OLPC: How Not to Run a Laptop Program
For the last six years, I have been investigating laptop programs throughout the U.S., including, most recently, programs using low-cost netbook computers and open source software.
I and others have found these laptop and netbooks programs to be highly successful, resulting in greater access to and use of diverse sources of information, improved quantity and quality of student writing, higher student engagement through working with multiple media, greater opportunities to explore topics in-depth for, and improved integration of technology in instruction.
How to run a successful laptop program
The successful programs I have investigated have all been built on a similar model. A balanced funding approach is used, with sufficient funding budgeted for curriculum development, professional development, wireless routers, purchase of peripherals, and repair and replacement of laptops.
A careful planning process is carried out to develop a solid educational design and win support from important stakeholders, including teachers, parents, and community leaders. A staged implementation process, based on pilot studies, formative and summative evaluation, and gradual deployment helps ensure that positive lessons are learned as the project expands.
Finally, the district or state carefully assesses a range of hardware and software options to choose which ones best meet their educational goals in a cost effective manner.
The OLPC model is radically different.
Computers are to be provided to children, not schools, and in massive large deployments carried out as quickly as possible. Whether schools have funding for curricular or professional development, technical infrastructure, peripherals, support, or maintenance is disregarded in the rush to get computers into children’s hands immediately. Planning, pilot programs, evaluation, and staged implementation are eschewed.
One particular hardware/software combination, based on the XO computer, is seen as the solution in all contexts, rather than recommending that educational leaders consider a range of hardware and software options and select models that meet their educational needs.
The results are entirely predictable, and have started to surface. A handful of inspiring examples, based on terrific efforts by a few innovative teachers or students and backed by armies of volunteers, are touted. But, when examining the broader implementation, we learn that without professional development or curriculum development, and with little of the infrastructure that makes computer use in schools effective, teachers for the most part ignore the computers, which thus go largely unused in schools.
As for home use of the laptops, children are initially very excited, but — again, apart from a few inspiring examples — they mainly use them to play simple games that do little else but displace time spent on homework or other forms of play. Within a year or two, the machines start breaking down and most families lack the means to repair them.
Meanwhile, huge amounts of money have been wasted that, with better planning, could have improved education in a myriad of ways.
As with prior unsuccessful examples of educational technology promoted as a magic bullet, everybody will then blame school systems and their teachers for failing to take advantage of such a revolutionary piece of equipment. Then, in another few years, a new revolutionary piece of equipment will appear and the same cycle will be repeated.
Our lesson learned from OLPC
The most impoverished countries targeted by this initiative shouldn’t be investing in one laptop per child, as their children will benefit more from the hiring and training of teachers, the building of schools, and judicious use of technology appropriate to their contexts.
As for more developed countries that are considering educational laptop programs, they will do best basing their programs on thoughtful educational planning and priorities rather than, as OLPC advocates suggest, simply passing out XOs and getting out of children’s way.
In summary, what OLPC has taught us so far is how not to organize a successful educational laptop program.
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Written by Mark Warschauer on December 17, 2009 in One Laptop Per Child Impact.
Tagged: Deployment Laptop Program Lessons Learned Mark Warschauer OLPC OLPC Model One Laptop Per Child | Trackbacks
"The most impoverished countries targeted by this initiative shouldn’t be investing in one laptop per child, as their children will benefit more from the hiring and training of teachers, the building of schools, and judicious use of technology appropriate to their contexts."
I am sympathetic to your argument. However, could you elaborate what could be done in this area that has not been tried before, and failed, in the developing world?
One of the main problems in the developing world seems to be communication. Especially in rural areas, the lack of roads, postal services. and phone/internet connections have a large share in holding back economic growth. Obviously, this also affects any attempt to improve education, eg, how to distribute books and course materials. In the cities, some of that is better (eg, roads), but even there the information divide that set back the poor remains a large problem.
These general problems are also instrumental in driving away prospective teachers. Few teachers, nurses, or doctors want to work in such poor regions. Not only is the pay bad, they are also completely cut off from the rest of the world (and the isolation often is dangerous too).
The situation of poor children in the US (or EU) will be markedly different. They will have access to public transport, newspapers, magazines, books, TV, radio, and telephone/texting. Many will have access to computers/Internet by way of family connections and Internet cafes. Teachers can live in better-off suburbs or else are in easy contact with family, friends, and the rest of the world. Even on a particularly bad day, US schools and teachers are a world apart from the schools in Brazilian favelas or rural Rwanda.
