During the past few weeks, a remarkable discussion has arisen on the results and implications of the OLPC Peru trial. As members of the team that produced this study, we are honored and grateful for all the comments and suggestions. We would also like to emphasize that this study is the result of a close collaboration among many individuals at the Ministry of Education in Peru, the think tank GRADE and the Inter-American Development Bank. In particular, the project would not have occurred without the support and commitment of Oscar Becerra, the director of the program at the time of the study.

Having responded to the points raised in previous posts in the corresponding comment sections, we will not address them here. Instead, we wish to address the implications of this discussion going forward. One of the main points of our paper, and our guiding principle for future work, is that a pedagogical plan is needed for the incorporation of computers into educational activities so that computers can be a useful tool.

In this post we wish to offer the personal view of Julian Cristia (IDB), Santiago Cueto (GRADE) and Eugenio Severín (IDB) regarding why solid evidence is needed in the area of education and technology—and how such knowledge can be produced. Specifically, we will argue the following:

1. We have little solid evidence about what works in education and technology.
2. This lack of knowledge is very costly.
3. We can and should produce this knowledge, but
4. We need to convince decision-makers to support efforts in this area.

We now lay out our arguments.

Little solid evidence about what works

We know little about what works in education and technology. For example, even though some research so far has focused on one-to-one programs, the main questions regarding the effects of such programs remain largely unanswered. (Although we hope our study has contributed to this literature, its results cannot be directly extrapolated to other contexts or other implementation models). This paucity of evidence is surprising, given that many countries around the world are embracing programs of this type, as Christoph Derndorfer discussed in the previous post. It is also particularly surprising when compared with what is known about other social programs. For example, conditional cash transfer programs represent another intervention that has been adopted in many developing countries. However, there are hundreds of studies analyzing those programs, compared with the handful of existing studies on one-to-one programs.

This lack of knowledge explains why technology and education is an area of heated debate. There are no other corresponding popular blogs called “agriculture and technology debate” or “health and technology debate,” even though technological advances have significantly aided striking improvements in both areas. Then again, because so much has been learned in these two fields, there may not remain much debate regarding their central issues. We do recognize that education involves more complex social processes than those involved in technology’s relationships with agriculture and health. Still, those processes and related outcomes can be analyzed, and significant knowledge can be generated regarding the effectiveness of particular interventions in specific environments. (Robert Slavin, from John Hopkins University, makes a compelling case in adopting the evidence-based approach in education as it has already been adopted in other fields such as agriculture and health).

The use of technology could be expected to translate into improvements in the educational process and thus in learning outcomes. However, it remains a challenge to know what technologies are most appropriate for a given setting, what complementary interventions should be added, and what educational areas may benefit the most from using technology.

This lack of knowledge is very costly

While researchers may relish the opportunity to find an important topic in which large and answerable questions remain open, policymakers find such an environment distressing if not outright painful. Being forced to make policy decisions in a vacuum of information is problematic because the risk of not choosing the right option is high, and this is especially true for public programs that involve spending significant resources. This is definitely the case for one-to-one laptop programs, which require important investments, and governments with limited budgets face tough decisions on whether to launch them or not. The risks associated with such decisions are considerable. If evidence later arises showing that those programs were effective, governments that did not implement them can be criticized for failing to seize an opportunity. But if the evidence suggests lower returns for laptop programs than other policy options, then governments that implemented those programs could be attacked for misallocating resources.

We can and should produce this knowledge

There are many researchers around the world who are willing and able to help determine the most effective education and technology programs for various contexts, and the basic methodology for this research has already been developed. Moreover, the most powerful method for producing solid quantitative evidence (i.e., implementing randomized controlled trials) is easy to implement, and the resulting data are quite simple to analyze. A substantial part of the research effort needed involves designing promising technology in education interventions and clearly defining the components of interventions (as Carmen Strigel detailed in a previous post). Only after these models are defined and tested on a small scale should large (and expensive) randomized controlled trials be implemented.

The question, then, is whether we should set aside enough resources to produce this knowledge. As mentioned before, taking policy decisions under uncertainty can be very costly, but to underscore this point we will present some back-of-the-envelope calculations.

First, suppose that in the roughly 36 countries where OLPC has been implemented, an accompanying randomized controlled trial (RCT) had been undertaken. Assuming that a high-quality RCT had been implemented costing $1 million in each of these countries (roughly what was spent on the OLPC Peru trial), the total cost of research would have been $36 million. In comparison to this estimated research cost, the estimated cost of OLPC programs around the world could be on the order of 800 million dollars (2 million laptops x $200 per laptop x 2 for the ratio of total to laptop costs). This means that, if a sum of less than 5% of OLPC expenditures had been devoted to RCTs, we would now have a wealth of data to further our understanding on expected impacts in different contexts and implementation models. This percentage further shrinks to about 1% when  compared with an estimate of how much countries in Latin America alone have spent or will spend under current plans on one-to-one programs (about $2.8 billion = 7 million laptops x $200 x 2).

This argument can be made even stronger if we consider a plausible scenario in which these programs are indeed effective. To make a rough estimate, suppose that implementing one-to-one programs could produce a gain in human capital that generates a net present value benefit of about $900 per student more than other policy interventions. (Assumptions: increase in permanent salary of one percent, average monthly wage $440, individual works between ages 20 and 55, discount rate 3%). Now, if we consider implementing this intervention for 50% of primary school children in Latin America and the Caribbean, the intervention will produce an aggregate increase in present value earnings of about $30 billion, an amount that makes the cost calculated above pale in comparison.

Finally, we can put these R&D expenses in perspective by comparing them with other fields. (These numbers are indicative because it is difficult to obtain estimates of specific investments related to technology). In the health sector, about $95 billion are spent annually on R&D worldwide by governments and pharmaceutical companies. But given that these companies generate large revenues in developing countries, it is reasonable to say that these countries are currently devoting large resources to R&D (on top of direct public funding to research centers). For the case of agriculture, the amounts spent on R&D are astonishing;  Argentina alone annually devotes about $120 million to advancing knowledge in this area.

But we need to convince decision-makers

Even if the preceding arguments make sense, nothing will change until decision-makers, who can provide funding for R&D, are convinced that this is money well spent. To change the current status quo, a significant communication effort is needed to make clear that, while there is a great opportunity that lies ahead, we will need to invest resources to reap potential benefits.

Global organizations and NGOs are in the process of realizing that investing in generating greater knowledge in education and technology could have high returns. Clearly showing which types of programs work best in specific environments, could induce government decisions to scale up those programs. This kind of research can be conducted by devoting resources to the design of promising interventions and their later implementation (and evaluation) on a small scale.

Nonetheless, because global organizations and NGOs’ combined budgets equal only a small percentage of public outlays of developing countries, governments in these countries will need to play a prominent role. Hence, a special effort should be undertaken to convey to governments around the world that R&D investment in the area of technology in education has large returns. Clearly, evaluating large public programs in a country involves political risks, especially if the results are not carefully analyzed or if they raise questions regarding the government’s decisions.  But implementing small and promising pilot programs together with rigorous evaluations could provide significant benefits (and even political ones) if positive results create pressure for subsequent governments to keep or even scale up the evaluated programs.

