[OLPC_Boston] Friday 9:45 AM: talk from the Eastern Townships School Board, Quebec

[Samuel Klein]

FYI.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Dear all,

We are finishing up the last day of technical talks at XO Camp,
discussing synchronous and asynch collaboration.  Transcripts will be
available soon on
  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XOCamp_2/Notes

For the last morning of XO Camp tomorrow, we have a few special guests
from Quebec:

Ron Canuel and others from  the Eastern Townships school board in
Quebec will be giving a 45-minute presentation about the last 5 years
of their saturation deployment of computers in the classroom.

They have a good relationship with Uruguay's CEIBAL program (see
below) and are keen on sharing their experiences with us.  They have
also worked with Terri-Nicole (a Harvard Ed School student who has
been @ the Camp this week).  Please come at 9:45 am tomorrow for their
talk and a Q&A
session afterwards.  An introduction to their work follows, and slides
for the talk are attached.

SJ


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ron Canuel
Subject: Greetings from the Eastern Townships School Board Quebec Canada


Good afternoon Samuel,

I just received the email from Greg indicating that... you are now
coordinating the dossiers that Greg had.  As I had written to Greg, I
have assembled a team of four experts in the field of laptop
technology and deployment who are finalizing the presentation for next
Friday, the 16th of January.  We are very excited to present and have
reviewed the agenda as well as the format of the week.

For information purposes, our School Board, the Eastern Townships
School Board is one of the few school districts in North America to
have provided free wireless laptops to all
students/teachers/administrators/trustees from Grades 3-11, including
our two adult education centres.  We began our deployment in 2003 and
have acquired much expertise and knowledge on the keys to successful
deployments of technology in education.  We remain one of Canada's
best kept secrets because we have witnessed a less than enthusiastic
endorsement of the role of technology in the classroom.

Please take a look at our website: www.etsb.qc.ca  and look under the
Enhanced Learning Strategy.

The OLPC represents a major and significant shift in paradigms in
education and sharing with you and your colleagues our experiences
will hopefully make the deployments in other countries easier.

The US Department of Education have used our pedagogical and
technological rubrics and posted it on their website, since they
acknowledged our important work in this area as well.

All of this expertise was fully appreciated by our education
colleagues in Uruguay, who signed a partnership agreement with our
School Board, to assist them in the deployment of the OLPC laptops
throughout the country.  We visited Uruguay and also had delegations
from Uruguay visit our schools.  As you can understand, we are also
receiving inquiries from other countries, most recently from the
ambassador of South Africa who wants our School Board to provide
further information on how laptops can make a difference in their
schools.  I can include Paraguay and Peru as well.

We also concluded an agreement with the world famous Cirque du Soleil,
in which we provide education to the minor artists of their shows,
synchronously, from our head office in Quebec.

All of this to say that, fully understanding the major upheaval that
the OLPC personnel have just experienced, we look forward to seeing
you on the 16th of January,

Sincerely,

Ron Canuel
Director General
Eastern Townships School Board
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