In the developing world, any channel that improves the connections between poor children, teachers, peers, family, and the world will improve their prospects in education and economic future. That even includes narrow-band LAN and Internet connections. So in that respect, 1-1 laptop (or desktop at home) initiatives will improve their prospects. And then we did not even start about text books.
So, if you consider 1-1 laptops initiatives not cost effective in the developing world, how do you think these countries could improve education in realistic terms?
The question for the future is can technology improve inclusion? Much of the technological use in the West has been as much political symbolism as about learning. The UK spent something like 5 billion dollars on schools IT in the last 6 years and there are still significant problems. Ok this is pretty depressing but there are some significant reasons why this doesn't have to be the same in the future. First of all the cost of managing conventional Windows LANs and the associate hardware and software costs have been horrendous. Mobile technologies and the internet have the capacity to change that. As an example, the UK government spent close to 1 billion dollars on curriculum on-line – that is about 100k for every lesson in the national curriculum yet we have no coherent on-line resource. Why? Because resources are fragmented across vendor licenses. Contrast that with Wikipedia. The way licensing is used makes a massive difference. So it would certainly be possible to produce an entirely free on-line curriculum on the web and in time it will get done. One town in the UK is already providing broadband access for free to citizens so access is also conceivably affordable at least in densely populate areas. Finally, cell phone technologies are getting computer capability and in time it will be available at far lower cost than text books. The problem is not knowing how long some of these developments will take. I think getting free on-line education to many more people is not an impossible goal but it is not here yet. Initiatives like OLPC are probably necessary steps in getting there. To me laptops are irrelevant. The most important part of the jigsaw is getting coherent learning pathways onto the web. In time the technology to access them will get to more people and it probably won't be using what we conventionally think of as a laptop computer.
I'm not an expert in all the things you address, but a few things come to mind. There are more affordable and sustainable ways of extending communication to rural areas than through giving all children laptops. This could be achieved through greater cell phone penetration, extension of wireless Internet infrastructure, computer or Internet kiosks or centers, etc. Teacher pay can be raised, and simple forms of IT can be used to ensure that teachers actually show up to work (or don't get paid). More and better schools can be built, more teachers can be hired, more books printed, and more follow up on how local teachers and schools are performing can be carried out. School supplies or clothing or meals or transportation can be made available for free to young children, especially girls, who might otherwise have to drop out due to not being able to afford the small (but large to their family) costs of going to school.
@Mark:
You supply a long list of "options" which just might improve education in rural areas. The question for all these is the same as with a 1-1 laptop initiative: How do they improve education?
More books? How to distribute?
Cell phones? What makes them better than a laptop?
Computer or Internet kiosks? Great, should be done. However, how will this help primary school children?
Teacher pay rises? A whole list of problems with this one, and it has never increased the supply of teacher.
Btw, these have all been tried in some way or another. I do not know of a case why they actually delivered on their promises (except maybe getting more girls in school). I can understand the general feeling that the problem cannot be solved. But I would rebel against the conclusion that these children should be abandoned.
From 1970 until today, the worldwide illiteracy rate has fallen from 36.6% to 16.5%.
Most of that is due to getting and keeping more kids in school. And this was during a period when Western Europe and Japan (regions where illiteracy was already near zero) decreased substantially as a percentage of the world population and Africa and South Asia (regions where there is substantial illiteracy) increased dramatically as a percentage of the world's population. And, amazingly, all of this happened without the XO laptop!
Do we have more to do? A lot more. But it's mistaken to think that nothing that has been done before works in improving education and that therefore we have to go into the poorest countries in the world and divert the entire educational budget to laptop computers.
Indeed, a remarkable result.
But how much of that can be attributed to China, the small tigers, and South America? How much to sub-Saharan Africa? In 1970, China was at a low not experienced since the time of the war-lords. And that is 1/6 of the human population. India has a similar story to tell. Together they account for almost 30% of the world population.
That is, how much of this decline is the result of the tremendous economic growth in some populous countries.
My fear is that those countries that did not benefit from the economic growth in the last three decades will not benefit in the coming years. Development in Africa, and to a lesser extend, South America has been a failure. Africa's economies shrank during times when the rest of the world boomed.
It is these hard problems that need to be solved. And these children that need better education.
You've investigated successful programs? Even highly successful programs? Could you, perhaps, identify one or two of these programs?
Without your resources I haven't found any successful programs, at least by the metric of improving educational outcomes, so I'm interested in successful – highly successful – programs. In fact all the programs I've had access to have been dismal failures both financially and educationally so you can understand that highly successful programs, and how they achieved their success, would be of interest to me.
