One Laptop Per Child News

I understand that the "March madness" that comes with closing the financial year on the 31st March has brought some good news for OLPC India.

• One industrial house has ordered 25000 laptops over the year 2010 out of which 2000 have been ordered to be in place by 31st March.
• Another industrialist has offered a fully furnished office space for 10 professionals, managers and the leadership of OLPC India along with putting all the professionals on their payroll.
• Yet another industrial house has ordered to roll out to 10,000 children from the 2009-19 budget and another 40,000 from the 2010-11 budget.

While there may be more, I thought of sharing with you what has been firmed up and may require many of the OLPC enthusiasts an opportunity to work with the implementation challenges this year.

S Adhikari posted this update to the OLPC India listserv

One of the most innovative design paradigms of Sugar is the simplicity of its user interface. Mainstream UI design in personal computing currently uses complex 3D components, with a combination of useful depth perspective, and less useful animated transitions. Icons get their share of animated effects too.

Compared to this, Sugar is plain simple. No 3D effects, the UI is plain 2D, with strong contrasted colors. Icons and buttons are also very simple, a white circle with a symbol in the middle. For example the browser looks extremely simple:

Now, we may wonder if the reason for such simplicity is the audience towards Sugar is directed: Children. Possibly. However, the very same design paradigms starts surfacing in the mobile market, from a very unlikely company: Microsoft.

The same company that pushes the complex Aero in Windows Vista and 7, it is now proposing a very simple and clean UI design for the new Windows Phone 7 series. How simple? If we look at for example a screen shot of Internet Explorer, we might notice how strikingly similar to Sugar:

Note how the simple white buttons on dark background are practically the same as those in Sugar. Similar design choices are present in the home screen, which is clean and with simple colors and blocky sections.

I don't think we should call for conspiracy theories here. Probably Microsoft realized that in a small screen, sometimes simple is better. Sugar provides a very usable yet simple UI, and combined with the innovative screen, it can be arguably considered as the first multi-purpose e-reader.

I am sure it served at some point as an inspiration for Windows Phone 7. As e-reader become more and more common, we should hope that more OS manufacturers will consider Sugar's UI elements. And why not? Maybe they'll use Sugar's UI directly.

At the SXSW geek fest, TMS Ruge made disparaging comments towards One Laptop Per Child. As quoted by others, he said:

"OLPC is a failed solution"... "Dead in the water"

Now you know I'm not shy about kicking OLPC in the shins when it needs a slap of reality, but TMS went a bit too far with calling it a failed solution, and I called him out on it, challenging him to a debate:

And TMS responded with the following points, under which are my counterpoints, expanded here with the benefit of contemplation and without the 140 character restriction. Both our comments have been edited for grammar and clarity.

1. TMS: It's digital version of neocolonialist topdown model of development. "we will save u!" One middle-aged (sound familiar?) guy decides "I'm going to save them, & this is only model"
   
   Wayan Agreed. Nicholas Negroponte was following in the footsteps of Muslim, Catholic, and Christian saviors before him with the XO religion, all pronouncing that their particular solution would offer salvation for Africa. And like any religion, the individual models may have flaws, but the overall theme has value.


2. TMS: [OLPC] perpetuates dependencies with [its] philanthropic approach. If you give to one school, every school/org is going to feel entitled to also receive [XO's]. How long can you keep this up?
   
   Wayan: OLPC's point is that every school should have XO's, just like each school should have teachers, desks, and the like. And governments should buy XO laptops for their students - like they do for textbooks. At OLPC News, we continue to question the economics of this model, as TMS hints, the numbers get crazy big (in the Billions!) even for small countries.


3. TMS What's value proposition of giving these away for free vs providing market eco-system? Assuming that Africa is poor and can't afford tech so we should "donate" it is lazy! If we can't afford anything, then why is iPhone available in 13 markets in Africa? OLPC hardware costs same as high end smartphones are on sale in Africa, why not sell it?
   
   Wayan On this we could not agree more. In fact, I say Damn the free XO-1.5 laptops, we want OLPC sales!. Alas, OLPC claims that selling retail is too much a hassle and they're gonna stick with large-lot government sales.


4. TMS: Where is bottom up input from people on ground? Better yet, why no Africans on your board?
   
   Wayan: Wow! What a great point that I never noticed. One Laptop Per Child leadership isn't African at all, thought its also not all "white" either. In fact, its very Hispanic for a USA organization.


5. TMS Where's research to support that giving tech away free is better model vs market solution? [OLPC's] corporate philosophy no better than Malaria No More run by cushy corner office suits. [OLPC] could make mass availability sustainable if selling them, versus philanthropic model. Yet [OLPC] gives them away. If OLPC is so great, then give it away to ANYBODY that wants one.
   
   Wayan: Again, OLPC does not give out XO's - governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy XO laptops. Those governments give out XO's as part of their primary school educational obligation. And with the low attendance already prevalent in Africa, it makes sense to give out XO's there, as a rationale for sending children to school, rather than charging poor parents who cannot afford much.


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6. TMS: OLPC cost same as netbooks. Result? Making computing affordable in Africa.
   
   Wayan: Actually, OLPC begat netbooks, so you could say that it made computing affordable for Africans already. OLPC is just intent to focus on education vs. the overall retail market.


7. TMS: There r 450 million mobile subscribers in Africa. 99.9% of those were bought, not handouts. A growing majority of those mobile phones are smart and of more practical use than OLPC.
   
