 13 Pacific Island countries requesting to participate in a OLPC Oceania Country Trial program. This followed acknowledgment in the keynote address of growing acceptance of ICT and OLPC in the region.

Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat Secretary General, Tuiloma Neroni Slade, told Education Ministers and Officials from 16 Pacific nations:

“ An example is the development challenge that the region faces with HIV and AIDS. Information Communications Technology, or ICT, has a much more important role in education than perhaps it did seven or eight years ago. Many countries have engaged with the One Laptop Per Child initiative and we hope that the educational benefits of this and other ICT ventures will be worthwhile, as ICT has much to offer our region.”

OLPC was an official observer at the meeting, alongside regional and international actors such as UNICEF, the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, and European Union. OLPC made a joint presentation with its regional deployment partner, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community outlining a regional effort to establish a "Pacific Pool" of XO laptops in the region, feeding Pacific schools with hardware as they become ready to deploy them.

Some 13 nations have requested to take part in the regionwide initiative: Fiji, Samoa, Federated States of Micronesia, Solomon Islands, Nauru, Tokelau, Niue, Tonga, Palau, Tuvalu, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Republic of Marshall Islands. Existing small pilots in 5 countries -- Nauru, Niue, PNG, the Solomons and Vanuatu -- will be scaled up and deployments in the other 8 countries will roll out as donor support is mobilised. Read more!

Pacific ICT ministers encourage OLPC

The Pacific ICT Ministerial Forum: Connecting the Unconnected, organised by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and kindly hosted by the Kingdom of Tonga, took place 19-20 February 2009, at Nuku'alofa, Tongatapu. The Forum included official representation from 16 Pacific Island Countries, 11 Ministers responsible for Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and 2 Prime Ministers.

In their communique, Pacific leaders' recognised the

"number of initiatives[1] to make available low cost ICT end-user devices to Forum Island Countries and that these initiatives have brought improved access and use of ICTs, particularly for young people, and that such initiatives should be further encouraged;

[1] e.g., One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Read more!

Pagelio: Give PNG children a chance

SPEECH by Dr Joseph Pagelio, Papua New Guinea Secretary for Education, to the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly*, Port Moresby, 25 November 2008.

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Dear Co-Presidents, Honorable Members of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen...

It is a personal privilege for me to have the opportunity to address you today, as it is an honour for my country to host you all in this important meeting.

There are many things we can all learn from each-other, both developed and developing nations, as we affirm our commitment here together to democracy, human rights and better cooperation between nations and peoples. We also note our shared commitment to work together to achieve global goals and targets as outlined in the Millennium Development Goals.

Papua New Guinea is a young democracy, we achieved Independence only in 1975. We have a population of about 6.25 million, with an average population growth rate of 2.7%. Half of our people are under 19 years old. There are over 800 different languages spoken and 85% of our people live in rural communities based on the traditional village structure, and they are dependent on subsistence farming supplemented by cash cropping.

In this context, as I speak to you today, as Secretary of Education, I am especially concerned with our progress on MDG 2, achieve Universal Primary Education by 2015. About half of our school-age children are not in formal education, and of the rest, half are in mission and faith-based schools, and the other half, about a quarter, are in the state education system. There is a great challenge to increase access to quality resources within PNG schools. Our rural schools are especially disadvantaged by transport costs, lack of infrastructure in telecommunications and electricity, lack of technical support and of course lack of funding.

So you can see, in order to meet our obligations on MDG2 by 2015 is truly a huge national task. The question for us becomes, how can we accelerate progress in a cost effective way? What can we do to make the leap which will see more children attending school, more children completing Basic Education. Here in PNG we have decided that improving the quality of our existing education system is the key. This follows some impressive testing of ICT in education, and we can see that ICT may just be the factor that can help us overcome the challenges we face of difficult terrain, remote locations, of power and communications infrastructure. We believe ICT in education can help us make that leap to achieve our long term goals.

Our government has been engaged in long-term strategic planning to try to meet these challenges within our own budget constraints. Our current Medium Term Development Strategy (2005-10) notes that "Modern telecommunications and the Internet have the potential to greatly expand education opportunities for all Papua New Guineans. By exploiting the opportunities available from the Internet, increased education opportunities can be provided at all levels without adding to budgetary pressures."

Over the course of this year we have been conducting trials in rural schools and in teacher education institutions with the XO laptop of the One Laptop Per Child program. I'm sure you are all familiar with the famous green and white laptop with the little rabbit ears that double as network antennae. These trials have proved very successful in energizing the children, unlocking their creative potential and creating a new collaborative learning environment that goes beyond the school gate and into the community. We are very excited by the prospect of connecting all our communities using the instant wireless network that these computers automatically create. In our villages this computer can work on solar power, it's rugged and can stand the treatment a child can dish out; our children can use it in the bright sunlight or in the classroom. It cannot be stolen or traded because if it loses it's central connection with the school server, it shuts down and becomes useless. It doubles as an e-book reader which means our entire curricula can be digitised and delivered electronically saving us millions of dollars in printing text books. Ten thousand or more books can be accessed from inside the remotest hut. And we can share our own stories in our own languages – all 800 of them --and preserve them for future generations.