In the U.S., I would consider the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, the Fullerton School District laptop program, and the SWATTEC program in Saugus, California all to be successful programs. The test score gains have been modest in these programs, but the programs are all very popular with teachers, students, administrators, and parents, and the improved learning outcomes achieved by students are not easily measured by tests. They include improved quantity and quality of authentic writing, better skills at finding and interpreting information, better skills at communicating via multiple media, higher student engagement, etc.
Admittedly these programs are expensive, but I think they can be made much less so through use of low-cost netbooks and smartbooks and open source software.
I'm sorry, but this look like a typical case that the reviewers would call "the conclusions are not supported by the data"! Simply because there are not any data!
It is certainly not what I was expecting as a "distillation" of scientific papers.
I can believe that the OLPC model will/is fail/ing, but is there any data to support my (and apparently your) beliefs?
Are they solely based on extrapolations from studies in different settings and distinct variables?
If yes. which of the variables would apply in the actual OLPC deployment setting? Which particular deployment setting?
Are there any relevant studies in developing world countries?
Which OLPC deployment you have in mind when you say that the laptops are just handed to the kids and then the kids are left to educate themselves?
etc, etc…
Could you please provide even rudimentary substantiation to your statements and (apparent) conclusions?
@Mavrothal,
First of all, I distinguish between "OLPC" and "olpc". I do not claim that all attempts to provide one laptop per child, with either the XO or other computers, are failing or are destined to fail. I do believe, that what might be considered the pure OLPC approach, of giving computers to children (not schools), without careful planning or staged implementation or pilot programs (but only as fast as possible), and based only on the automatic choice of one hardware/software solution (rather than on a discussion based on local needs), is destined to fail, and is failing where it has been implemented. I have carried out a small case study that supports that claim, as well as reviewed data from a larger study that also supports that claim. In both cases, they data is still being analyzed and under peer review, so I regret that I cannot share it on a blog. However, these kind of reports are starting to come out and will continue to do so.
That being said, with proper planning and implementation, perhaps the results will be very different. I certainly hope so. I am looking forward to seeing some of the results from evaluation studies done in large programs with better planning.
I suppose an apology's warranted if for no other reason then sarcasm's an expression of frustration which isn't particularly constructive even if it feels good.
In the case of the questions about the use of computers in education even that microscopic rationale's doesn't justify the effort since the vast sums that've been wasted on computer use in education are merely a symptom of a greater problem which is both beyond the scope of this forum.
I will note, as a means of bringing some sense of proportion to the discussion, that computers have been used in education since the early 1960's – check out the wikipedia article on the Plato computer system – and the best Professor Warschauer can come up with are three examples which the professor admits haven't produced much in the way of the sort of benefits which are always implied for the use of computers in education but never delivered, i.e. education. The popularity of the various programs is immaterial since the use to which computers were to be put was not to generate enthusiasm but to generate meaningful, measurable results.
I think most people will agree that the best way to improve the quality of education is to improve the quality of teachers. In the developing world, this is very difficult.
In Oceania where we are working on deploying OLPC in very small pacific islands and atolls, there is no budget for professional development of teachers. In fact, 90% of the budget goes on salaries. It is economically not possible to train a teacher on an outer island that sees one boat a month call in to deliver food and fuel.
Even all the aid agencies don't try to fund teacher training. They do the "easy" stuff like building schools and toilets and even curriculum development.
The hope is that by providing internet access with satellite and a cheap computer (OLPC), the teacher can get help and training and if nothing else, can access much better educational resources to stimulate the children's desire to learn.
We have found most teachers really want to be good teachers, but the system does not/can not support them. I find it less than helpful comparing IT deployments in resource rich environments (UK and USA for example) with resource poor developing countries. And I don't think it is at all helpful to say we should be building more schools instead of deploying ICTs. Of course, we need to provide better access to education, but this is not a twitter conversation. There are complex issues and implying that we can only do one thing is very unhelpful.
Finally, I find it incredibly embarrassing having "experts" from developed countries telling desperate teachers in rural and remote areas of the developing world, what they are "allowed' to have.
What keeps me going is the strong need/demand for better things that we can supply with little effort.
Having worked for three years on a development project in Egypt, and met during that time with teachers in some of the more remote and rural parts of the country, I can tell you that I never once heard a need or demand expressed for laptops for all of their students. Perhaps you have better documentation of that need or demand than I have, as well as evidence that we (whoever we is) could supply laptops to all the children in the world with little effort.
