The name of this School is Kikarwali School (located about 32 miles on the main road from Sri  Ganga Nagar to Raisingh Nagar or 8 miles from Raisingh Nagar). There are 19 students in the 6th grade and 29 students in the 7th grade. They need 55 laptops including for the teachers and server plus solar panels. OLPC India is providing 40 laptops. Some of these are funded by TiE Sydney, some by Aastha Foundation and the rest by Satish Jha. OLPC India needs to raise the remaining funds to make it a successful project.

OLPC means One Laptop Per Child and is an initiative to provide the poorest children in the world with education. The project provides some of the most technologically advanced laptops with free open source software and teacher training for schools at the cheapest price – $300. It’s hard to believe that this includes training, rollout and the laptop, but it is true and successful. So far 2 million laptops have rolled out across South America, Asia and indigenous communities in Australia.

Now, someone might argue that we should be giving the poorest children food as they need it more than education. Of course we should give them the basic needs to survive. Nevertheless OLPC is a great initiative to give access to education which will ultimately help as those kids can use their education to improve life in their communities. OLPC therefore is a help to self help. Research shows the laptops increase attendance at school and kids stay in class longer. Educational outcomes are something like skills in 6 months is equivalent of 5 years of traditional schooling and kids love them! What a great way for the developing world to catch up on education, don’t you think?

OLPC India ran a fundraiser in December 2009 in Sydney in order to be able to provide this support in Indian schools. Satish Jha, head of OLPC India was speaking at the event and OLPC Australia provided some of the laptops to play with. The event was appropriately themed Bollywood, so it was a great evening with good food, good entertainment and inspiring speeches. There was also a lot of support from the Sydney community to donate prizes for a silent auction, for example Kim McGuiness from Network Central donated tickets for breakfast events and Ilka Brookes from Marziplanner generously donated her award-winning wedding planner software. The event raised A$10.000 which equals about 30 laptops that can now be provided to the Kikarwali School in India.

In March the OLPC India team will visit the school and report back on the outcomes.

It was a successful year which established the FISH@6 workshops as a platform across all Future Journeys programs and therefore as a link between different industries, ages and business genres where there are opportunities for collaboration which creates a space for innovation.

For 2010 FISH@6 workshops will run every 2nd Wednesday of the month throughout the year. With the support of the Department of Industry and Investment we are able to stay in the same venue on level 47 in the MLC Centre, 19 Martin Place, Sydney CBD.
The monthly Innovation Workshop will feature some interesting topics again this year. Have a look at the FISH@6 section for more details.

FISH@6 is a complimentary continuous innovation program supplementing Future Journeys’ Corporate Programs with an ongoing opportunity to get access to innovation tools, and to give  a platform to collaborate with a broader audience with the purpose to bring innovation in Australia forward.

The format of the workshops will remain the same as in 2009 having some great speakers presenting around the topic which then opens up discussions on the application of the presented ideas.The last part of the session remains dedicated to the Innovation Challenge where creative tools, foresight methods and sustainability principles are used to gain new insights and new ideas for new products, services or ways of interaction.

Also in 2010 FISH@6 aspires to create a more innovative and sustainable future.

Every Second Wednesday of the month
6pm – 8pm
at Department of Industry and Investment
(formerly Department of State and Regional Development)
Level 47, MLC Centre, 19 Martin Place, Sydney CBD

So on 17th December we gathered in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and formed 4 teams of 3-4 people. We started of with a little memory exercise where cards were placed upside down on the grass and each team had to find matching pairs by taking turns in turning 2 of them over. It was a lot of fun and got the teams in a competitive mood.
The cards were actually portraying gifts from TEAR Australia. Those gifts are things like a toilet $70, a goat $50, save water $20, school supplies $5 and many more, therefore these are the “World’s most useful gifts”, giving twice – once to a loved one and once to a person in need in the developing world.
The idea was to take the cards won in the memory exercise and go and buy those gifts or find people to buy them the in order to raise funds for TEAR Australia.

On another layer the game we were running was a serious game and the purpose was to practice some creativity tools which will help individuals and businesses to be more innovative. Participants were asked to tune in to their surroundings, experience them and then use their reflections, visual and sound impressions to tackle a particular problem, in our case an ad campaign for “How to make Sydney more creative and more sustainable. We’re talking sustainable design and sustainable consumption at every level.” It is amazing how looking at Sydney Harbour Bridge in a different way or thinking about rats or just really experiencing The Rocks, Sydney gives you new insights simply by applying the different viewpoint to the problem at hand.

It was a challenging task for the participants and a very valuable learning experience for us. By going out and running this prototype we could see immediately what worked and what didn’t which will assist us in the development of this and other serious games. Thanks to the Future Journeys community for joining us on that day and helping us on that path while having some fun and hopefully taking away some insights into creativity tools as well.

The game finished on Observatory Hill, where to reward the participants we enjoyed the view and heard the game outcomes over Pizza and Champagne. It was a great way to finish a great year!

The Future Journeys Serious Games Lab creates serious games that easily integrate into corporate programs or training programs incorporating learning aims of your choice or that create awareness of your organisation, project or product. We are developing a range of games to go on the market in 2010, so keep an eye on this website and on the Future Journeys Serious Games Lab.

By Jana on July 14th, 2009

Future Journeys’ CEO Janine Cahill who runs the FISH@6 events has a bad case of the flu. Therefore, unfortunately, we will have to cancel the event on Thursday. We apologise for any inconvenience that might have caused.

If you would like to see our speakers on Serious Games, there will be a games space at the Live Futures 2020: A World of Convergence festival at COFA @ UNSW on August 15. So you will get even more of an opportunity to share and learn games ideas and the future of learning, health, and other computer human interactions. Will send more information as it develops. Keep a lookout to the website
http://www.livefutures2020.com/ which will be updated very soon.

We hope to see you at our next FISH@6 workshop on September 17 on the Art and Science of Foresight.

By Jana on June 4th, 2009

We are getting excited about our next FISH@6 innovation workshop in Sydney on 18th June 2009.
This month it is all about creativity and innovation.

We will explore creativity tools which and see how we trigger an “out of the box” thinking by changing our viewpoint.  In the context of idea generation and opportunity recognition which lead to innovation we will look at different forms of innovation.

Our inspiring speakers will be:
Janine Cahill who will share a combination of creativity and foresight tools
Matt Moore on Innovation in Australia
Darren Menachemson on Designing by Recontextualising

We will discuss the application of the presented ideas which will lead into the Innovation lab, where
we will use a combination of creative tools, foresight methods and sustainability principles to gain new insights, and develop new ideas for new products and services and ways of interaction.

Join us at this next FISH@6 event and (re)discover the simplicity of being creative and turn this creativity into innovation. Be inspired!

Thursday 18th June
6pm – 8pm
Department for State and Regional Development
Level 47, 19 Martin Place, Sydney CBD

Please RSVP to fish@futurejourneys.com

The game which has been recently developed by a team of great young people who met at the Serious Game Workshop on 18th April 2009 is based on low tech around social awareness.

The Designing Serious Games Workshop was organised by Vibewire and facilitated by Janine Cahill, Future Journeys.
Janine Cahill is a Serious Game Designer and contributed with this workshop to the Vibewire’s 2009 e-Festival of Ideas, which takes place from 4-10th May 2009. One of the live events during the festival is the developed game A Race against Time.

Come and join us for an afternoon of fun!

Event Details:
Starting from the Vibewire Enterprise Hub, 525 Harris St, Ultimo
10th May, 2pm – 5pm.