Following examples in other fields such as health and agriculture, we believe that  that independent, well-funded long-term research and development centers will need to be established in order to generate significant improvements in knowledge. Careful consideration should be given to the governance structure of such centers, which will need to focus on generating relevant knowledge that could increase learning through technology as well as participate in the system-wide adoption of this knowledge. A significant discussion will need to take place in order to determine whether and how investments of this type should be made.

Producing useful research will require the participation of a variety of stakeholders and professionals in order to maintain academic rigor as well as derive policy implications directly from the studies that are produced. All of these actions will be needed to improve our efforts in helping children learn.

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While the idea of using information and communications technologies in education (ICT4E) certainly is not new, it has received an ever-increasing amount of interest from governments, donor agencies, NGOs, and similar organizations in the past few years. One model for ICT4E interventions which has become particularly popular is the so-called “1-to-1″ approach. It is constructed around the key concept of every user, in most cases pupils and teachers, having access to a personal digital device.
To date most 1-to-1 initiatives have been implemented with laptops or netbooks, whereby One Laptop per Child’s XO laptop and Intel’s Classmate PC have seen particularly wide-spread adoption. However, with the increasing availability and popularity of other ICT devices such as tablets, mobile phones or e-book readers it is no longer sufficient to exclusively focus on laptop or netbook based projects in the 1-to-1 space.

Within this larger context this article aims to provide an overview of 1-to-1 initiatives around the world. Or rather the goal is for this article and related data to form the basis of a crowd-sourced effort to build and maintain a curated, comprehensive, and up-to-date record of significant 1-to-1 initiatives. As such this post and the information presented in it should be a considered a starting point for further work rather than a finished and complete artifact.
By highlighting key developments in other countries, which have implemented OLPC initiatives, it will also try to provide additional context for the previous EduTechDebate posts, which were largely focused on the Peru’s OLPC project.

Global 1-to-1 list

Here is the link to the underlying sheet – please add in project data and links to verifications.

Inclusion criteria for the overview

In order for an initiative to be included in this global overview it has to fulfill two basic criteria:

1. It must adhere to the 1-to-1 approach by distributing a personal device to each user.
2. It must be of significant size whereby this was defined to mean that the initiative takes place in at least a state/region if not a whole country.

As indicated above this overview is technology-agnostic insofar as all kinds of device-choices are considered as long as the two basic criteria are met.

Explanations

Most of the fields used in the overview should be self-explanatory. An exception might be the saturation column, which indicates the ratio between the number of devices that have been distributed, and the number of potential users which the initiative is aimed at.

Limitations

As it turns out one of the biggest challenges in the compilation of this overview was finding reliable information as opposed to mere announcements or discussions of 1-to-1 initiatives being considered or launched. Also, relevant information about initiatives might not be available in English, Spanish, French or German and hence not accessible to me. Therefore it is quite possible, in fact even likely, those sizable efforts in countries such China and Russia have been omitted from this list.
Additionally a number of other countries and provinces also seem to have started 1-to-1 initiatives. However as I was not able to obtain solid information about these efforts I did not include them in the table. If you have data on them, please add them to the list:

• Chile
• Georgia
• Honduras
• India
• Malaysia
• Nigeria
• Russia
• South Korea

Any corrections, enhancements, suggestions, and other feedback regarding this overview are much appreciated.

And the most widely used devices in 1-to-1 are…

Earlier I mentioned the notion of 1-to-1 having to be expanded to include more device categories such as tablets, mobile phones, and e-book readers. At the same time the table above reveals that as far as ongoing projects netbooks, and in particular the OLPC XO and Intel Classmate series, remain the most widely used devices in 1-to-1 projects today.
According to OLPC the organization has distributed approximately 2.5 million of its XO laptops in the past few years. Intel’s web site states that more than 6 million of its Classmate PCs have shipped. As previously mentioned it is very hard to independently verify these figures but overall it does seem clear that:

1. While a significant number of pupils and teachers are involved in 1-to-1 projects which use netbooks, the road until 1-to-1 becomes a global reality is very long indeed.
2. Latin America is without a doubt the global hotspot of large-scale 1-to-1 initiatives.

Wanted: More information, monitoring, and evaluation

What strikes me as interesting is that beyond the aforementioned key figures fairly little information – let alone further documentation such as accurate TOC figures or impact evaluations – is publicly available about most of these initiatives. Given the vast amounts of money which are currently spent on implementing 1-to-1 initiatives one would wish that all of them would be accompanied by extensive monitoring and evaluation efforts. Unfortunately this generally does not seem to be happening. This makes IDB’s ongoing evaluation of Peru’s Una Laptop per Niño such a noteworthy effort that deserves the attention of researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and everyone involved in 1-to-1 initiatives.

A suggested monitoring and evaluation framework

In early 2010 Tanja Kohn, a PhD researcher at University of Innsbruck, and I compiled a list of six criteria for successful implementations of ICT for Education projects in developing countries:

1. Infrastructure
2. Maintenance
3. Contents and materials
4. Community inclusion
5. Teacher training
6. Evaluation

I have since used these six criteria in both a descriptive fashion to support the analysis of ongoing ICT4E projects as well as a prescriptive set of aspects to consider when planning such initiatives. Therefore I believe that these criteria can also serve as a basis for extracting valuable lessons for other ICT4E projects from Una Laptop por Niño and other OLPC projects, in particular Uruguay’s Plan Ceibal.

1. Infrastructure needs of ICT4E projects are often considered but seldom seem to be addressed in their entirety. For example in Peru some schools which were formally counted as having electricity turned out to actually only have a very small number of or even just a single power outlet limited to the principal’s office. Especially with 1-to-1 projects this is obviously a serious restriction that is going to impact the potential use of devices such as netbooks, even more so when children and teachers can’t be expected to have electricity at home. Internet access or an intermediary solution such as educational resources cached on a server that receives occasional updates is another infrastructure dimension that can provide tremendous value in ICT4E projects.

Beyond its potential impacts on education, connectivity also facilitates other aspects of projects. For example it makes it easier to distribute software updates and enables teachers to informally connect with each other to share experiences and resources. Last but not least such infrastructure can also provide benefits outside of the scope of ICT4E itself, e.g. by providing electricity and Internet-based services to other members of the community where it’s installed.

Charger and non-connected network plug

2. Maintenance has to be a key component of any ICT4E effort. Despite numerous improvements in its maintenance system and more than two years after Uruguay reached full saturation in its public primary school system the project recently reported approximately 46,000 pupils’ machines being out-of-service. IDB’s current report about Una Laptop por Niño also found that 13% of XO laptops have malfunctioned at some point so far. Beyond the associated significant logistical and financial burdens such widespread technical issues likely also play a role in slowing down their acceptance and subsequent classroom use by teachers.

3. Contents and materials covers a broad variety of artifacts such as electronic books, multimedia collections, educational content or software tied to specific curriculum goals, teacher-support materials, etc. Arguably its absence is one of the most widely cited problems when it comes to many ICT4E projects. I think it’s fair to say that both Una Laptop por Niño and Plan Ceibal have recognized the important of such contents and materials and now offer a range of them to pupils and teachers.