I will say that I distinguish between countries like Haiti and Rwanda–where I believe a massive OLPC initiative to be very ill-advised, compared to what could be achieved in those countries if the same funds were spent otherwise–and a country like Uruguay. The latter is a middle income country with a GDP per capita of well over $10,000, a high literacy rate, and an effective educational system. If they want to have a national school laptop program, they have much better means of doing so. I suspect, though, that their chances of success will depend in part on how far they deviate from the pure OLPC model, and instead devote sufficient resources to all the other curricular, pedagogical, social, and technical factors that shape a laptop implementation. I wish them the best and I look forward to learning of their results.
From my limited knowledge of Plan Ceibal, Uruguay's laptop project, the mere start is already a 179º deviation from the pure OLPC model:
- there's a major concern to bring in all stakeholders: government, teachers and school administrators, students, parents… included the local community at large
- there's an effort to build a consensus within these stakeholders
- content has an important place in the strategy and budget
- training has an important place in the strategy and budget
Well, in my opinion, the laptop could have been a XO or whatever else. It merely had an instrumental role.
So I agree here with Mark Warshauer that Uruguay's project is _very_ different from other laptop experiences like Rwanda or Ethiopia.
I and others have been unsystematically collecting reports of one-to-one computing deployments, successes, and failures. See
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Academic_papers
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Education_Team/Educa...
We would be grateful for anything you can add.
You are right that planning and resources are needed for best results, not just computers. OLPC has tried to make that clear to countries,and also to make it clear that OLPC has all it can do to provide the computers, so somebody else has to take up these other responsibilities. In fact several countries have created impressive programs to do just that. Proyecto CEIBAL in Uruguay is the most advanced. Bryan Berry's team at Open Learning Exchange (OLE) Nepal is getting some very good results under extremely difficult conditions. The government of Ghana has brought in University of Education, Winneba as a partner in its planning.
But there have been remarkable successes even without planning and resources. See, for example, http://radian.org/notebook/astounded-in-arahuay, which describes three remarkable sets of social changes even apart from the benefits of accessing the Internet for agricultural information in subsistence potato-farming communities, and of using the resources of the Internet to supplement the meager textbooks provided by the government.
I conclude that we do not yet know enough about what makes a laptop deployment successful and what leads to failure. The remedy is not to complain that OLPC is not doing the job of governments, but to organize and fund the rest of what is needed, including good research.
Finally, I would like to observe that your view of results depends on your expectations as much as on the program itself. It is not the primary purpose of the OLPC program to improve scores on standardized tests (although that certainly does happen) but to teach children how to learn and think for themselves, and to evaluate the information that comes to them, whether from friends and neighbors, from their governments and political organizations, or from the Internet. Connecting children together, while not an explicit OLPC goal beyond the level of the classroom, will in my view turn out to be as important as the in-class educational improvements provided
Nobody has yet addressed in full the requirements for electricity and Internet infrastructure throughout every country, and for microfinance to create new jobs and start new businesses. We have barely started on replacing printed textbooks, although funding sources for that enterprise have started to appear. So, as the bumper sticker says,
Please don't honk. I'm pedaling as fast as I can.
Over the years I have read many comments for and against the OLPC initiative. Sometimes I wonder if those who comment have ever worked in a developing country and seen the look of wonder, excitement, and pride of accomplishment when a learner obtains access to a computer and is able to accomplish simple tasks at first, then more complicated ones. I wonder if they think about how this event in childhood might inspire the learners to reach beyond currently accepted personal and community limitations.
I think that it is absolutely marvellous that someone thought big as it spurs the imaginations of others. It definitely spurred others to come up with similar projects (there are more than 50 inexpensive computer initiatives), to develop the netbook, to provide inexpensive software licensing agreements, and to think about educational technology implementation and the role of the instructor in the learning-instructional mix.
From the beginning, it was obvious to everyone that the success of the OLPC project would depend on training teachers how to incorporate technology in the classroom, altering learning and instructional methods, revising the curriculum, providing adequate maintenance and repair services, and obtaining access to reliable and inexpensive power and Internet connections. It was not expected that the OLPC project would provide everything. Other groups, including national governments, were suppose to play their role – some did, others did not. The OLPC project success also relied heavily on volunteers – people who have bills to pay and lives to live. Volunteers make it difficult to provide continuity and for the organization to build upon past experiences.
I believe that in time, the OLPC project will be seen as a significant event in the history of introducing technology to developing nations. Rather than emphasize its shortcomings, I would rather focus on what worked/works and build upon the successes. I do agree that giving one computer and a project to every teacher would be helpful, but I am also aware that this procedure will just perpetuate the teacher-centredness of the educational system. I do believe in collaboration and that learners have the capability to help others learn. I look forward to the time when the functions of a computer are incorporated into an inexpensive mobile device so that it becomes as ubiquitous as mobile phones are wherever I travel and work – from Bangladesh to Zimbabwe.
