OLPC Oceania

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Cook Islands -French Polynesia - Kiribati - Nauru - New Caledonia - Niue - Palau - Papua New Guinea - Samoa- Solomon Islands - Tonga - Tokelau - Tuvalu - Vanuatu



see also OLPC Friends, OLPC Australia and OLPC New Zealand

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OLPC Oceania describes OLPC activities in the Islands of the Pacific (excluding New Zealand and Australia). Ethnologically, the region includes sub-regions of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. Geographically, it includes thousands of coral atolls and volcanic islands with small populations, grouped in 26 island nations.

OLPC activities in the region are coordinated by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), with Dr. Jimmie Rodgers as Director-General, with additional guidance from members of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS), with Mr. John Budden as executive secretary. In consultation with governments, donor partners and other key stakeholders, OLPC and SPC have developed a concept note to deliver "One Laptop per Pacific Child" by 2015. Download the Concept Note (here).

OLPC Boston has gifted 5,000 laptops for seeding projects in the Pacific Islands. SPC is managing the rollout of projects in every PI and provides technical help, teacher/student/parent training and other assistance as needed to run the projects. Initial countries are

  • Niue
  • Nuaru
  • PNG
  • Solomons
  • Vanuatu

Each project is establishing its own Measurement and Evaluation criteria

Related activity in the region includes implementation of a satellite-based Pacific Rural Internet Connectivity System (Pacific RICS) consisting of low-cost VSAT satellite broadband Internet that will provide a broad infrastructure to accomodate large-scale OLPC rollout. This initiative, launched at the 2007 Forum Leaders meeting in Tonga responds to a call by Leaders in the Pacific Plan Digital Strategy to bridge the digital and communication divide between the urban and rural and remote areas in the Pacific. Initial funding came from the Australian Government, however for its usefulness to be realized in the region's rural and remote communities, Pacific Island countries need to invest in roll-out programs at national levels. The RICs together with the Oceania OLPC initiative is a package for rural and remote areas in the Pacific, addressing both the transport of information as well as the content - 'Every RICS site is an OLPC Hub'.

Initial countries include Solomon Islands, Tonga, Kiribati, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. It is expected that other countries will participate later in the year.

To view the current status of progress within a leading site see the Solomon Islands or Papua New Guinea pages.

Participating countries

Trial deployments have started, or as of October 2008 are in preparation at the following countries:


  1. Solomon Islands
  2. Papua New Guinea
  3. Nauru
  4. Kiribati
  5. Vanuatu
  6. New Caledonia
  7. Niue
  8. Tuvalu

Links to these countries will provide detailed information on the project, pictures and progress and developments worthy of note. Each country will be trained to keep their country page up to date.

Key contacts

The following people have been instrumental in the evolution of this project:

  • Dr. Jimmie Rodgers, Director General, Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC)
  • Dr. Barry Vercoe, OLPC Asia-Pacific Liaison
  • Michael Hutak, OLPC Regional Director, Oceania
  • David Leeming, Oceania OLPC Coordinator, SPC, and Technical Advisor, People First Network, Solomon Islands
  • Ian Thomson, RICS and Oceania OLPC Coordinator, SPC, [1]
  • Phil Hardstaff, IT Manager, SPC
  • Rangan Srikhanta, Executive Director OLPC Australia
  • John Budden, Economic Infrastructure Advisor, Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat
  • Technical Working Group let by Dr. Robert Whelan, University of the South Pacific (USP)
  • Pia Waugh, OLPC Friends, Technical support and volunteer coordinator

Strategy

The team is working on all of the overarching strategies below. At the moment we are in a learning phase - the Oceania top-level strategy will be informed from out experience in the 8-country trials above. Each country will have to develop local interpretations of these strategies. Meanwhile, we hope to post information on our approach in the areas below, in the relevant country pages of this category.

There has been a lot of discussions with potential donors for rollout of OLPC. Some donors have not yet accepted that OLPC is the right way to go. Here are some Objections to OLPC

Documents and Resources

The following is a collection of materials that have been produced or obtained by the project.

Document formats are ODT (use Open Office) or PDF.

Teacher Training

Please see the Teacher Training page.


Primary Language ,|x|Language spoken::x}}
Number of Laptops Number of manufactured laptops::5000
Keyboard Layout Keyboard::OLPC English Keyboard
Build ,|x|Software release::x}}
Date(s) Arrived in Country ,|x|Has received laptops on date::x}}
School Server ,|x|School server status::x}}
Deployment Status [[Deployment status::Plan to use a School Server, possibly 0.4.

Some islands may be using pre-release 8.2 image.]]