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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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 One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program aims to improve learning in the poorest regions of the world though providing laptops to children for use at school and home. Since its start, the program has been implemented in 36 countries and more than two million laptops have been distributed.

The investments entailed are significant given that each laptop costs around $200, compared with $48 spent yearly per primary student in low-income countries and $555 in middle-income countries (Glewwe and Kremer, 2006). Nonetheless, there is little solid evidence regarding the effectiveness of this program.

Technology and Child Development: Evidence from the One Laptop per Child Program presents results from the first large-scale randomized evaluation of OLPC. The study sample includes 319 public schools in small, poor communities in rural Peru, the world’s leading country in terms of scale of implementation. Extensive data collected after about 15 months of implementation are used to test whether increased computer access affected human capital accumulation.

The main study outcomes include academic achievement in Math and Language and cognitive skills as measured by Raven’s Progressive Matrices, a verbal fluency test and a Coding test. The Ravens are aimed at measuring non-verbal abstract reasoning, the verbal fluency test intends to capture language functions and the Coding test measures processing speed and working memory.

Exploring impacts on cognitive skills is motivated by the empirical evidence suggesting that computer use can increase performance in cognitive tests and the strong documented link among scores in these tests and important later outcomes such as school achievement and job performance (Maynard, Subrahmanyam and Greenfied, 2005; Malamud and Pop-Eleches, 2011; Neisser et al., 1996). Additionally, the software loaded on the laptops contains games and applications not directly aligned with Math and Language but that potentially could produce improvements in general cognitive skills.

Our results indicate that the program dramatically increased access to computers. There were 1.18 computers per student in the treatment group, compared with 0.12 in control schools at follow-up. This massive rise in access explains substantial differences in use. Eighty-two percent of treatment students reported using a computer at school in the previous week compared with 26 percent in the control group. Effects on home computer use are also large: 42 percent of treatment students report using a computer at home in the previous week versus 4 percent in the control group.

The majority of treatment students showed general competence in operating the laptops in tasks related to operating core applications (for example, a word processor) and searching for information on the computer. Internet use was limited because hardly any schools in the study sample had access. Turning to educational outcomes, we find no evidence that the program increased learning in Math or Language. The estimated effect on the average Math and Language score is 0.003 standard deviations, and the associated standard error is 0.055.

To explore this important result we analyze whether potential channels were at work. First, the time allocated to activities directly related to school does not seem to have changed. The program did not affect attendance or time allocated to doing homework. Second, it has been suggested that the introduction of computers increases motivation, but our results suggest otherwise – we do not find impacts on school enrollment.

Third, there is no evidence the program influenced reading habits. This is perhaps surprising given that the program substantially affected the availability of books to students. The laptops came loaded with 200 books, and only 26 percent of students in the control group had more than five books in their homes.

Finally, the program did not seem to have affected the quality of instruction in class. Information from computer logs indicates that a substantial share of laptop use was directed to activities that might have little effect on educational outcomes (word processing, calculator, games, music and recording sound and video). A parallel qualitative evaluation of the program suggests that the introduction of computers produced, at best, modest changes in pedagogical practices (Villarán, 2010). This may be explained by the lack of software in the laptops directly linked to Math and Language and the absence of clear instructions to teachers about which activities to use for specific curricular goals.

On the positive side, the results indicate some benefits on cognitive skills. In the three measured dimensions, students in the treatment group surpass those in the control group by between 0.09 and 0.13 standard deviations though the difference is only statistically significant at the 10 percent level for the Raven’s Progressive Matrices test (p-value 0.055). Still, the effects are quantitatively large.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the estimated impact on the verbal fluency measure represents the progression expected in six months for a child. The average sixth (second) grader in the control group obtains 15.9 (7.1) correct items on this test. Hence, assuming that the average child takes four years to progress from second to sixth grade, the annual average progression is about 2.2 items. The estimated impact is 1.1, hence it represents half a year of normal progression.

Similarly, the estimated impact for the Coding and Raven tests accounts for roughly the expected progression during five and four months, respectively. We summarize the effects on cognitive skills constructing a variable that averages the three mentioned tests. Results indicate an impact of 0.11 standard deviations in this measure that corresponds to the progression expected in five months (p-value 0.068).