Particularly Plan Ceibal is using many different approaches to obtain such contents. These include idea competitions, invitations to companies to develop new or adapt existing software and contents, calls for volunteers to translate Khan Academy videos, etc. Una Laptop por Niño seems to have been more focused on contents developed and curated by the Ministry of Education itself. However due to the very limited Internet connectivity their distribution was a significant challenge which was apparently ultimately overcome by distributing USB drives pre-loaded with a collection of such contents. What these experiences indicate to me is that it’s important to come up with a comprehensive approach to survey existing content, involve many different stakeholders in the adaptation of existing and creation of new materials, and subsequently come up with efficient ways to make them available to pupils and teachers.

4. Community inclusion is one area where Plan Ceibal seems to be in quite a unique and exceptionally good position when it comes to 1-to-1 initiatives. Outside of the government-run official project there are now at least half a dozen well established organizations and communities which are closely involved in many related activities. These include the installation of network access in rural parts of Uruguay, the development of open source education software, the involvement of students and faculty of Uruguay’s largest university, the organization of information meetings for parents and all manners of logistical support, etc.

It’s many of these seemingly small efforts, which lead to the buy-in of key stakeholders such as parents, teachers, and school administrators. Informally organized groups of people or small organizations can thereby often address specific needs, which can’t be easily met by more traditionally organized entities such as Ministries of Education. As such it is important that these established organizations allow and ideally support community-based participation and involvement in ICT4E projects.

5. Teacher training is a topic which is particularly hotly debated in the context of OLPC. This is mostly due to the fact that the project is generally considered to having been very focused on children and thereby sometimes ignoring the key role that teachers play in learning. As I wrote about Plan Ceibal back in 2010:

“While not having been able to completely solve this puzzle yet Uruguay’s experiences do point to what a suitable solution could look like:

• Training that takes place before the laptops are handed out combined with in-service training and in-classroom support
• Training components that take place in both physical and virtual environments
• Training that is really focused on how to use the laptop for learning rather than spending too much time on simply learning how to use a particular application
• Creating suitable spaces for teachers to exchange ideas, experiences, and materials they made while using the laptops
• Inclusion of training of methods and abilities required for using connected digital tools in schools in the education of future generations of teachers”

Similarly the findings from IDB’s current evaluation report about Peru provide important indications about additional aspects to be aware of, e.g. the high turnover rate of teachers.

6. Evaluation and associated monitoring efforts are in many ways what enable ICT4E projects to address the other five criteria. As such it’s also clear that they mustn’t be an afterthought but rather have to be considered in the earliest planning stages of any implementation. A specific example is the collection of baseline data in order to subsequently form the basis for impact evaluations.

IDB’s Una Laptop por Niño evaluation uses the traditional treatment/control groups approach but as Uruguay’s public primary school system has been saturated with laptops this is no longer possible there. In some ways this is probably a good problem to have, however it also makes it harder to separate Plan Ceibal’s impact from other developments in its school system and larger society.

More M&E of all types is needed

Overall there’s no doubt in my mind that there’s much to be learned from these two OLPC implementations. However as indicated earlier it seems to me that not enough is being done to document, evaluate, discuss, and reflect upon what’s happening in the many OLPC, 1-to-1, and other ICT4E projects around the world.

Doing this would help in two important ways: Learning how to do things right. And maybe even more importantly: How to avoid making mistakes which others have already made before – what Alan Kay once referred to as “reinventing the flat tire”.

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A fascinating discussion has emerged on one laptop per child programs – much has been said in the previous articles and there have been many posts in the past several days on the topic of OLPC in Peru and similar efforts elsewhere. Research has been cited, and personal experiences and opinions shared. Where do we go from here?

I want to specifically address the broader ICT for Education (ICT4E) question of whether or not a single intervention can have an impact on student achievement.

In looking at the discussions and research to date, I suggest an ICT4E intervention can have (and should have!) an impact, but only through focus. Specifically, focus on:

• Specific problems and explicit objectives
• Student achievement
• Monitoring and evaluation

To start, let me clarify what I mean with ICT4E initiatives for the purpose of this article: I am talking about comprehensive ICT interventions at the classroom/student level such as OLPC (but not only one-to-one programs). Such efforts would at a minimum combine elements of providing electronic teaching and learning resources (content), devices to access the content, and related teacher training. Under the paradigm of focus, I also propose that we get more precise when we talk about ICT4E, as clearly one intervention type or implementation model does not necessarily compare to the other.

Focus ICT4E interventions on specific problems and formulate explicit objectives

The OLPC Peru program aims “To improve the quality of public primary education, especially that of children in the remotest places and in extreme poverty, prioritizing multi-grade schools with only one teacher”. The program description does not mention specific subjects or explicit skills in any of its objectives, and there are plenty of programs out there with similarly vague statements.

I think we need to get more evidence-based, specific, and realistic when talking about anticipated impacts and avoid overgeneralization in our program descriptions and general ICT4E rhetoric.

In a focused approach to ICT4E intervention planning and program design we would unpack the broader goal, identify the key problems area(s) on the classroom level, and address them in a systematic manner. Children’s early reading skills, e.g., are low “…most children read badly, with poor fluency and limited comprehension”. Oscar Becerra in his contribution also mentions the challenges of teachers’ reading levels. Further, the effort to add 200 e-Books to the other content provided on the XOs, and the fact that the section on how to use these provides the most descriptive and detailed pedagogical guidance in the OLPC manuals, is an indicator that reading has already been recognized, although not explicitly and systematically, for specific attention.

Continuing using early reading as an example, a focused ICT intervention could draw on research to date on how to improve reading in the early grades even in low-resource environments. From this work, we can learn that a focus on the classroom-level and the very specific, underlying skills of early reading (such as phonemic awareness and letter recognition), with simple-to-implement and direct approaches to teaching (and teacher training), low-cost materials and a focus on continuing assessment to monitor progress can make a significant difference in students’ early reading outcomes already within a relatively short period of time.

A role for an ICT intervention in this scenario could then be how to get to such results in a more effective and efficient manner and/or for specific groups of students whose needs are not yet fully addressed through existing, though working, approaches.

In an effort to respond to the (very valid) sustainability and scale up requirements, to adhere to best practices in institutionalization and sector-wide approaches, and in dealing with the significant challenges related to procurement – of equipment and content – ICT4E initiatives get caught up in investing resources and efforts on too many fronts already at the very beginning, without having had a chance to even get to the classroom and validate their impact where it should matter most: at the student level.

Focus on student achievement

A lot of discussion related to this month’s topic raised the question of whether or not ICT4E initiatives should be assessed in regards to their contribution to improved student learning outcomes and specifically academic achievement.

In environments where resources are extremely limited, the choice for implementing a certain program is de facto a decision against an alternative approach. I question how we justify not expecting comprehensive classroom-level ICT initiatives to focus on learning outcomes when even the most foundational skills critical for future learning, such as early reading, are not being acquired by large proportions of children.

