OLPC Oceania/Content

Oceania Community - News - Content - Evaluation - Languages - Countries
Cook Islands -French Polynesia - Kiribati - Nauru - New Caledonia - Niue - Palau - Papua New Guinea - Samoa- Solomon Islands - Tonga - Tokelau - Tuvalu - Vanuatu

Content

This page lists the evolving top-level strategy for content. There will also be local interpretations and issues; see the country pages in this category for detail.

XO content for children

• Default apps
• Removed
  • ePals
  • Newsreader
• Added
  • Flash
  • Java
  • Cartoon builder
  • Colors
  • Flipsticks
  • Map
  • Joke machine
  • Ruler
  • Scratch
  • Simcity
  • Speak
  • Stop watch
  • Gmail

Academic linkages/collaboration

• High level consultations with universities (USP, DWU, UQ, QUT, etc) to set up a research and development function for OLPC Oceania. Some dialogue has been established with the following institutions:
  • UQ Marine Science Dept
  • Queensland University of Technology
  • USP has lots of connections:
    • USP is creating an ICT Centre, funded from JICA
    • JICA-USP research defining principles for multimedia and e-learning in the Pacific Islands (http://www.usp.ac.fj/jica/ict_research/educational_multimedia/educational_multimedia_intro.html)
    • The PRIDE project (http://www.usp.ac.fj/pride)
    • OLPC TWG set up (contact: Dr Robert Whelan)
    • PREL. PREL serves the educational community with quality programs, services, and products developed to promote educational excellence. We work throughout school systems, from classroom to administration, and collaborate routinely with governments, communities, and businesses. Above all, we specialize in multicultural and multilingual environments.http://www.prel.org/

Localisation

• Establish Pootle projects for the main languages.
  • In PNG, Solomons and Vanuatu this will be the local pidgin
  • Specific languages associated with each trial site such as Marovo in the Solomons
  • Identify communities and champions/volunteers in each country who will take up the translation
  • Dialogue with SIL (http://www.sil.org)
  • Involve NGO content providers (through national steering group)
  • Translate the text-to-speech synthesiser. Use communities to do this – for instance Mick Saunders’ students in Belleville, Ontario are continuing to work on Solomon Pidgin and Marovo

Building capacity and communities for content development

• WikiEducator is a key to allow some early progress on creating local content.
  • Link the current Learning4Content (http://wikieducator.org/Learning4Content) workshops in the Pacific Islands to OLPC, inviting people involved in the OLPC trials and content owners to the workshops
  • Work with Curriculum departments to help them appreciate that they can easily convert curriculum materials to PDF and IMS content packages for the XO
  • As above, but with NGOs and projects that might wish to create content for the XO
  • Use the power of the WE to build communities to develop content and localisation

We have now tested the school server with IMS Content (SCORM) packages from the Wikieducator. These render very well and are very efficient. As the school server it it's current edition does not yet have Moodle implemented (a customised implementation is planned) we have done the following proof of concept:

• Creating a new OLPC section on the Wikieducator for content development and as a repository http://www.wikieducator.org/OLPC_Oceania
• Creating some simple lesson plans for teachers (about the OLPC and XO, and how to operate the XO) on the Wikieducator and then published these using the "Collections" facility, both as PDF and as an IMS package.
• Collecting most of the 57 lesson plans for Biology in Primary Schools http://www.wikieducator.org/Biology_in_elementary_schools and publishing this collection as an IMS content package.
• Loading both examples above onto the school server. PDF files can then be accessed by an XO by downloading them from the XS. The IMS packages unzip into a folder. A simple index.html file is then written listing all the content pages and saved in the same folder on the XS. It's then possible to simply browse to the folder using a connected XO and the list of pages opens allowing very simple access. The pages display very well, and very quickly.
• To demonstrate how they would appear on a standard version of Moodle, we have loaded both the above examples into the Solomon Islands SchoolNet Moodle http://www.schoolnet.net.sb (log on as guest). On the smaller screen we see the text in the navigation pane of Moodle's SCORM view overflows onto the main content pane. Otherwise it works very well.

School Server

Things we are already trying on the school server

• Wikieducator collections published as IMS content packages (see above)
• UNESCO CD (Bangkok office) of educational materials Strengthening ICTs in Schools and Schoolnet Project in the ASEAN Setting with 100s of applets and animated educational materials for English, Science and Maths - however many are in PowerPoint format and Java, which does not yet work on the OLPC (if you disagree let me know - David). The framework works fine however, it is a great proof of concept.

The above are demonstrated on four XO laptops connected to a school server here [1]

• Local language PDF readers for children published by SIL PNG
• 50 lesson plans for Primary School Biology, exported from the Wikieducator as an IMS content package;
• From Solomon Islands SchoolNet http://www.schoolnet.net.sb using eXeLearning
  • Vanga Rural Teacher Training College (the country's main vocational teaching college) teacher training manuals created using “exelearning”
  • Beekeeping manual
  • Kokorako (chicken farming) manual
  • Turtle conservation manual
  • Financial literacy self-learning modules created by UNDP
  • Animations regarding overfishing and mangrove deforestation in local Marovo language, created by a University of Queensland project
  • The Curriculum Development Centre in Solomon Islands is looking into providing some of it's new primary curriculum materials.

The above package can be downloaded and installed on a school server (unzip into /var/www/html/content). It is very basic but can be used as a demonstration if nothing better is available. (Note, the UNESCO CD is not included in the download).[2]

Children's content

• Websites
  • http://childrenslibrary.org/
  • http://www.tki.org.nz/
  • OLPC Oceania open educational resources on the Wikieducator
• Content to include on the XO