Our results relate to two non-experimental studies that have used differences-in- differences strategies to assess the effects of OLPC on academic effects, finding conflicting results. Sharma (2012) estimates the effect of an NGO-conducted small pilot benefiting students in three grades in 26 schools in Nepal, finding no statistically significant effects in Math and negative effects in Language. Ferrando et al. (2011) explore the effects on 27 schools that participated in the OLPC program in Uruguay and find positive statistical effects on both Math and Language.

Our work also relates to a growing literature that uses credible identification strategies to assess the effects of computer use on human capital accumulation. A set of studies have analyzed the effects of public programs that increase computer access and related inputs in schools finding typically no impacts on Math and Language (Angrist and Lavy, 2002; Leuven et al., 2007; Machin, McNally and Silva, 2007; Barrera-Osorio and Linden, 2009).

A second group of studies has explored the effects of providing access to specially designed academic software to students and has documented in some cases, though not all, positive impact on Math and Language (Dynarsky et al., 2007; Banerjee et al., 2007; Linden 2008; Barrow, Markman and Rouse, 2009).

Recently, researchers have focused on the effects of home computer use, and the results have been mixed. Fairlie and London (2011) report positive effects on a summary of educational outcomes whereas Malamud and Pop-Eleches (2011) find negative effects on school grades but positive effects on the Raven’s Progressive Matrices test.

Technology and Child Development: Evidence from the One Laptop per Child Program contributes to the literature on technology in education in several ways. First, we explore the effects of a program that intensively introduced computers at both schools and homes. The intervention was performed at the community level, allowing the incorporation of general equilibrium effects that prior studies could not identify. General equilibrium effects may arise if effects for individual students change as the percentage of their peers that are beneficiaries increases.

Second, we analyze this increased access in an ideal setting composed of many isolated communities with low baseline access to technology. The communities’ isolation precludes potential spill-over effects across study units that could contaminate the design. The low levels of baseline technology diffusion allow the intervention to produce substantial changes in both access to and use of computers.

Third, we obtain clean evidence from a large-scale randomized controlled trial involving thousands of students in 319 schools. Fourth, we not only measure the effect on academic achievement but also analyze the impact on cognitive skills and exploit computer logs to elicit objective data regarding how computers were used. Finally, our findings on the effects of the OLPC program in Peru contribute to filling the existing empirical vacuum concerning one of the most important and well-known initiatives in this area.

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of the education sector in Peru, the OLPC program and its implementation in Peru. Section 3 describes the research design, econometric models and data and documents the high balance and compliance of the experiment. Section 4 presents the main results and Section 5 explores heterogeneous effects. Section 6 offers a discussion of the main findings, and Section 7 concludes.

Download Technology and Child Development: Evidence from the One Laptop per Child Program

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In 2007, Peru announced it would distribute tens of thousands of XO laptops from One Laptop Per Child to children in rural schools across the country, and expanded the program every year since. Almost 1 million laptops later, the program is now the largest XO deployment in the world and one of the most faithful to OLPC’s technology-centric Constructionist principals.

Teacher training was downplayed, with the belief that exposure to XO laptops alone would create a learning environment where children were excited and inspired to learn learning. Rather than developing relevant digital content, the focus was on how to use existing “Activities” (software applications) on the XO laptop to teach different subjects.

This was a radical change from existing ICT4E best practices, which tend to focus on teacher professional development and locally relevant content as equal or greater in importance than hardware, and invited close evaluation. The Inter-American Development Bank responded with a multi-year randomized evaluation of the impact of the OLPC project in Peru – the first rigorous attempt to examine the impact of the largest “1-to-1 computing” initiative in a developing country.

Results to Date

So far, the IDB has issued two synopsis examining the academic achievement and impacts on cognitive skills that XO laptops facilitated in a 15-month randomized control trial with 21,000 students in 319 schools – an initial report in 2010, and a second report earlier this year. The summary findings should not be a surprise to EduTechDebate readers:

The effective implementation of the “One Laptop per Child” program was not enough to overcome the difficulties of a design that places its trust in the role of technologies themselves. The use of technologies in education is not a magic and rapid solution through which educational problems and challenges can be solved with the simple acquisition of technological devices and systems.

The IDB did find some positive and significant results in cognitive ability – a five-month lead over non-XO students – but no overall significant differences were found on Mathematics and Language standardized tests 15 months after the implementation.

What Does This Mean for ICT4E?

We took a deep dive into OLPC in Peru with the Inter-American Development Bank during a Technology Salon to figure out what these results mean for OLPC in Peru, “one laptop per child” projects regardless of technology, and ICT in education in general.

In the discussion, several good questions came up in relation to this study on OLPC in Peru that we should all think about.

