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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."
This kid seems to have gotten the right idea. Maybe even if the teachers aren't using them properly, giving naturally curious kids access to a whole world of information will help them out anyway.
Or maybe that guy was just a unique case, I don't know. That video made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside however.
(If you can't be bothered to watch the video, shame on you! But also, it's about a child in Peru who works cleaning people's shoes on the streets. He has an OLPC laptop, though, and he uses it to educate himself with wikipedia.)
Seriously, I just returned six days ago from a week in Lima, where I visited partners who buy used computers (for repair, refurbishing, recycling business). At one of the shops (which had 22 repair employees) they showed me one of the One Laptop Per Child laptops they'd gotten their hands on. They were absolutely ridiculing it compared to the price of used Pentium III laptops they buy in bulk from off-lease. I just wrote about the trip a few days ago. http://preview.tinyurl.com/peruewaste
The refurbishing business itself is falling off in Lima, however. (No joke, I saw used CHINESE CRT televisions - the Chinese cities are upgrading and selling their own used goods to South America and Africa). But the cheap white box models from China show the most growth in the market.
In short it's a mature market and the whole charity command-and-control, of "e-waste" and white box laptop sales, is rife with at best piss poor market research, and at worst just making things up out of thin air. Read Harvard Business Review Article, http://tinyurl.com/chinagoodnuff The Battle for China's Good Enough Market (2007, written by Bain & Co consultants), to see how the changing consumer demand is being mis-marketed to. Lima had 9M residents, I had no problem finding wifi, and the geeks of color in the used electronics markets all had smartphones.
Gently reply
The point has never been "technology enables learning" the point has always been along the lines of "what would happen if we could make sure everyone had access to wikipedia?"
What you say is true; someone assumed that giving each child their own computer would enable them to do something. But the assumption that the "something" would be educational doesn't appear to be correct. I saw it in the computer lab at my own kids' school; most of the effort by the students was listening to music or trying to find a way around the Net Nanny so they could view porn. They didn't know how to use it as an educational tool, and the teachers had no clue what to do with it.
The big problem now is that every child learns differently, has different interests, and (what many don't want to acknowledge) many students are just plain dumb. A good teacher can adjust to each student in real time, but how do you write software that will help all of them learn?
You've kind of missed the bigger picture here. And that is, the intention is FREEDOM. The guy that started this wanted to get an infrastructure out into the world that provided an avenue for truth in information. Before you SHOULD educate you need the truth. This would allow kids and adults alike in these countries access to a form of media not directly manipulated by their government. It was going to be done on the back of Linux not because of price but because no one wants a world addicted to one product (Windows). He had toyed with the idea of using windows at one point because (as the devil often does) they were going to offer a version of windows to him in an attempt to familiiarize all those little kiddies with their products. Yay. Despite good intentions the more worldly of us know that all that was going to happen was these governments would weaponize the systems. And lock them down with network restrictions in their DNS's and backbones only to continue pushing their selfish agendas. This is/was a clear indication that this particular country failed to use these devices in a proper manner. Yes, this is about education but its also about freedom.
I remember getting an F in "computer class" (elementary school in the early 90s) because when we were supposed to be learning to use a drawing program, I instead wrote a BASIC script to draw the image we were supposed to draw. It didn't matter in the slightest to the teacher that I was able to attain the result in a far more efficient way or that I was able to actually write my own program, nope, I didn't do it exactly the way she said to (and thus exactly as the book said).
This always annoyed me in school, you put this incredible, mysterious and powerful machine in front of a student, the student already has a basic understanding of some of the amazing things this machine is capable of, so the student is incredibly excited. Five or so years later when the only thing the student has been taught to do is use the computer as an alternative to a pencil and paper, then you have a problem.
It's like putting kids in a giant room filled with Legos and only allowing them to use the blocks to build 3" tall numbers to answer math equations straight from a book.
The OLPC project was always one step near the infamous "Bibles for Haiti" project - a condescending view that an "easy answer", one which is easily mass-manufactured will miraculously solve a hard social problem. That the OLPC-ers are technocratic instead of theocratic makes little difference with regards to the efficiency of the approach. What *should* have been sent are *teachers*, but it's much, much harder to send teachers into the wilderness when they are already so lowly regarded in the western world.
-- Sig down
This idea is nothing new. In the sixties it was typewriter skills which led to a lot of schools using IBM selectrics for typing class. In the seventies, it was ten key calculators which led to 6 to 8 week courses in using a calculator to add and subtract. In the late seventies, it was programming on cards in a high school lab and then led into Apple IIs in a dedicated computer lab. In all of these cases, the idea was that the technology was so earthshaking, that you just drop these machines in front of teachers and have a coherent lesson plan materialise out of nothing. (and if I sound biased, it is because my mother, a jr.high math teacher, was given the plum job of running the computer lab where her major worry was keeping the students from stealing the computers, keyboards or mice. She was the best available choice for the job but had no training or experience, only that she was a math teacher was over thirty years teaching experience.. She was provided with little materials other than showing students how to turn the computer on, copy files to a floppy, and use a notepad type editor. Not a lot to work with.)
Right now, these technology grants are being spent on tablets. What would be a good curriculum for those devices?