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CEO Says One Laptop Per Child Project Has Achieved Its Goals
waderoush (1271548) writes "A blog post at OLPC News last week went viral with the claim that the nine-year-old One Laptop Per Child project is dead. Media outlets quickly controverted the assertion, but the response from the OLPC Association itself was brief, saying that its mission is 'far from over' and citing ongoing projects to distribute laptops in Central America. In a more lengthy Q&A this week, OLPC chairman and CEO Rodrigo Arboleda says the organization has achieved many of its goals, including demonstrating the value of the 'Constructionist' 1:1 learning philosophy originally espoused by Negroponte. With 2.5 million laptops distributed so far, the OLPC vision is 'on track to being fully realized,' Arboleda says. He sees 'commercial greed' and a 'status-quo mentality' within ministries of education and teachers' unions as the main hurdles holding back faster progress."
Laptop project is done... as in toast.
1. "Has Achieved Its Goals" == "on track to being fully realized"
2. "Mission Accomplished" Redefine goals to state what has already been done, declare victory, forget about the rest. (banner and photo-op on aircraft carrier optional)
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
How many of those 2.5 million laptops still work? Most of the OLPC laptops I saw at trade shows were broken.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
:-)
I seem to be left behind. Where is my laptop?
:(
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Love his obvious disdain for capitalism vis-a-vis "commercial greed."
Why, pray tell, is OLPC's original mission essentially dead in the water? Because of innovation, competition, and the marketplace mechanism, not because it lead the world to cheap hardware. Platitudinal NGOs started by tenured academics are created in a vacuum, away from market forces or awareness, living in ivory towers of unlimited funding.
OLPC was/is an NGO charity case, relying on the largesse of the white guilt complex for the third world to support it.
Yea, computer hardware is cheap, faster, and more accessible than it's ever been, to the point where it's at disposable pricing even for the third world. Whether it's Android or RPi or Arduino, we're well into an era of a complete computer that costs $20 for all the parts. Tablets are $50-$75 a pop.
And you know what OLPC is selling their "commercial" Android tabs for? $150! Far more than what it really costs to make. One can presume the profits will be used to fund additional tabs for the third world but the more likely scenario is those profits will go into the pockets of guys like Arboleda and "honorariums" for Negroponte and his ilk.
Confirmed distribution of the OLPC laptop outside of Mexico, Central and South America are all but non-existent. Deployment of XO laptops
That doesn't make a good case for a culturally-independent constructivist philosophy of education --- at the core of which is the notion that kids in the primary grades can teach each other and that adults are redundant. Which lead inevitably to fire-and-forget "parachute drop" deployments.
OLPC hardware was never as robust as claimed.
Several defects in OLPC XO-1 hardware have emerged in the field, and laptop repair is often neglected by students or their families (who are responsible for maintenance) due to the relatively high cost of some components (such as displays).
The Sugar interface has been difficult for teachers to learn, and the mesh networking feature in the OLPC XO-1 was buggy and went mostly unused in the field.
The OLPC XO-1 hardware lacks connectivity to external monitors or projectors, and teachers are not provided with software for remote assessment. As a result, students are unable to present their work to the whole class, and teachers must also assess students' work from the individual laptops. Teachers often find it difficult to use the keyboard and screen, which were designed with student use in mind.
Hardware and software bugs
Rwanda provides an interesting example of the conflict between the theory and reality of OLPC.
Rwanda had a total primary school population of just over 2.3 million as of 2011. As of September 2012, exactly four years after the launch, according to the Rwanda Education Board, there were about 115,000 computers in primary schools across the country.
The aim is to have half a million of the laptops distributed, and at least one million by 2017
At least one school in each of the 416 sectors in Rwanda is expected to get the laptops. A sector is the equivalent of a sub-district or division in Kenya.
Rwanda's situation is no different from much of East Africa. Uptake for the laptops could be better, except for two main reasons.
The first major reason is inadequate infrastructure, especially electricity supply to schools. The OLPC laptops are mainly operated using electricity, while many schools are yet to be connected to the national grid. Efforts are, however, under way to install solar electricity in as many schools are possible.
The second is inadequate capacity, in terms of numbers and computer literacy, of the primary school teachers. As of May 2012, the OLPC Project had trained just over 1,500 teachers and heads of school --- not only in computer literacy, but in troubleshooting hardware, software and applications.
There is good reason for such technical training of the teachers. Computers often tend to break down for one reason or another, especially in the hands of children. Giving the teachers the ability to diagnose what the problem is likely to be, and how to fix it, is crucial.
Caution has already been urged before the laptop project is implemented in Kenya. It has already been pointed out that the imminent laptop project may not be viable without first addressing teachers' computer literacy, including the woefully inadequate school infrastructure in much of the country, and ensuring the computers are loaded with relevant curriculum.
This includes addressing issues of poverty that tend to hinder access to education. A significant number of school-going children in Kenya lack basic needs, including food and clothes, which has raised questions of feasibility for such an ambitious project.
What Kenya could learn from Rwanda on One Laptop per Child
The 8-bit generation of under $200 computers did more to teach programming than OLPC has ever done. OLPC is a nifty government contractor and nothing more. Sinclair did more for programming than OLPC.
OLPC's goal was to induce the creation of computers affordable in the third-world and usable in an environment where basic utilities are not available. At the time, a bottom-end new computer cost around $500.
Today we have a tablet and netbook industry which churns out the cheap components that such computers need at a high economy of scale. Micro Center has a bottom-end android tablet on sale for $50.
Things may not have worked out as OLPC expected or in a way that left OLPC with any importance as an organization, but their goal was surely achieved.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.