One Laptop Per Child News

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.

What impress me is the answer they got from the community. In a short time, all the aspect of the project was covered! The project is heavily based on wireless architecture so a local group ZAP Québec jump in and offer their help to validate this part of the setup. For the software part (School Server, XO install, etc) and procedures, Rene and me will do the validation.

I was really impressed that many groups joined their efforts and gave their free time to help such a good project. I also like the impression we gave of our community to the project team. We often hear that the free softwares community is a place where people help each other. I am happy to have seen this in action and do my part.

Jeff Saucier wrote OLPC deployment in Gabon and its republished here with his permission

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. These are the kind of studies that OLPC should have not only follow closely, but also actively sponsor, and possibly enhance with their own on-the-field experiences and surveys. Although that was never done, it is never too late for OLPC to back up such studies, and to provide additional supporting data.

Teachers matter in 1:1 success

Regardless of the OPLC involvement, the outcomes of these studies is clear. Is this a clear strong, although indirect victory or endorsement for OLPC? Not really. The article clearly states:

"One of the most salient findings was the critical role that teachers played in the success of each 1:1 program," Bebell said. Additional factors critical to student success across 1:1 technology settings included:

1. Having a strong commitment from school leadership
2. Developing consistent and supportive administrative policies
3. Creating professional development opportunities for teachers, particularly the sharing of best practices

It appears that the key for success of the 1:1 computing initiative are teacher involvement and a strong school commitment. In other words, handing out laptops to individual students and let them to learn independently, is not what is found to work effectively. Teachers' involvement, training and professional development is the real key for success. Unfortunately, on a global scale OLPC performs poorly in this regards.

Teachers' training and professional and curricula development is left to local groups and and it happens countries where the role of teachers has been recognized. It should not be a surprise to note that in these countries the OLPC initiative is known to have been the most effective. When such local involvement of teacher' training and curricula development was missing, the program has not shown any significant sign of success.

Therefore, having a global push for sharing experiences, promoting teachers' collaboration and training is the determining factor for the success of the overall OLPC effort.

It is unfortunate and heart shuttering to witness OLPC lack of recognition of the relevance of teachers involvement in the learning process. A laptop will never be able to replace a teacher. It will only be an effective tool for students to improve their learning and teacher to extend their teaching. Scientific evidence now backs this strongly. Let's hope OLPC will follow.

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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.

When Beth Santos presented at OLPC Learning Club DC about her OLPC Sao Tome experience, her description of the OLPCorps deployment had me asking one very intense question: Was OLPCorps 2009 an OLPC failure?

When Beth first went to Sao Tome to volunteer with Step Up, she didn't expect to work with XO laptops. She just wanted to help the São João school. On arrival, she found XO laptops stored in a closet, unused since the OLPCorps volunteers left.

This should not come as a surprise. We predicted that abandoned XO laptops would be one legacy of OLPCorps. Technology adoption, in any culture, requires enthusiastic supporters with a long-term commitment to change. By parachuting in volunteers for a few weeks on summer, OLPC was setting up OLPCorps to have a temporary impact at best.

One Laptop Per Child has announced they're starting to distribute C2 Test Model XO-1.5 laptops through their Contributors Program. This is great news for hardware and software developers who are looking to code and test for OLPC. But it pretty much sucks for everyone else.

There is not a week that goes by without someone asking me how they can get XO laptops for their community-based project. XO-1, XO-1.5, and to my amusement, XO-2 and even XO-3 laptops - any XO laptop! They are shocked that OLPC will not sell XO's to them and confused when told about the Contributors Program.

Why? Because the Contributors Program is still a mysterious process where some groups get XO's and others don't, based on... Whim? Chicken bones? Negroponte's fancy that day?

They seek a clear, transparent process. Some way, any way to get XO laptops with certainty.

Today was the third and last day of the "New Millenium Learners Conference 2010". Since the conference ended at 1PM only the keynote, a single session and a closing panel took place. However it turned out to be a really strong finish which made for a perfect ending for what was truly a great conference. After yesterday's constant crashes and issues I was very happy to see that ustream.tv worked like a charm today. The only thing that was slightly annoying is that my conference WiFi account ran out 10min before the actual end of the conference, hence the last few minutes of the last session are missing from the recordings.

It's safe to say that day 2 of the "New Millenium Learners Conference 2010" was at least as interesting as yesterday, if not even more so. The day started with an excellent keynote by Peter Baumgartner (German Web site) from the Donau-Universität Krems, Austria. He generally spoke about learning and education and focused on 1:1 netbook projects that are currently taking place in Austria. One very memorable quotes from his presentation was: