Here’s the video of the talk I said I’d be giving at OSDC 2011, titled Australia’s Toughest Linux Deploy­ment:

In it, I outline our educational programme and how the technology fits into it. Some key points:

• we have a better version of the video I show in the talk, up on YouTube
• we maintain a Policy Document, which provides an overview of our overall programme
• OLPC Australia have two core principles in addition to OLPC’s original five
• we have some support in government at different levels — for example, we were praised in federal parliament and the print media by a prominent federal Member of Parliament
• our programme is showing beneficial results, and we are engaged in longitudinal and detailed evaluation
• we have a comprehensive educational programme, with online training and certifications (such as our XO-cert course)
• we are breaking dependence on special expertise and infrastructure — building sustainability and grass-roots support is key
• deployments are made at the classroom level, which is more manageable than saturating a whole school at once
• we don’t provide XOs without training — a teacher must earn a certification before they can receive XOs for their class
• our support is focused on enabling schools and communities to help themselves, and each other
• we have innovated in the technology space, with offerings such as the XO-AU OS, XO-AU USB, XOP and XS-AU
• contextualising learning, for example through localisation, is a powerful tool to improve engagement from the child, school and community
• we invite people to join our development efforts
• there’s a nice surprise mentioned towards the end, which I shall elaborate upon in the near future

For those of you who have seen me speak about OLPC Australia at SLUG, this is a much more polished talk.