Since IDB did not find remarkable educational outcomes from OLPC:

1. Do any ICT interventions have impact? Or are we all just wasting our time with technology?
2. Do we actually know how to measure the impact of ICT on education? Or are we testing the wrong things to see impact?
3. Can any single intervention have impact? Or do we need to have more interventions over longer timeframes for impact?
4. Are all laptop programs doomed? Or was Peru’s approach itself the problem?

During this month’s Educational Technology Debate, distinguished members of the ICT4E community from around the world will give context to the report and expand on these and other questions the report raises.

Your context and input is welcome in the comments on this and every post, and if you find yourself writing a multi-page essay answer to a comment, consider submitting it as a Guest Post instead – email it to us and we’ll make sure it’s seen by everyone.

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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.

In this context, we are interested in exploring the following questions:

• Where and how are mobile devices or other affordable technologies being used for access to learning materials and collaboration? What lessons can we learn from these experiences?
• What are the key challenges for the use of these technologies in education in Africa? What are the critical success factors for their effective use?
• What recommendations should be made to policy makers, regulators, donors and other stakeholders if technology is to be used to support learning and collaboration in an equitable, sustainable and scalable manner?

The next several posts will look at some of these questions and we hope that they will trigger discussion on some of the issues they raise. We invite responses questions as well as the sharing of both successes and failures.

This conversation is part of the eTranform Africa initiative.

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Part 1. My Computing Journey through a PC World

I’m not typing this on a PC, but on a tablet. The screen on which the letters are appearing is the same one on which I am tapping. I’m not sitting at a desk, but on the couch while my 3-year-old plays balancing games. This location means I can still chat with and encourage her while getting work done.

The first computer my family owned was an 8086 running DOS. It was advanced with its 8 MHz processor, 3 colour screen and 512k memory, but had far less power than my current smartphone and took up a whole desk. It cost over $2000.

And so it remained for each subsequent computer I owned. An 80386 with 16 colour screen and 33 MHz processor; a Pentium 4 with thousands of colours, a 1700 mhz processor and 512 MB of memory – all cost over $2000, and … took up almost a whole desk. I next switched to a 12 inch laptop – so portable! and with a price tag of – you guessed it, over $2000.

Something changed in 2006. I bought a high end, top of the line Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). With a 200 MHz processor and 16 MB of memory, it could do some of the things that the computers I’d had so far could do, but it also had a touch screen and, as one of the first ‘converged devices’, a digital camera. It cost $1700, a huge amount still, but a price that was the beginning of a trend.

Two and a half years later and my first Smartphone (a PDA with a phone built in) cost $1100 and had 64 MB of memory and a dual-core 200 MHz processor. Then my first iPhone 3G cost $900 and had a 412 MHz processor. Finally in this history of my personal computing journey came the iPad, an $800 device with 512 MB of memory and a 1000 MHz processor.

So what’s the point of all this historical conceptualising? It’s fairly obvious that as computing power has increased, size and price has decreased. At some point however, the primary computing platform changed from a central, ‘one computer does all’ model to a multiple mobile device model that builds on the existing desktop computing network to enable computing applications never possible before.

To paraphrase Mr Jobs, CEO of the world’s largest technology company that now sells ten mobile devices for every one laptop or desktop computer, this is like the first phase of automobiles, which consisted almost entirely of trucks. Now trucks still form the backbone of our transport infrastructure, but the average automobile today is far smaller and more efficient. Similarly, car buying has long passed the stage where the absolute top speed or revs per minute was all important; we now look for efficiency and usability, and the same thing is occurring with computing.

Once a certain threshold of computing power was reached where all computers by default could have enough memory and processing speed to perform all basic functions required, other factors have come into play. Is it easy to use? Does it fit to my needs or desired location? Does it require me to learn complex commands and file systems or help me just start on the tasks I need done?

Other questions may join these ones shortly as the extra abilities of the emerging class of devices in this field become more familiar; questions not just based on what we could do with PCs but now in a new mobile way, but questions relating to what new things they can do which PCs never could. Can it tag my geo-location (GPS)? Does the device know where it is in 6 dimensional space (Accelerometer and Gyroscope)? Can it overlay information on a live view of the scene in front of me (camera and Augmented Reality)?

