OLPC Tuvalu/Deployment/Content

Curriculum Materials

 * The Curriculum and ICT departments should discuss ways of testing the viability of providing some digitised teaching and curriculum materials.
 * These can be existing materials in PDF format, or newly created teaching resources.
 * One way would be to work with Champion teachers based in Funafuti. Fano is very enthusiastic about this. He has a Sugar on a Stick and can develop materials for the trials.

Wikieducator and OERs

 * As there is Internet access, it is possible to search the OER repositories and use them to support specific curricula.
 * Wikieducator and Wikipedia articles can be accessed and downloaded as PDFs. They can also be copied (the wikimedia code) into new pages in the OLPC Tuvalu Wikieducator section, and adapted for certain age groups or local context.

Wayne Mackintosh (founder of Wikieducator) expounds:

''So for example, a teacher could re-contextualise and re-use a wikipedia article for a lesson by adapting the resource for the age level of the students or selecting those components of an encyclopaedia article which map to the particularar curriculum. It would be great to see WikiEducators experimenting with the adaptation and remix of Wikipedia articles as lesson plans or teaching materials for specific curricula. We're keen to try this under the OERNZ project here in New Zealand.'' (Wayne Mackintosh, concerning how Wikieducator educational resources can be reused and adapted)

Local sources of content

 * Ask other line Ministries such as Health, Sport, Youth, Culture, Fisheries to produce PDF documents for primary school, can be in local language.
 * They can also record audio materials (which can also be played on community radio). These need to be in OGG format (DL can assist)
 * NGOs like TUFHA
 * Media (news reports aimed at children)

The schools will develop their own content. For instance
 * Lesson ideas and teaching resources, worksheets, pols, memorise games, etc
 * Educational activities involving the Community Radio station, where audio materials, scripts and school news written by students are examples of the potentials

We have created a WikiEducator section that will serve as a repository for such local content. See here

Regional sources of content

 * CROP agencies (SPC will coordinate)
 * A partnership can be built with the OER Foundation. There are moves towards this on a regional level

Open Educational Resources

 * Schools-Wikipedia can be downloaded and made available to the schools on DVD. Note, this is a 3GB resource that can be downloaded and expanded using a suitable application such as 7-Zip. (Note from DL - I have downloaded and am testing this with view to installing on the server)
 * Wikieducator, Wikiepdia and many other sources of online content
 * UNESCO, OER Foundation, COL and many other sources of Open Content.
 * UNESCO SchoolNet project is one example, CDs of open content available. The demo School Server has the contents of the UNESCO ASEAN SchoolNet CDs (2005 and 2008) installed as public folders. A demo of this is available on Youtube
 * Open eBooks for children for example the Internet Archive has opened up over 1.6 million books for the OLPC XO laptops and in general, any machine running Sugar.
 * See details here and here