Clearly, other skills, including cognitive skills, critical thinking skills, etc., are important for learning and child development. Thus it is important to move the body of knowledge on ICT for Education further into exploring such new domains. However, should this really be done on the expense of education systems that already struggle with basic service delivery and ensuring universal learning of the most foundational skills? As many of us remember, there has already been much discussion around the issue of added-value of technology in good schools, versus challenge schools (systems).

I propose to go back to the drawing board and try to get more specific about where we expect ICT can make an impact, define impacts more narrowly, and develop a roadmap of the steps including outputs and outcomes to get there.

A revised ICT4E initiative objective could under such an approach read like: “… aims to improve early reading skills, specifically fluency, among students in grades 1 and 2 of public primary schools” within an average timeline of a donor-funded project of some 5 years. The OLPC Peru program sets a good example in regard to focusing on a specific target: “…children in the remotest places and in extreme poverty, prioritizing multi-grade schools with only one teacher.”

While ICT is still not a magic bullet to resolve this issue, such an objective is at least measurable as there are internationally validated tools, and – as we can learn from reading curricula around the world – results should be detectable within a reasonable timeframe of 1-2 years for most languages and scripts. Other objectives may take longer to achieve and may need to be broken down into intermediate results and steps to find the balance between being ambitious and realistic.

Establishing priorities and validating impact on specific aspects of larger objectives and expanding on these over time will go a long way to building credibility for the ICT4E and the larger ICT for Development practice area, and rallying the national support needed for a program.

With such a focused objective in hand, program implementers can then align activities (provision of content, equipment, training, etc. ) and design monitoring and evaluation frameworks that provide relevant information to the project internally and to the larger body of knowledge.

Focus on rigorous Monitoring and Evaluation in ICT4E interventions

Much has already been said about the lack of systematic Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) of progress and impact in OLPC programs and elsewhere.

Implementing good M&E is difficult. It is hard to design relevant and appropriate frameworks with coherent indicators, realistic data collection methods, and validated tools. Thus, M&E costs money, which can be more or less depending on the complexity of the program and/or the objectives and questions driving program implementation. And it is even harder to focus on M&E when at the same time available resources and people engaged in the program are tied up with the enormous tasks related to the logistics of getting the hardware devices into children’s hands.

In spite of this, however, absence of systematic M&E deprives any program of the opportunity to tell a story much beyond anecdotal evidence once it comes to evaluation.

Furthermore, without systematic monitoring, there is no opportunity to implement corrective measures to program parameters and to continually check back whether activities and resources are moving the initiative towards project objectives before scale up/institutionalization. Monitoring can take many faces and each of them can be strategically employed at different times in a project life-cycle to help improve the program. Monitoring may involve low-effort usability tests with target group users on ease of use of equipment, user acceptance tests for new content and approaches, pilots for new curricula, or comprehensive randomized controlled trial methodologies that allow for a more precise look at the effect of the equipment versus that of the content or the teacher training on the overall project objective before scale-up.

Although no written M&E framework was found on the OLPC Peru website, some monitoring- type activities have taken place. From an outsider’s glance it seems, however, as if these were not yet fully capitalized on to improve the implementation model.

In 2007, in advance of the main roll-out, a pilot was conducted in Arahuay with 48 students for several months. The pilot unearthed a number of hardware design and technical installation issues that were subsequently fixed. However, there seems to be little documentation of any change in the pedagogical model related to the educational resources or teacher training provided as a result of the pilot.

Further, the first IDB study was conducted in 2009 and found that “Concerning use, it is worth making note of what looks like a decreasing utilization of computers in the classroom, which could be a reflection of the need for more technical and pedagogical support for the teachers, as well as of the lack of planning sessions, activities and digital resources appropriate for educational use.” Although in other sources, an iterative improvement process to the roll-out is being stated, the IDB 2012 report does not indicate implementation design adjustments towards more pedagogical support or resources appropriate for educational use between 2009 and 2010.

The OLPC Peru program has been given a potentially huge opportunity through this present IDB study, which, given the rigor of its methodology should be taken very seriously. For this, however, the community would need to agree that the current study is conceptualized as a monitoring effort, providing relevant feedback at a strategic point in time for the program, rather than constituting an “end of program” type evaluation effort. On the side of project implementers, it will require some potentially hard strategic decisions about the need for and focus of future efforts and resources.

In general for the ICT4Ed practice area, I propose we adopt a more focused approach to establish the added-value ICT provides in low-income countries and:

1. Avoid generalizing results from studies done on specific models/intervention types (and their particular choices for equipment, content and implementation) to “ICT for Education” as a whole.
2. Focus on very explicit problems and measurable objectives for ICT interventions first of all and avoid general, overambitious objective statements.
3. Get more systematic and rigorous in monitoring ICT for Education initiatives to find out first, on a small scale, what works (or not) for specific contexts before scale up.
4. Increase expectations on comprehensive classroom-level ICT initiatives to contribute to measurable results – specifically in key learning areas – instead of expecting different standards for ICT4Education compared to other educational improvement efforts.

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One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has been a part of a larger ICT4E discussion, which has included ongoing debate over the effectiveness of the XO and its various deployments.  Since its inception, OLPC has relied mainly on aspirations, visions, and projections to support investment from various partners across the globe.  Pilots programs were conducted at various levels of deployment, programming, and stakeholder engagement.  More recently, larger, more longer-standing deployments have reached a point where assessments are now coming to fruition.

Concurrently, as the OLPC offering developed and evolved, so too did a variety of education technology initiatives and device platforms.  More specifically, the presence of similar programs and other form factors (tablets, mobile phones) increased the channels through which a variety of activities for education, instruction, communications, and business could be conducted. 

These processes contribute to shifting expectations, which despite the support or critique of one assessment or another, highlight the importance of setting clear objectives that are cognizant of both the array of available tools as well as the surrounding systems that have an indirect, but no less significant affect on final outcomes.

A recent Technology Salon in Washington, D.C. touched on various topics including the current landscape of ICT developments around the world and the findings and characteristics of the 2011 IDB randomized control experiment in Peru XO deployment.

ICT Landscape

When the XO concept first hit the market in 2005, laptops had just passed desktop machines in overall retail sales in a personal computing.  The personal computing device landscape at the time was characterized by the mobility of laptops and the power of the desktop computer.  Netbooks would surface several years later, accentuating the value of mobility over power.   

Seven years later, that landscape has changed with the introduction of tablet PCs, not to mention the prevalence of smart phones.  With laptops displacing laptops and netbooks (sort of) and tablets displacing laptops, all while smart phones provide prevalent and complementary channels of information, resulting in more diverse market than that which the XO first entered in 2005. 

What are the implications of this mixed learning environment for ICT4E?  The answer will no doubt vary.  In higher disposable income environments, it’s completely feasible for a primary school child to check out an iPad at school, own a smart phone, and return to a home equipped with a tablet, netbook, and/or a laptop.  On the other hand, in the lesser developed areas, this is not necessarily the reality for individuals, NGOs, or state education authorities on the ground. 