Part 2. A Market Analysts Useful Summary

This era then in which such new questions may be asked has recently been labeled ‘Post-PC’. Horace Dediu, a Market Analyst with Asymco (March 8, 2011) has defined what Post-PC means better than I could:

The first post-microcomputer tablets are used alongside microcomputers for tasks such as presentations and entertainment. They depend on PCs for data backup and software updates. They do not require IT support. They do not require a keyboard or a desk. They are cheaper and simpler to operate… new products rely on new input / output methods and allow a new population of non-expert users to use the product more cheaply and simply.

Before we ask then what the Post-PC era may mean for education, I also want to list Dediu’s consequences of such a generational shift so that we can discuss what they may mean for learning:

• Skill required decreases
• Support required decreases
• There are new applications and use cases
• The economics are not favorable for incumbents
• The economics are favorable for new entrants

Part 3. What Does it Mean for Education?

Let’s start with the potentially bad news. Only one of the consequences listed by Dediu is negative, that being that generational shifts in computing are not favourable to incumbents. How does this relate to education? One might say that as a sector found to be the least IT intensive off 55 major US industries (Dumagan, Gill, Ingram, 2003), it’s highly likely that Education is still driving around in trucks.

As an industry that traditionally was focused on centralised knowledge, the stable, fixed model of computing of the PC era was much easier to integrate than the mobile and agile model emerging in the Post-PC one. Whether this means that Education as it stands today will suffer the same fate as the technology company Bell Labs did (hint, they went bankrupt) during the transition from pre-PC, vacuum tube mainframe computing to the microchip PC era (as Heppell, LWF Talk, 2011, thinks likely), is yet to be seen. But there would appear to be plenty of potential for ‘new entrants’ to appear. We wait and see what these may be.

On the positive side however, if the entry level barriers of initial skill level and the amount of IT support required are reduced by tablet and smartphone devices, educational institutions that have struggled to:

1. Find the time to provide basic technology skills training to staff or
2. Get past the time intensive ‘learn menus and file systems’ lessons or
3. Keep technology repaired and working so that it’s available in the first place.

- may instead be able to:

1. Spend staff training time on improving pedagogy.
2. Spend valuable student lesson time on using technology not just learning to use it.
3. Spend less money on supporting existing technology and more on supporting its use in classrooms.

Most important in helping to cut through the either/or arguments that often dominate definitional discussions such as this one is another of Dediu’s statements that “The older generation slowly fades through diminished growth but never disappears”. Post-PC devices do not mean that Desktop and Laptop PCs will go away. They may replace them numerically at some point, but larger more powerful computers will not be extinguished by mobile devices any more than cinema replaced radio, or television replaced cinema, or video tapes, discs and downloads replace television.

The work of Australian schools such as Hambledon State School in Queensland, or St Aloysius College in Tasmania provide acknowledgement of this by providing students a blended selection of computing devices that spans PCs, laptops, converged mobile devices and stand-alone mobile devices. The emphasis in both of these schools is on avoiding a one-size-fits-all solution and instead expect students to understand the learning process enough to make the choice of the best computing tool for specific tasks themselves.

Interestingly though, there are some sectors who don’t have to choose a blended environment because mobile computing is their first computing experience. Only in the West has affluence been wide spread enough to afford $2000+ computers. Third-World nations, not having had the same opportunities to develop either the level of electricity supply required by larger computing devices, or the economic base to purchase them in large numbers, is well known for embracing cheaper mobile devices such as cell phones which require less infrastructure, support and skill. Indeed, the One Laptop per Child organisation that has delivered over 2 million education-focused XO devices worldwide was inaugurated primarily to target the low power and low cost needs of such nations.

Similarly there is a movement of consumers who are embracing Post-PC devices due to their simpler, more personalised nature. Generally these are older users such as the 99 year old Virginia Campbell of Oregon, USA, for whom an iPad was her first ever computer, and one she was able to use unaided. She has been writing limericks as well as reading books again after having not been able to for ten years due to poor eyesight.

So what does this mean for education? If Virginia can overcome encumbrances older than the PC era to take advantage of the lower entry level of skill and IT support that Post-PC devices provides, as well as go on to explore new applications and uses suited to her personalised needs, then anyone, including Education can.

So, what is next on the computing journey? How long until the race of increased computing power and shrinking size does lead to a world even beyond tablets of embedded, ubiquitous computing? Today’s students will find out. And they will master it, if we’ve trained today’s teachers well enough in harnessing the potential of the current generational shift in computing to give them the education they deserve.

Disclaimer:

While some references are supplied, this article acknowledges its non-academic nature and is intended to simply be a beginning, not end of discussion on this topic. In addition, all opinions are my own and not that of my employer.

