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OLPC Project Disappoints In Peru
00_NOP writes "The One Laptop Per Child project has disappointed in Peru, reports the Economist, apparently because in general teachers did not make creative use of the technology. As in other cases the computers seem to have been regarded as ends in themselves rather than tools to help change the ways kids are taught. Quite disappointing for those of us looking for Linux-Global-Domination but not really much of a surprise given the experience in richer countries either."
I own one of the first OLPCs. The problem isn't Linux. (I hate to think of Win XP running in 256MB system, 1GB storage.) The problem is the whole philosophy of "it's not a computer, it's an education tool." (Or however they put it.)
No. A computer is whatever the user wants it to be. If you try to make that difficult, it'll fail sooner or later. The less money behind it, the sooner.
The educational philosophy they were pushing works for some subjects, some of the time. But they should have made it easy to use the OLPCs any way people wanted much earlier. It was only some time last year that a simple desktop switcher (sugar - gnome) was included with the basic OS. For me, at least, not having an ordinary filesystem available was a showstopper. I'd been dualbooting debian since the beginning, but all the trial and error to accomplish that isn't something a lot of teachers would do. But initially, for the first four years!, there was a lot of resistance to just giving people a familiar interface.
Then there were the hardware limitations. Even for Linux, at least the Fedora they're using, 256MB is barely enough to breathe. The keyboard takes a lot of getting used to. I'm not sure they ever got the expanded touchpad working.
So, like I said, nice idea, but they should have put more effort into improving hardware, providing the software people want, better distribution so they had a larger community of enthusiasts to write code for the project and help on (better organized!) forums, and kept their goofy educational philosophy for the people who wanted it.
... this doesn't come as a surprise to me. Teaching in Ecuador is mostly "frontal assault", the kids are told all the time what to do. Copy that, etc. One student told me - after I quit - I was a go teacher and he liked me, because I didn't tell them all the time "copy that fast"... Basically my impression was that the schools condition the students to be "recipients of orders" ("Befehlsempfänger").Now on the one hand there is quite an authoritarian rule and on the other they just don't care too much mixed up with some totally unnecessary bureaucracy, e.g. every teacher had to sign that he arrived on that day in school and that he left, also entering the time - makes sense. But you would sign twice at once, also if I was late, it wouldn't matter I should write the time I should have been there... furthermore a teacher was running around and taking these signatures, usually interrupting the lessons by doing it...
Also I worked a bit in an Internet cafe, what you consider a power (or even normal user) in Western Europe would be an admin there...
Ecuador and Perú are quite similar. I was in the jungle region, which is probably the least "developed" one.
Giving them access to wikipedia won't solve anything, though. They need to know how to use the information they find, and for that they need to know basic technologies, models and methods to apply this. It's something we struggle with in our laptop-equipped classes - they're amazing at first glance, but once you actually look for comprehension, you discover that they copy-paste and don't question or even understand what they've found.
It all needs balance. Show them that the information is out there, and give them the means to get to that info. But right now, there are a lot of areas where you simply can't use laptops consistently because it takes more time to get things running than to sit students down and simply run them through the matter the old-fashioned way.
Also, I'll commit murder if I ever meet the designers of some of the educational software platforms out there. The software aspect is absolutely lacking at the moment when it comes to educational stuff. If the software doesn't exist, then good luck at getting it down to a reasonable price. I'm still stunned that Moodle currently gets promoted as the best solution.
WE need to start with all education degrees being REQUIRED to have several computer operation classes. Something a lot more than "how to type letters in word 101" and "internet for idiots 102" They whould be requlred to go through a couple of more advanced classes like "education systems troubleshooting and use 204"
Well, if this is what you're trying to accomplish, just print out this handy graphic and you're done.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I live in a tribal village in Peru, and the kids here have OLPC laptops. The trouble is bigger than teachers who have not been educated to make good use of the laptops (although that is an issue too). There isn't electricity here, much less internet (except my personal VSAT). While a computer loaded with educational resources is useful without an internet connection, it is a nice shiny green and white brick without power. For all of the hoopla about hand-crank or foot pedal chargers, I haven't seen one. When my solar panels are pulling in enough power, I'll charge one up for a kid or even let them on the internet, but my resources are limited in these areas too. So...it will be hard to REALLY evaluate the effectiveness of a machine like the OLPC until we have solved these basic infrastructure issues.