OLPC Europe/Report JDC SAX meeting dd 20140109

1. Jan DE CRAEMER is the Adjunct Directeur Vlaamse Overheid Dpt. Onderwijs en Vorming.

Agenda

1. Intro
2. How to get an olpc cell in every ministry of education in Europe?
3. List of ICT Leaders in the Flemish educational landscape?

Intro

1. --SvenAERTS 15:31, 9 January 2014 (UTC) cf. my email to him and other ict leaders in the educational landscape I'd found on a document from a couple of years ago. But turnover in the departments seems high as many emails didn't work anymore, people had been replaced/left, ... , lot of expertise lost? My email to JDC had a spelling mistake in it and I'm quite sure I've only been copy/pasting from websites and documents ... fortunately it was passed on to him from the leading magazine on education in Flanders: www.klasse.be whom I had included in the "To:" and someone was so kind to forward my email to JDC.
2. JDC: knows OLPC very good. Of course. He's one of the most stable elements in the Educational Landscape. I've found his name in several documents and official website, his name keeps popping up. To no surprise he's one of the right arms of the Minister of Education. They organized a 2 year campaign at the flemish educational landscape to help all schools/univs to switch to open source. Cf. pics. After a couple of years, the evaluation was one of frustration. Following lessons were learned. Absorption capacity of the schools proved to be low. The open source community has/had a low commercial capacity e.g. to respond to public tenders, to compete against the Microsoft and Apple sales force (however limited they are), capacity to respond to support formula's/offers to the educational landscape, ... .
   1. A large budget was given to the schools to develop an ICT vision and infrastructure. Varied results. At the Ministry of Education's level they are now discussing the conclusions and develop a new plan of action.
   2. We both shared our experiences on OLPC and olpc. Mainly I think OLPC has created the best laptop-2-tablet / laptop / tablet for kids. There is this image that it's only for poor kids and countries, we really have to get rid of. I think JDC's belief in the open software and open hardware community has received a serious dent / reality check, recovering slowly.
   3. At the Ministries level, they leave the schools free to develop a vision on ICT. There are just "eindtermen" = minimum knowledge and capacities students must have acquired by the end of each school year level. How and with what infrastructure, programs, software, operation system, tablets or not, ... the ministries doesn't interfere with that. There is enough capacity at the school network levels to develop a vision on that. On a more personal level, JDC certainly doesn't advise to go for tablets. Note: There's been a series of publications by ICT teachers are completely into iPads, e.g. ... then the OLPC XO-XS laptop-2-tablet is a MUCH more preferred option.

How to get an olpc cell in every ministry of education in Europe?

1. http://www.eun.org/ = European Schoolnet is a network of 30 European Ministries of Education, based in Brussels, Belgium. We aim to bring innovation in teaching and learning to our key stakeholders: Ministries of Education, schools and researchers. Mainly to respond to EU Directorate General for Education call's of proposals and tenders. So they are the ones we have to propose the creation of an olpc lab and cell to in their cf. below Future Classroom Lab.
   1. European Schoolnet link olpc
2. http://fcl.eun.org/ = Future Classroom Lab. The EU Future Classroom Lab is created by European Schoolnet, its supporting 30 ministries and industry partners to help visualise how conventional classrooms and other learning spaces can be easily reorganised to support changing styles of teaching and learning.
   1. The EU Future Classroom Lab link olpc

Actions

1. Sven to take up contact with RedHat to see if they can hire me to lead some olpc europe cell.
2. JDC will pass on the update email address list of ict leaders in the flemish / european educational landscape
3. Sven has subscribed to the European Schoolnet facebook pages
4. Sven has subscribed to the European Schoolnet facebook pages

Sincerely: --SvenAERTS 15:31, 9 January 2014 (UTC)