Deployment Strategy
OLPC Australia has developed a deployment strategy designed to ensure the longevity and sustainability of this project.
1. Teacher training
Where possible we run teacher-training workshops at schools before the laptops are given to the children. This allows for the teachers to familiarise themselves with the XO, its capabilities and functionality and, in turn, understand the added benefit the educational tools have in the classroom. Teacher-training sessions also assist the teacher in integrating the XO into the curriculum.
2. 1:1 Institutions
The key is to create an industry centred on education innovation by investing in university capabilities to conduct school teacher coaching in the XO learning environment. To make this a reality, we have created a subsidiary called 1:1 (one-to-one).
1:1 is focused on collaborating with university education faculties to coach teachers in integrating technology into their classrooms.
Why university education faculties?
Universities are the custodians of tomorrow's teachers and the best place to establish an industry focused on education innovation. We are establishing 1:1 branches and hosting them within university education faculties. Those schools set to receive donated XO laptops will fund their teachers to take part in teacher training workshops. This funding comes from each school's Government subsidised staff training budgets.
3. Deployment
To ensure the success of the project, OLPC Australia has chosen entire classrooms, grades or schools to receive the XOs to achieve a level of digital saturation. The key point is choosing the best scale for each circumstance. For example, if you don't have enough laptops to deploy across an entire school, you select some classes (say, years three and four) who are all given an XO, while the younger kids know they will receive one when they reach that particular grade.
In this way the whole community becomes responsible for the OLPC Australia program, opening up children and adults alike to new experiences beyond their (often insular) neighbourhoods. Opportunities to improve their own circumstances, and that of the wider community, become evident, and ultimately this deployment strategy will help these communities grow together and expand in different directions, outside of what was ever considered possible before.
4. Evaluation
ACER has been involved with OLPC Australia to develop a framework within which to measure the success of the remote deployments. Having interviewed the Indigenous communities prior to the integration of the XOs, ACER will return six months after the deployments to collate empirical evidence on the effectiveness of the devices. ACER will measure differences in student attendance, student morale and the teachers' capacity since introducing the XOs into classrooms.