For the education sector, the result is an increased variety of tools and overlapping ability to engage educational learning goals and objectives.  Whether the tablet proves to be an effective tool in ICT4E remains to be seen in projects like the Aakash tablet and OLPC’s more recent release of the XO 3.0.

Assessment in Context

For the XO deployment in Peru, the IDB’s randomized control experiment sampled five students per grade per school out of 320 schools (2/3of which were in a treatment receiving the intervention) at intervals of 3 and 15 months.  A 2010 assessment brief was released based on the 3 month data, and last Thursday’s assessment brief covered the 15 month data.  The findings showed little effect in national assessments in math and language test results, with slight advancement in cognitive abilities based on IDB methodologies.  A natural question follows:  Was 15 months long enough of a period to observe significant effect on child learning?

Part of the answer may rest in the level of technical and pedagogical support implicated in both briefings.  In the 2010 assessment, only 10.5% of teachers reported receiving technical support (with 7% receiving pedagogical support).  Thursday’s discussion revealed that only 1/3 of the schools had received pedagogical support and only 1/3 had actually used technical training and manuals provided them.  Further discussion revealed that training consisted of a total 40 hours of training, while the percentage of teachers having received training dropped from 80% in 2010 to 71% by the 2011 assessment. 

Considering the role teachers play in the traditional education systems of instruction and assessment, a lack of technical and pedagogical support could, at the very least, delay integration of the XO as a significant tool in those systems.  It can be argued that the use of XOs outside the classroom could produce other benefits to complement classroom learning.  However, given that almost half the students were prohibited from taking the XOs home and that half of all teachers didn’t use the XO in the classroom, would a larger assessment time frame produce significant difference in findings?

Outputs vs. Outcomes

Core to program logic is that program theory helps identify a problem for which a program is designed, complete with inputs, activities and outputs.  In assessing a program’s effectiveness, it’s important to distinguish the difference between outputs and outcomes as well ensure alignment with measurement and evaluation criteria.  The two largest XO deployments in absolute numbers and percent of population are Peru and Uruguay. 

Thursday’s discussion pointed out Uruguay’s clear objective of social inclusion, which produced a near 100% primary school penetration rate through a national 1-to-1 program.  The Uruguay assessment focused on access, use, and experience, reflecting a focus on social inclusion as an outcome.  In the case of the assessment of Peru, math, language, and cognitive test results showed outputs, but no clear connection to Peru’s 2007 stated objectives which targeted pedagogical training and application.  If objectives and outcomes are not clearly aligned with assessment criteria, can “effectiveness” be appropriately measured?

Objects vs. Processes

It is important to be clear about what is being measured before measurement begins.  Is it the insertion of an object or introduction of a process?  Thursday’s discussion touched on the lack of clarity over this question.  Was it the sheer presence of laptops that would dramatically “empower children to learn?”  Placing a laptop next to one’s head to demonstrate expectations of the XO, of course, is an exaggeration of the self-learning model.   

An analogy that better demonstrates the situation could be a teacher being given a chalkboard and chalk at the beginning of the school year.  There is an inherent assumption that the teacher knows how to write on the board and has been trained with curriculum content to write on the board.   The point being, the intervention is much more complex than the introduction of a singular object, be it a chalkboard or an XO.  In some sense, this is recognized by the stated objectives of the Peruvian program, targeting both training and pedagogical application surrounding the XOs.  The realization, however, based on the numbers seems distant.

The statement, “Computers will happen” brought up an interesting idea of shifting focus away from the question of “whether the XO’s presence had an effect,” and towards evaluating the effect of the content and overall experience.  Assessing the experience, rather than the hardware, would more specifically target the processes designed to target pedagogical use and curriculum development.  The XO does not stand alone, but rather depends on an ecosystem of processes that affect child-learning.  More specifically, outcomes related to XO use would more appropriately be measured not by only looking at groups that have received the XO and those who haven’t, but by looking at what surrounding processes have contributed to child-learning. 

Walter Bender spoke at a mEducation event where, despite the XO 3.0 being the theme of the event, he emphasized the capabilities of the Sugar platform and the capabilities of it and the applications surrounding it.  Perhaps focusing on the evaluation of training, content, and support surrounding XO deployments can provide more insight to measured effects of the processes that sit on top of the object?

One-to-What Computing

The name “One Laptop Per Child” itself explicitly assigns itself to a “one-to-one” computing model as an education solution.  The discussion over instructional format is not new and reflects the complex reality that program design.  The right “solution” will be considerate of not only training and curriculum, but also the resources and capacity constraints of school programs and the communities surrounding them.  Curriculum can be designed for individual or collaborative learning environments.  In my three years of experience teaching computer studies in Western Samoa, I used different classroom formats, employing both a one-to-one model and a one-to-many model.  Admittedly, applying the one-to-many model was a compromise between limited resources (20 computers) and overwhelming demand (300 students). 

However, I observed just as much “learning” happening in both models, in conjunction with adjusted lesson and activity plans.  The value of collaboration cannot be discounted, especially when students in a one-to-one model often still talk amongst themselves.  The issue then becomes a matter of how much “face-time” the student has with the computer and how much value that provides for their overall learning process.  Is one hour of use a day necessarily less valuable than 24 hours a day?  The reality is that each student will have different circumstances that affect their ability to use the device. 

This variability in circumstance highlights how classroom designs differ from home use design where the primary influencer, at least for the class period, is the teacher.  The debate between one-to-one and one-to-many computing formats is important and will no doubt be expanded by studies in the more measurable and controllable classroom environment.  But to be clear, I definitely value having a computer at home (as a child, I was fortunate enough to have a Tandy 1000EX), but I am unsure how the effect of such exposure can be accurately measured, when the “home” environment can vary greatly.

Shifting a Paradigm

In 2007, Uruguay’s Plan Ceibal and Peru’s XO program designs looked very similar, but Plan Ceibal evolved with input from the community that helped shape the activities, enabling Uruguay to achieve its objectives.  Perhaps larger geographical, socio-economic, or political factors held Peru back from achieving its goals? Or perhaps, as one attendee asked, Uruguay’s success was a reflection of a social structure that existed prior to OLPC. 

The reality is that the technological landscape is rapidly evolving, challenging both the “form” (netbook) and “fashion” (1-to-1 deployment) of OLPC deployments.  Moving forward, ICT4E projects will need to focus on alignment between a growing array of tools, clear objectives, and assessment criteria in order to ensure measurable effectiveness and consider cost-effectiveness in the presence of alternative measures.  A focus on the curriculum and pedagogical experience may provide a better understanding of process interventions rather than object insertions. 

The cases of Uruguay and Peru could serve as first steps in appreciating that the success of the program does not lie solely in a single machine, but rather in engaging the stakeholders and conditions surrounding it.

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Thanks for the opportunity to discuss OLPC again. I am not unbiased since I was responsible for the design and implementation of “Una Laptop por Niño” but I think my contribution may illustrate some of the points described in the article. To begin I would like to point out the reality upon which “Una Laptop por Niño” was developed.

In January, 2007 a census evaluation applied to 180,000 Peruvian teachers showed 62% of them not reaching reading comprehension levels compatible with elementary school (PISA level 3) 27% performed at level 0 or less. 92% of the teachers evaluated did not reach acceptable (6^th grade level) performance in Math. After 200 hours remedial education in reading comprehension still about 15% stayed at level 0. It was clear to us the main challenge for our project would not be “teacher training” on how to use computers in the classroom because most of our teachers needed exceedingly much more than ICT literacy courses.

Public schools did not receive any maintenance for years, most of the largest schools known as “emblemáticos” that were built in the 1950’s had not been subject of any maintenance and were literally falling apart. One of them, with a capacity for almost 5,000 students had less than 2,500 because anyone who could run away from public education would do so. About four thousand schools (5% the number of schools but about 30% the Public school student population) had connectivity but very few of our target schools were connected because of their remote location.

Almost 200,000 students in Peru attend about 10,000 “one-teacher primary (1-6) schools” where one teacher has to teach first to sixth graders in the same classroom. It was these schools we decided to serve first. The rationale behind such apparently “doomed to failure” decision was:

1. The poorest and most remote schools are the most difficult to serve and therefore usually left for the last stages which seldom really happen.
2. Any widespread effort to improve quality of education should aim to reduce the gap between the poorest and the less poor.
3. The hopelessness plaguing children in extreme poverty areas had to be confronted. Access to technology is not a panacea but could certainly contribute to help children feel empowered.
4. It is widely recognized children have a natural trend to learn how to use technology.
5. Wealthy schools don’t question if their students should have access to technology. Why should the poorer? We saw the project as a way to reduce the digital divide.

Our justification was evident enough for the Congress to pass a law approving the program, surprisingly without a single opposing vote in spite of the diversity of congresspersons.

Going to the four questions:

1. Do any ICT interventions have impact? Or are we all just wasting our time with technology?

All interventions, not only ICT interventions have impact. The problem is to figure out what the impact is and if it is good or bad. In the case of ICT, as the IDB report wisely points out, the effect is neither magic nor fast. What is surprising is how many apparently sensible people expect magic fast results and are ready to criticize the effort made after such a short time.

An educational system in such poor shape as the Peruvian will take, in my opinion 10-15 years, just to improve the quality of its teachers. Something needed to be done in the meantime. We thought giving children access to a technology designed as a tool to learn with, was a step in the right direction. I don’t think time is wasted with technology, however it is not measuring how much more Math or History have children learned in the traditional way that we will see the impact.

2. Do we actually know how to measure the impact of ICT on education? Or are we testing the wrong things to see impact?

I think “those who have a hammer see everything as a nail” is a proper way to describe the ways many evaluations are done or, even worse, looked at. In the case of the IDB study, having participated in the design and first stages I can assure the study was very well thought. However, as soon as the initial findings were reported, every interested party tried to “llevar agua para su molino” (bring water to its mill).

For example, I heard many advocates of the ICT industry (the main detractor of the OLPC approach because it impacted its market share numbers) use the results to say the project was a failure and their approach should have been used. There were no impacts in cognitive results because, as we knew from the beginning, no results could be reasonably expected so soon.

We were not (I should say they) testing the wrong things, not only the cognitive abilities were measured, but also the attitudes and expectations of students parents and teachers which actually showed improvement. Students became more critical of the schools system and expected more of it. That is an important outcome that will certainly impact the quality for the system in the long term.

3. Can any single intervention have impact? Or do we need to have more interventions over longer timeframes for impact?

Any single intervention will have probably limited impact. It is a combination of interventions that will have long-term effects. In our case we knew several articulated actions were needed and they would all take long times. Some of the things we did were:

• a multimillion dollar remedial education effort aimed to improve teacher quality through in-service training in reading comprehension and math;
• tougher requirements to enter higher education institutions to become teachers (just those dependent of the Ministry of Education because universities are autonomous);
• a new career path for teachers based on merit and performance tied to improved salaries;
• an articulated common curriculum for K-11;
• diffusion of school expected outcomes from K to 11 among parents in order to involve them in the quality improvement efforts;
• national census evaluation of students and diffusion of results among stakeholders (teachers, principals and parents);
• infrastructure improvement and new equipment for the largest schools (flagship schools);
• a school maintenance program that assigned about $500 per classroom directly to principals for minor maintenance tasks at all public schools countrywide.

Most of the efforts will have long timeframes. The problem is the vicious tradition among politicians to stop everything done by their predecessors and trying to begin everything anew. We tried to resist the tradition and maintained most of what we found that we thought was in the right direction. Una Laptop por Niño was built on the foundation set by Huascarán project. Our Educational Resource Center concept evolved from the Pedagogy Innovation Classrooms and the Robotics in elementary school program was designed to capitalize on the original ideas proposed by the MoE team back in 1996.

4. Are all laptop programs doomed? Or was Peru’s approach itself the problem?

I don’t think laptop programs are doomed, I did a study of impact of the program on intrinsic motivation towards school work and the results confirmed all the hypothesis. Students feel better and their readiness to work hard to learn things they think are important improves significantly more for participants in “Una Laptop por Niño” than for those who did not participate.

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The greatest challenge with promoting literacy with ICT is that ICT may not be the most appropriate tool to promote literacy.

The issue here is that we are starting with the solution instead of the problem. We are asking: “How can ICT help address low literacy levels?” Instead of: “How can low literacy levels be addressed?”

This might seem like semantics at first, but there is a fundamental difference between those two questions:

• The former prescribes a solution: ICT.
• The latter does not.

This is significant because when we start with a solution already in mind, we tend to reduce the problem to only those factors that can be solved using that prescribed solution. In this case, we’ve been inundated with cheap hardware and e-content that hasn’t demonstrated a concrete ability to improve literacy.

But, perhaps more significantly, the factors that our prescribed solution can’t solve get left out as a result. This is particularly troubling in this case, because the low level of literacy in many developing country contexts is not a primarily technological problem.

There are bigger factors at play, such as:

• Teachers are inadequately trained and poorly compensated;
• Curriculum is outdated;
• Schools are poorly equipped and maintained;
• Students’ families cannot afford school fees.

ICT alone cannot fix a broken educational system or compensate for poor pedagogical practice. In a context where these issues exist, it is extremely difficult to improve literacy in a significant, sustainable way if you ignore them.

This isn’t much of a revelation. The ICT4E community has been aware of these facts for quite some time.

But, somehow, this knowledge still doesn’t seem to be manifesting itself in the way most ICT4E projects are designed. So, what do we do?

My suggestion is this:

1. Start with the problem.

This seems obvious, but it’s something many ICT4E projects aren’t doing. When we start with a particular technology—or even technology in general—we risk falling into the trap above.

So, we start with a problem. Whether it be literacy in primary-level students or poorly trained teachers or outdated teaching materials, the problem should be something concrete. A good indicator is to ask: is this an issue that we can measure progress towards solving?

For example, “education” is not a problem because we can’t measure progress towards education in any kind of tangible way—we need to be more specific (ie. define what we mean by education or literacy) in order to do that.

2. Brainstorm solutions to the problem. Pick the one that is most appropriate for your context.

Now that we have a problem—low levels of literacy, for instance—we can start to think about solutions. Different ICT interventions will probably be among them.

But then we need to look at the context where we want to implement this solution, which is where all of the other challenging factors identified in this month’s ETD discussion (technology restrictions, human constraints, market failure, language, total cost of ownership, etc) come into play.

Taking all this into account, we might find that the best approach to addressing low literacy levels (or solving educational problem X) doesn’t even involve technology.

Or maybe it involves ‘old’ media—like radios or feature phones—that can get overlooked in ICT4E because they are no longer ‘in fashion’.

This is unnerving for many of us ICT4E folks, because if we draw this conclusion then we potentially make our involvement in some projects obsolete. But if we’re serious about the “E” in “ICT4E” we’re more concerned with improving education than with promoting ICT as a solution. And if that means ICT isn’t the best way forward, we’re going to come to terms with that.

But to be honest, I don’t think this will happen. There are lots of contexts where ICT may very well be the most appropriate approach to improving literacy levels or addressing other educational challenges. In fact, I think that, given the right human and technical resources as well as the range of ICT available, ICT has the potential to be a powerful tool in this regard.

We just need to start with the problem and not the solution so that we know 1) what we want technology to help us do, and 2) pick the right technology to help us do it.

3. Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate

The third piece of this puzzle is figuring out how we know if technology is doing what we want it to do.

One of the big issues, which has already been flagged in this month’s discussion, is that we don’t have enough evidence to show a positive correlation between ICT interventions and improvements in literacy. In fact, there’s a troubling lack of monitoring and evaluation happening in the ICT4E field as a whole.

The only way to keep ourselves from repeating past mistakes is to know when we’re making a mistake.

But monitoring and evaluating a project is pretty hard if you don’t have a concrete goal to begin with—which, again, is why it’s so important to start with a problem that we can measure progress toward solving.

Now, I realize that’s easier said than done. Defining ‘success’ is a slippery topic that deserves its own discussion.

The challenge with defining ‘success’ in ICT4E is also a possible reason that some projects start with solutions as opposed to problems: it’s much more straightforward to measure ‘success’ when it’s defined by the saturation of laptop:child, for instance, than having to deal with pinning down what ‘success’ is in terms of improving something intangible, like literacy.

But skirting around this issue is leading us away from singling out the more effective uses of ICT to enhance education. If that’s really what we want to do—and we want to get better at doing it—we’ve got to figure out how we know when we’re doing it right.

The first step towards that is starting with a problem, not a solution. And accepting that the most appropriate solution to an educational problem, such as addressing low literacy levels in developing country contexts, may not be ICT.

I think that USAID’s recently announced Grand Challenge for Development: All Children Reading is a great step in this direction. It clearly starts with a problem–”793 million adults worldwide cannot read these words”–and is sourcing for solutions. From the information available right now, it looks like technologies (mobile ICT in particular) are going to be one of several focuses when looking at possible solutions.

I’m interested to see how this process pans out, and what kind of research emerges from the initiative.

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If you looked at the buzz in ICT for education, you would think the solutions to problems of teaching literacy and reading are mainly around hardware price points. You have everyone talking endlessly about $100 laptops, $30 tablets, $15 teacher laptops and projectors, and $10 talking books. But all this is fluff. The sideshow to what is the real cost issue: how much everything else costs, how to raise funds for it all, and how to show the impact of the investments.

The Hardware Issue

In struggling to understand why there are so few literacy and reading interventions that use ICT, I thought long and hard around the hardware angle. Is there some inherent missing gadget that could increase the ability of educators to teach reading skills? Is there a gadget that can help a child write or a learner combine both reading and writing for true literacy in their native language?

Yes, it would be nice to have more interactive e-book readers or more intuitive electronic writing tablets, but that didn’t seem to be the real issue. We have an entire quiver of education tablets to choose from. What seems to be missing is not hardware, but a specific focus on literacy in education that incorporates information and communication technology. I posit there are three overarching reasons for this lack of ICT in literacy across the educational systems of the developing world:

How much everything else costs

In Vital Wave Consulting’s landmark study on the costs of ICT in education, they found that in ICT4E, its not the cost of the gadget that matters that much:

The quest for a $100 laptop and the subsequent development of low-cost and ultra low-cost computer categories have focused the discussion about computers in the education environment on the initial hardware cost. This focus is misplaced, as the initial hardware investment represents less than 28% of the total cost of ownership over a five-year period. In the case of ultra low-cost computers, the initial hardware investment is only 13% of the five-year TCO.

Where are the majority of ICT4E costs? In the technical support, training, connectivity, and electricity required to maintain the chosen solution over time. Oh, and the specific solution didn’t matter that much either – costs among different devices is about the same. Yet, VWC’s study didn’t even get tot the other two legs of the three-legged stool of educational technology: teacher professional development and content development.

I have yet to come across a comprehensive study of how much it costs a Ministry of Education to fully deploy and ICT4E intervention, especially one on a national scale. The best I’ve heard is this small mention in Miguel Brechner’sTEDxBuenosAires talk about Plan CEIBAL‘s XO laptop costs, but these seem like awfully low numbers:

How much did it cost us? We invested around one hundred million dollars. So that we do not delve too much into figures, each computer cost us around $188. Sixty dollars was the rest of the cost: servers, networks, antennas, tech support, parts, logistics, delivery… everything else. This was all accomplished with public funds, both domestic and foreign.

If we calculate four years of effective life per machine, it will cost us about $75 per year, of which $48 is the computer and $27 the rest of the servicing a project of this magnitude requires. To give you an idea: in the deployment phase that’s less than 5% of the educational budget, and less than one two-thousandth of the gross domestic product.

So if a country or a company wanted to invest in an ICT solution that could impact the literacy rates in a country, their first challenge would be to figure out how much such an investment would cost. I stand ready to help if needed – it’s a calculation that would be educational for everyone involved.

How to raise funds for it all

Getting people and donors excited for a new gadget is easy. Just show off a prototype, and even if it doesn’t work, or is just plain vaporware, you’ll have multiple press stories championing your achievement. From there, it’s slightly harder to get the money rolling in to fund a working prototype and pilot deployment.

What is hard is getting the funding to work on something as basic and un-sexy as teacher professional development or digital curriculums.

The net result is that we have great projects like Worldreader and CyberSmart Africa, which are at their heart about changing the way teachers educate to improve student literacy, but everyone else refers to them as the Kindle project or interactive whiteboard project.

Now there is hope. USAID and World Vision have a forthcoming All Children Reading Grand Challenge for Development that invites organizations to submit innovative ideas, practices, products, or programs for improving student reading in primary grades. Winning submissions will be provided seed funding from combined resources of USAID and World Vision. I have heard there will be an ICT component to the grand challenge as well but we’ll see if it also focuses on the learning ecosystem to make that ICT successful.

How to show the impact of the investments

What is “success” in reading, writing, and literacy? We have the Early Grade Reading Assessment which can be given and measured electronically, but even if a stated ICT intervention happens between two EGRA assessments, and there is a positive change over the assessment period, how can we know it was the iCT intervention that caused the change?

In other words, how do we prove causation not just correlation?

I believe this is the largest challenge in ICT interventions that propose to improve literacy in any educational system, not just those in the developing world. With ICT, it is easy to show a great excitement about school – everyone loves a new gadget – or even a greater usage of ICT via server logs and the like, but its much harder to show that excitement translating into greater scholastic achievement.

In fact, I challenge you dear reader, to find an ICT intervention in any aspect of the learning process, that can show that the ICT intervention itself is the primary cause for an increased learning outcome.

It is that fuzziness in impact that makes it so hard to raise funds for an ICT intervention in literacy. And without the money to get investors and school systems excited in the teacher professional development and the content creation required to augment a gadget purchase, we are stuck in a vicious cycle.

Cheaper and cheaper gadgets are showcased as the solutions to the woes of educational systems, while more and more of us come to the conclusion that technology should not be the focus of educational strategies. And the smart people who could be working on ICT for literacy choose to expend their efforts elsewhere.

Building on last month’s Educational Technology Debate on the theme of What ICT can improve reading skills of learners in primary schools?, for this month, we will focus on why there are so few ICT tools available that promote and facilitate reading and literacy skills at the primary school level in educational systems of the developing world.

In this discussion, there are three categories of questions we ask you to respond to:

1. Technology Restrictions
   Is it a lack of appropriate hardware? Is the software not “smart” enough yet? Do we need more digital content? Is it the cost of the ICT? Do we need better ICT ecosystems?
2. Human Constraints
   Or are the restraining factors even technology-related? Could it be teachers, administrators or parents that hold back promising ICT-based reading solutions? Might there be solutions we just don’t know about or are not willing to try at scale?
3. Market Failure
   And this is the most worrisome; are there just not that many solutions because technologists are not focused on literacy and reading as problems? If so, is it a lack of visible profit or do they just not care?

Please join in this Educational Technology Debate by submitting your thoughts and ideas either as short comments on this post, or as longer independent Guest Posts. Please email Guest Posts to editors@edutechdebate.org. We will be publishing Guest Posts throughout the month to maintain the conversation.

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One of the great struggles of education is providing all children the individualized instruction they need to understand the material taught and to be challenged at their level, especially when teaching children to read and improve their reading skills.

In an ideal environment, the teacher would be able to provide each student personal attention and help each student overcome struggles, master skills, and receive challenges where needed. But with so many demands on a teacher’s time, many children do not receive much personalized instruction.

One of the many educational benefits that information and communications technology (ICT) can deliver is an effective and scalable solution to this problem—the problem of personalizing literacy instruction for children.  Technology can adapt researched, effective teaching models, content, and assessment to individual students and extend them geographically to reach millions of children who might not otherwise have the opportunity to get high-quality instruction.

Because many factors contribute to a child’s learning opportunity upon entering school—e.g. his or her home environment, quality of instruction in the class, availability of effective materials, student to teacher ratios—individualized instruction with high-quality adaptive materials is important to a child’s progress and improvement in reading. Whereas one child may understand phonics and letter concepts, another child may struggle. The struggling child cannot move on until his or her obstacles have been addressed and overcome. But in a class size of 45-plus students, a teacher has little time to devote to individualized attention for each student.  Consequently, many children in developing countries do not advance from primary education.

Effective ICT software programs can provide the adaptive framework and sequencing to give children the individualized instruction they need while improving reading skills and enhancing the classroom experience. To be effective, personalized learning challenges and supports each child at his or her own level. The curriculum included in any program aimed at offering personalized learning must be

• Engaging for students to hold their interest and motivate them to continue
• Based on research to provide effective curriculum and instruction
• Broad and deep to provide the content needed for true individualization
• Carefully sequenced to provide the personalization each child needs

In Waterford Institute’s Waterford Early Reading Program, all four requirements are met. The program is full of engaging activities, characters, music, and songs that provide research-based instruction that meet national requirements. Plus, the content is extensive and sequenced to adapt to each child’s individual needs.

In the program, each child experiences learning different as the program continually adjusts based on each child’s mastery of concepts and performance. In this way, each child experiences a personalized learning path, receiving instruction and challenges, remediation, and repetition as needed to understand a concept that will lead to mastering specific reading skills.

This means that he or she will be presented with specific learning activities tailored to his or her own learning needs. Where a child may be struggling with a concept, he or she will receive more instruction and practice. Where a child shows mastery of a skill, he or she will move on to more challenges.

An evaluation performed by Stephen Powers, PhD, and Connie Price-Johnson, M.A. at Creative Research Associates in Tucson, Arizona, in 2006 is just one of many third-party evaluations of the effectiveness of Early Reading Program. The study showed the effectiveness of the program’s instructional and individualized learning approach by comparing students in U.S. Title I elementary schools.  A “treatment” group of 15 schools used Early Reading Program, while a “control” group of 15 other schools did not. Matching techniques and statistical controls were used to evaluate each group.

Final assessment and analysis indicated that kindergarteners who used Early Reading Program outperformed the comparison group of kindergarteners in all outcome measures. And among English language learners in both groups, kindergarteners who used Early Learning Program substantially outperformed the comparison group of English language learners.

Many studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of ICT in providing personalized instruction, for both English native speakers and English language learners. Research results obtained by the Henrietta Szold Institute in Israel have indicated that Waterford Institute’s computer-based, adaptive instruction has been effective in accelerating English acquisition for children using the software.

The concluding point is that ICT provides real efficacy for reading instruction as it provides the adaptive and personalized instruction that each student needs. And it is scalable, offering a consistent, enhanced learning experience to large numbers of children in a wide variety of circumstances.

The Waterford Early Learning software in reading, math and science is available in multiple deployment models, including being completely being completely disconnected from the internet in a locally self-contained deployment.

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Our topic is influenced by the USAID Global Education Strategy, which has as it’s Goal One the improved reading skills for 100 million children in primary grades by 2015, via improved reading instruction, improved reading delivery systems, and greater engagement, accountability, and transparency by communities and the public.

To quote the USAID Global Education Strategy:

Studies have also shown that learning outcomes have a direct correlation to a country’s economic growth. A 10% increase in the share of students reaching basic literacy translates into a 0.3 percentage point higher annual growth rate for that country. Other research has shown that early grade reading competency is critical for continued retention and success in future grades.

This link is especially relevant for low­-income children, because they tend to have home and school environments that are less conducive to early reading development relative to those of higher income children. Children who do not attain reading skills at the primary level are on a lifetime trajectory of limited educational progress and therefore limited economic and developmental opportunity.

Given limited resources, USAID believes the most strategic impact it can make in basic education is to address early grade reading as an outcome that is critical to sustain and ensure learning for children.

While the conversation will not be bound to this specific organization or these explicit goals, we will have thought leaders sharing their learned opinion on what information and communication technology could best be used to reach a goal like this – improve reading skills of learners in primary schools.

For those that are in the USAID sphere, this topic is very timely. USAID/Ethiopia will be issuing a Reading for Ethiopia’s Achievement Developed (READ) Technical Assistance RFP this fall and technology interventions to improve reading figure very prominently in the draft RFP.

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