And because this meshed network can share a single internet connection, we can see that if this technology can be deployed in remote highland and island villages as well as in larger towns and cities, it will become a catalyst and incentive for us as a government to deliver urgent investments in human resources, in teacher education, in power and communications infrastructure, all of which build long-term economic sustainability.

We are looking at ICT to be a key driver of three strategic objectives for delivering Better Basic Education, objectives which focus on the short-, medium and long term:

FIRST – We want to improve the quality of existing Basic Education. The short-term goal here is to complete our One Laptop Per Child pilot and planning phase in 2009 to cover 10,000 children or about 25 or so schools. The medium-term goal is to scale up One Laptop Per Child to reach all our children who are in Basic Education by 2015 (about 250 000 children).

SECOND – We want to increase the number of children completing Basic Education. We have seen that OLPC can drive an increase in retention and completion rates, as well as lifting teaching standards and the capacity of my Department overall. This is a medium- and long-term goal

THIRD – We want to extend access to Basic Education to all PNG children. As we improve quality, increase completion rates and build our capacity, we will also continually seek to bring more children into Basic Education. This is a long-term process of continuous improvement, which will require a coordinated, whole-of-government effort with the ultimate goal being to meet our Millennium Development Goal commitment to achieve Universal Primary Education (MDG2). We may not make 2015 but we will make it.

In education, our long-term goal is to achieve high-quality systems and standards through reform of the existing education system and more focus on skills development. We see OLPC as the perfect vehicle to drive this agenda.
This initiative also recognizes that if we are to meet our international commitments to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, especially the target of universal primary education by 2015, we must invest in our children now.
Finally, we recognize that while we can aspire to meet our goals, we will need the help and counsel of valued partners to achieve them.
We hope to work with our valued partner in development, the European Union, to develop an integrated strategy and a dedicated ongoing funding stream to enable us to fully develop ICT in education for the betterment of our children and our society.
In our trials we have seen undeniable evidence that given the chance, given the access, our children will embrace new technology to the fullest. It has been extremely heartening to see the skill of their minds on display as they use this world class technology to enhance their learning, and to work with eachother. Our children, like all children, can shine if given the chance. With your help we can give them that chance.

Thank you

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Today's six-year-olds reach Y12 in 2020...

In 1996, internet access was restricted and novel in global terms, today it is wireless and approaching potential ubiquity. So much has changed in technology in the last 12 years, how can we know what will 2020 look like? In education, how do we prepare children for a world we cannot predict? What should education be when information is just a few clicks away?

Here are some things we do know about the school leavers of 2020:

• They will be competing for jobs on a global market.
• They will be working with as yet undeveloped computational devices, many in still to be imagined industries, in digitally connected communities.
• They will need 21st century skills to succeed: information literacy; critical thinking; innovation; creativity; open-ended problem solving; technological fluency...

In 2008 the people of the Pacific are facing challenges from poverty, climate change, globalization, natural and human-made disasters, rapid population growth and increasing rates of urbanizationi. These forces are impacting the natural environment, traditional cultures and practices, food security, local markets and livelihoods, communities and families.

Countries that fail to equip their children to meet present and future challenges will be at an even greater disadvantage when the not-so-distant future arrives. They will hand the baton to a new generation less able to support and raise their own families, and thus more vulnerable social disintegration. As adults, they will risk being left behind, a legacy they will pass on to their own children.

However we have options. We can choose the future. We can help the children of the Pacific secure their future livelihoods. We can give a child a laptop today which can extend her education, broaden her knowledge, expand her skills, and unlock her creative potential. We can provide a laptop to every child to help them make own extraordinary contributions to our complex and increasingly interconnected world. In many Pacific societies this means being better able contribute to the communal well-being of the family, the clan and the group.

It is up to today's leaders to ensure that this aspiration becomes reality. In this context laptops are not the answer but instead they pose a question: Do the children of 2008 in the Pacific deserve an education that will equip them for 2020? At a time when Australia, for example, is rolling out its Digital Education Revolution, delivering one laptop per senior child, the question for Pacific leaders is not whether laptops for children are appropriate, but whether they are going to be early or late in supplying them.

Under the auspices of the Pacific Plan, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community is working with countries and donor partners to deliver One Laptop per Pacific Child. Read more!

XO trials roll out to the Pacific

One Laptop per Child and the Secretariat for the Pacific Community are working together to give the children of the Pacific access to the digital world: knowledge, information, skills, training, technology, and life-long learning.

OLPC and SPC are committed to community consultation and participation. We are putting the needs of children, families and communities at the centre of our partnership efforts. Read more!