Clayton raises some important points, i.e., that OLPC provides the computers, and it is thus presumably up to others to provide the rest of the package. For that reason, for a long time I withheld any criticism of OLPC, because I did not think it right to criticize it for decisions (regarding teacher training, support, etc.) that are the responsibility of ministries of education–first off, in deciding whether one laptop per child is affordable in their contexts and then, if so, for implementing it correctly.
If that is what OLPC were, I would have no problem with it. The problem is that it comes with an ideology, a value system, and an approach, which can be characterized as "give children XOs and get out of the way." That approach deserves criticism, because it leads to wasted resources and negative results. As for the work to develop the XO and its software, and the work by volunteers around the world to support children's use of techology, I applaud that.
And yes, though I can't speak for others, I personally have worked for three years on a development project supporting educational technology for young children, and it precisely because of the tremendous social and educational needs that children around the world have that I think we have to be as thoughtful and effective as possible in how we help provide for their future.
That was also my point for withholding criticism on the OLPC.
But as it is pointed, the OLPC has never been sold as a technological project, but as an educational one, with Papert's theories, constructionism, coding as a means for education, etc. embedded with it.
Nothing against these theories, but their tacit embedding on the project seems to have been just that, tacit, not explicit, with all the support (training, social consensus, budget, planning, etc.) that it should come with just lacking but also leaving no room for this support to be added to the project.
The problem with open source and free software is that when projects have to solely depend on volunteers and donations, it seldom work or sustainable on large scale basis.
Lack of contents would therefore make most projects fail.
XOs for each child is really impractical for most countries and should not be pursued and too drastic step. The next step is to equip the teachers with technology i.e a laptop (netbook) and a projector.
That is the most logical next step to transform nationwide a blackboard centered classroom to a mixed blackboard and projector based classrooms.
Only after mastering this transition should any attempt be made to enable students to have access to PCs or laptops.
One PC per child would be in the final stages when computers are dirt cheap and the nature of the classrooms have changed where maybe students do not even have to go to schools.
Regards
Alan
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FOSS projects do not have to depend on volunteers any more than any other projects. The technology employed can be completely independent of the project funding. Lack of content is an issue but there are projects to provide free content, both in the not for profit and profit sectors. You are right in that an access device is not much use without curriculum content that is both accessible and provides progression routes. You assumption that the teacher stand at the front of the class (whether with a projector or a blackboard) as the keymeans of supporting learning is contrary to most research about best practice. Ok, it will provide some of what is needed but the internet above all else provides the opportunity to teach young people how to learn and how to be more self-sufficient in what they learn. I don't see why these benefits should be denied those in the developing world even if we can't achieve perfection right away.
Forget one PC per child. By the time that is a reality the world will be well and truly transitioned to technologies dervied from Smartphones and these will be dirt cheap compared to paying teachers. While I have some reservations about mass roll outs in environments not ready there is certainly a case for governments to trial and research such projects. They should also be pooling resources to develop a free on-line school curriculum because this would be an insignificant cost in the whole scheme of things and provide a learning driven focus for development rather than a technology driven one.
We agree strongly with Alan. Although we provide netbook, projector, wireless, and flash drive hardware at cost for pilot projects where necessary, all of our R&D focus is on enabling both online and offline access to appropriate free content. We work to develop and improve online and offline tools for finding, collecting, and sharing content in order to support mentoring of and by teachers at any geographic scale from local villages to nearest cities to international mentoring. We particularly welcome collaborations with kindred-spirit complementary approaches.
Thanks for this discussion.
As someone who co-designed an interactive curriculum for young Nigerians in 2007 with the ministry of education and many Nigerian experts, when we still hoped that 1 million olpcs would come to the country, I was really dissapointed by the naieve implementation (lack of) strategy of olpc.
To date one school in Nigeria has olpcs, maybe 2. The intel classmate has been better thought thru, they provide for example teacher training, some technical support and network installation.
I agree that we should applaud the mind shift OLPC has helped bring about with regard to developing low cost robust devices for emerging economies and thinking about the rural child, but I would like to see OLPC admit its shortcomings and not continue to claim itself as THE answer.
Introducing technologies, in my experience has to be done holistically, from tech aspects, to people capacity to infrastructure to content development. It doesn't – i believe – have to be requested by the user / teacher / student as they may not know about existing tech possibilities, however once the end user interacts with the tech it is vital to listen and learn from their experiences and continually update solutions. Hard Work
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But seriously, great post and thank you alot !!
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