At primary school level in Australia textbooks are rare. Published workbooks, such as Mathematics problems and tests are more common, as are worksheets (unfortunately in my opinion), but textbooks are not.
The conversion to digital textbooks at primary level, I imagine, would not be a priority here because very few classrooms really use them. Teachers generally source information, sometimes photocopy it from teacher resource books or library books, sometimes find it on the web and print or project in the classroom. With the XOs, teachers are instructing students to locate information on the web. I don't hear many stories of classes using the XOs as eBook readers. I have a couple of thoughts as to why this might happen. Firstly, distributing the same text to a class of XOs has its challenges. It would require a USB stick to be passed around the class which is time consuming and requires high teacher support in the lower years, disrupting the lesson. It would be easier to print. Secondly, the information a teacher might source is not necessarily in a format suitable for an eBook reader. Tracy Richardson Education Manager One Laptop per Child Australia P: 02 9378 6155 M: + 61 418 744 318 E: tr...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au -----Original Message----- From: iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Edward Mokurai Cherlin Sent: Sunday, 5 February 2012 4:42 PM To: iaep Subject: [IAEP] (no subject) Please pass this on to OLPC Australia <olpc...@lists.laptop.org >, OLPC New Zealand <olpc...@lists.laptop.org >, OLPC Oceania <olpc-ocea...@lists.laptop.org >, Grassroots <grassro...@lists.laptop.org > On Fri, February 3, 2012 7:41 am, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: > Hello everyone, > > You may be interested in a review I have written of the OLPC Australia > education programme: > > http://www.dhanapalan.com/blog/2012/02/01/creating-an-education-progra > mme/ Thank you for this. Is Australia planning for the necessary conversion from printed textbooks to all-digital Open Education Resources? I say that it is necessary in part because the computers cost less than the printed textbooks, and also because we cannot integrate computer software into the curriculum until we go to digital OERs. Bangladesh has done so, and both Uruguay and South Korea have announced plans to do so. There are OERs on almost every subject at all levels, but outside Bangladesh there are no complete integrated suites covering all of the requirements, including teacher training. We need governments and school authorities to take this problem seriously, to plan for what is needed, and to think about how to organize and fund the conversion. > It contains the video of a talk I gave at the linux.conf.au conference > in January, and a more detailed explanation of that talk. > > Some of the key points: > > * We have a comprehensive education programme that highly > values teacher empowerment and community engagement, with a focus > on building sustainability. > * The investment to provide a connected learning device to every > one of the 300 000 children in remote Australia is less than 0.1% of > the annual education and connectivity budgets. > * For low socio-economic status schools, the cost is only $80 AUD > per child. > * Our programme is available to any school in Australia, for $380 > AUD per child. > * Our programme is schools-centric, with a strong focus on the teacher. > * A teacher must undergo training and earn a certification to > qualify to receive XOs for their class. > * Training is conducted online, and hence scales very well. > * We have an online community to provide peer-driven support, > assisted by OLPC Australia personnel. > * Technology development and deployment is guided by the principle > that it must be manageable by non-technical personnel. > * Our technology platform is open and not locked-down, providing > maximum opportunity for children to learn and empowering > schools/communities to own the deployment for themselves. > * We are seeing real educational results from our efforts, and are > engaged in longitudinal and detailed evaluation. > * Our supporters include corporations and members of parliament at > state and federal levels, but we can always use more help :) > > Please have a read if you are interested, and contact us if you would > like to take part in our mission. > > We will be releasing more information on this educational programme in > the coming months. > > > Sridhar > > > Sridhar Dhanapalan > Engineering Manager > One Laptop per Child Australia > _______________________________________________ > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) > IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep