[OLPC New Zealand] Quick write-up of 2020 Headlight series talk in Wellington June 7 2012

[Tabitha Roder]

Thanks for the write up Nicholas; it's really appreciated as I would
have liked to be there had I not been giving a research presentation
then teaching that day.
Thanks
Tabitha



On 10 June 2012 10:20, Nicholas <independentcommercial at gmail.com> wrote:
> I piggybacked Tabitha's invite to Barry Vercoe's 2020 Headlight series
> talk in Wellington. Here is a bullet-pointed list from memory (I
> didn't make notes as I didn't think I'd be doing any sort of write-up
> of the talk)
>
> *Free buffet & coffee!
> *2020 Headlight series first talk
>
> *Barry Vercoe is introduced.
>  - educator (MIT)
>  - composer (classical)
>  - OLPC Australia rollout instigator
> Nowhere is it mentioned he invented CSound!
>
> *An outline is given of the educating method at MIT media lab,
> Barriers to learning are highlighted. Mentioned are things like:
> middle management (in general hinders learning), walls (people need to
> be able to talk to each other, meet, collaborate), funding streams
> (work on this thing here, not that thing over there). Collaboration is
> mentioned several times during the talk as an essential aspect of the
> OLPC project.
> *Overview of the OLPC Australia project. Looking at education from the
> point of view of young people at a disadvantage due to lack of access
> to adequate education resources. 50,000 Australian children are either
> found to be living in remote or very remote locations. Up to 50% of
> these remotely living kids don't go to school.
> *Teacher-centric approach to an OLPC roll-out. An excellent overview
> of the process by which teachers can encourage or inhibit the process
> of a rollout of OLPCs. A process of concentrating on and working
> directly with the teachers who are actively enthusiastic in using the
> OLPCs is arrived at. OLPC teachers in Oz who qualify can count hours
> training towards their professional development. Flow diagrams showing
> how a slow uptake from the principles to the teachers flows down to
> the slow uptake of the children. A kind of negative feedback loop.
> *Pilot of South Pacific nations, the remotest of the remote in Papua
> New-Guinea. Great video of kids using the computers straight from
> nothing. Outside using computers, girls showing the way forward. No
> problems there--presuming no Internet.
> *The best photo of all is a group of kids taking apart broken OLPCs to
> make working units from broken ones. Bootstrapped approach--the whole
> system is taken as a learning opportunity.
> *New charging station! Eliminates wires, elegant design--gang-able to
> suit class size..
> *Proposed NZ roll-out--5000 laptops. Barry & Alan travel to the East
> Coast with OLPCs in hand. Photographs. NZ demographic make-up
> discussion. People have some resources available, there is agreement
> further discussion is needed in this area.
>
> The 2020 Headlight Barry Vercoe talk seemed to be mainly attended by
> education professionals, an example might be those working with
> Computers in Homes. I didn't see any other geeks I could easily
> discern and was therefore severely under-dressed for the occasion.
>
> It was an excellent talk, gave a really good overview of the project
> as a whole. I enjoyed meeting Barry and the many other people who were
> there. It was evident all who attended were passionate about
> education.
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