   Wayan: The mobile phone vs. computer argument is an old one, and the results are always the same: there is a place for both. You'll not read (or write) a textbook on your mobile phone, but it is handy for short text, and for voice, its the killer app. Most of all, the XO laptop is an optimized educational tool, the mobile phone is a communications tool that can be used for education. Note the difference. Yet, wouldn't a $50 eBook reader beat both?


8. TMS: Stop feeding us the damned fish, sell us the fishing pole!
   
   Wayan: Agreed, OLPC should advocate for local XO assembly to transfer skills, knowledge and wealth to local communities that buy XO laptops. Yet don't get your hopes up for actual production. Asia owns technology manufactures - even of your beloved mobile phones - and they'll not be building fab labs in Kenya anytime soon.

Overall, I though that TMS Ruge brought up good points. His main thrust is that OLPC should sell XO laptops - and it does already, to governments. They pass out XO's like other school supplies, free to needy students. This is a different model than consumer technology, like mobile phones, so it should not be compared their individual buyer model, unless TMS suggests primary school children should be working to buy school supplies as well.

Yet, we both agree that OLPC should have some form of XO retail sales, and there should be more local buy-in and economic impact. In fact, its something I've been advocating for 4 years now.

Still, TMS is no Mark Warschauer when it comes to critiquing OLPC. Though I do hope he learns from this experience. OLPC, and its supporters are a force to be reckoned with. You need to come prepared, and I have just the place to be educated.

Update!: TMS Ruge has replied to this post with Why OLPC is "..dead in the water"... still.

I applaud OLPC's attempt to have the governments pay for the laptops and distribute them to the children, but I do not see this going very far beyond a few progressive governments like Kagame's Rwanda. If the government does not acknowledge and address its poor education system, and put massive weight behind making sure that the cornerstones of their country's education system are overhauled to be inline with 21st century educational best practices, then OLPC is dead in the water.

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The UCC Flickr set of their Ntugi visit
On my own behalf and on behalf of Ntugi Mixed Day School let me thank Upper Canada College and Mark Battley in particular for helping the school to get XO laptops. The laptops have boosted the morale of both students and teachers in the school.

Some parents have transferred their kids from the neighbouring schools to our school because we are the only secondary school connected to Internet. This has raised the school enrollment from 4 classes to 6 classes. Students are using them, especially in Science and Geography. In the 2009 Science Congress, two projects scooped the best 2 positions in the District and were ranked No. 9 and 10 out of 102 in the Provincials. Previously, no Ntugi student had participated in Science Congress.

Kibwezi is a small rural town located in the arid region of Kenya, about half-way between the capital of Nairobi and the coastal city of Mombasa. Many of the students come from the surrounding farms. Their families survive on subsistence agriculture and many do not have electricity or running water in their homes.

The access to XO laptop computers stirs emotions of pure joy inside of the children as you can see by this video:
Read more about this deployment XO laptops on the OLPCorps Kibwezi blog.

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Pass saturday, I met with the team that will go to Libreville in Gabon, Africa this month to deploy 110 XO laptops in a school. You can have more details about the OLPCorps LavalUniversity Gabonproject. The team launched a call for help to the local LUG for helping them be sure that everything is alright before they got there. They want to confirm that all the hardwares, softwares, procedures, etc are good and without error. The project team did a really good job and I think they are ready to go there but a validation before leaving is a great initiative.

One of the major innovations of OLPC consists in the idea that a computer given to a single child (also called 1:1 computing) is the best way to enhance the pupil's ability to learn effectively. It's called ONE-laptop-per-child after all.

In a recent article in ScienceDaily, strong evidence is presented that shows that 1:1 computing allows students in these programs to outperform their peers in traditional classrooms. According to findings of studies published in the Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment:

Students who have participated in 1:1 computing report higher achievement and increased engagement. This new collection of articles brings together some of the best evidence to date on the implementation and impacts of 1:1 computing.

All of the studies that examined the impact of 1:1 computing on student achievement found that students in the 1:1 settings outperformed their traditional classroom peers on English/Language Arts standardized tests by a statistically significant margin. Study authors also reported on evidence of increased student motivation and engagement, as well as changes in teachers' instructional practices.

This is great news for OLPC. So far the evidence of the effectiveness of 1:1 computing was circumstantial and anecdotal.

Wow! Watching this video from OLE Nepal I am so happy for them and sad for One Laptop Per Child. The success of OLE and the failures of OLPC are so self-evident:
See how OLE Nepal is focused on empowering the teachers? Hear how they're working with the established educational system? That's the path to XO laptop success - using technology as an enabler of educator evolution, not a bludgeon to force change.

Better yet, did you see the shoutout to the Teachermate? Yeah, OLE is the real education project.

Our goal here is to dramatically and quickly improve educational outcomes. Unfortunately that process doesn't happen magically by itself. There's a myriad of cultural and reality on the ground matters that need to be taken care of. We need to understand concretely the problem we are attempting to solve and how our intervention is going to lead to solving it. So the reality on the ground in most Afghan schools here is that students and teachers really don't have enough time in class. Typically 30 mins for lessons that they would really need one hour for. Teachers often have to find additional hours to do other jobs to make ends meet.

Going back to that lack of time, sometimes capacity difficulties, they often can't provide feedback to student work, homework, etc. Without feedback, hints, etc. which parents and teachers can't provide learning results naturally suffer. Finally against this backdrop providing opportunities for group work / soft skills is tricky to say the least.