References:

• Cairns school transforms for tech-savvy kids. (27.10.2010).
• What’s a Post-PC device? Dedui, H. (8.3.2011).
• Steve Jobs: Let the post-PC era begin. Fried, I. (1.6.2010).
• Apple Reports First Quarter Results. (18.1.2011).
• Stephen Heppell Learning Without Frontiers Talk. Stephen Heppell. (26.1.2011).
• How Bell Labs Missed the Microchip. Riordan, M. (December 2006).
• 99 year-old loves her first computer – an iPad. (7.4.2010).
• Digital economy report, U.S. Department of Commerce. Dumagan, J., Gill, G., Ingram, C. (2003).
• Who says Technology can’t change Africa? Hersman, E. (12.3.2006)

The most popular answer to the question of how to improve the quality of schools and education in developing countries is: Invest in more teachers and more schools.

Let there be more teachers

I think there are few people who would contest that having one full time, fully qualified teacher in front of every class of 25 children would bring education of the highest standards to any country.
But could this really be the solution to the educational problems in poor countries? I sincerely doubt whether this solution is feasible. I even fear it is completely impossible to solve the plight of education in the developing world by this route alone.

Here is a statistic that paints a bleak picture, indeed:

India has one of the lowest ratio of teachers. In the US, it’s 3,200 teachers per million people, in the Caribbean it’s 1,500, in the Arab countries it’s 800 and in India it’s 456 teachers per million people. The Times of India (2009)

The US might not be the best example, but even to get at the level of the Caribbean, the Arab countries must double their number of teachers, and India must more than triple its number. And that would be just the number of teachers needed to get at the level of the Caribbean. If the teacher pupil ratio should get close to that of the US, double the number of new teachers would be needed.

Obviously, if the aim would be to decrease the number of pupils per teacher in all developing countries to the level of the developed countries, enormous numbers of teacher would have to be recruited and trained. For many countries in the developing world the number of teachers would have to double, like in the Arab world, in others it would have to triple, like in India and many African countries.

A lot of numbers

How many teachers would have to be recruited, trained, and send to schools? Below, a lot of statistics will be presented. If you are already convinced, you can skip the arithmetic and go to the next section.

Let us look at the numbers, some of which are collected in the table. For OECD countries there are around 16 students per teacher in primary education (CESifo DICE Report). Looking at the numbers, we can take a national average of 15 pupils/teacher as the norm for primary education in developed countries and 13 for secondary education. But note that these are just very global statistics on education. And keep in mind that worldwide, approximately 100 million children that should be in school are not.

Furthermore, as these statistics are global, they do not tell us how the available teachers are distributed. The developed countries are able to organize education in such a way that all children have comparable access to education. The difficult situations in the developing world make that the already low number of teachers are also distributed unequally. The pupil/teacher ratio can be much higher in rural areas than in urban areas. So for many children, the situation is even worse than these averages indicate.

Teaching staff in millions, pupil/teacher ration (P/T), and enrolment ratios in percent (net- NER and gross- GER) in primary and secondary education. Data for 2008 unless indicated otherwise. Source: Unesco

Just to get the average number of teachers in the developing world to the level of that of the developed world would mean that the number of teachers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South- and West-Asia must more than double. In other regions increases of over 50% would be required.

To get these numbers in a global perspective, there are currently some 58 million teachers in the world, 28 million in primary education and 30 million in secondary education (see table). If the worldwide average ratio of pupils to teachers should be reduced from 25 to 15 for primary and from 18 to 13 for secondary education, an extra 30 million new teachers would be needed (19 million in primary, 11 million in secondary education).

Even a more modest aim to get the pupil to teacher ratio to 20 in primary education and 15 in secondary would require some 13 million new teachers, world wide. And that is without increasing the enrolment ratios in primary and secondary education to 100%. That alone could require another 20 million teachers.

In conclusion, any attempt to improve education in the world by increasing the number of teachers must prepare to recruit, train, and deploy well over 10 million new teachers, and maybe even up to 50 million new teachers. Trainers are needed to train these new teachers. If we are in a hurry, we would have to train them in, say, 6 years for a 3 year teacher training program, that would make 4-13 million new teachers a year entering training. This training program would require anywhere from 130,000 – 400,000 trainers for these teachers.

Round numbers:
13-35 million new teachers: Recruit, Train, Deploy
40 million teachers: Retrain
150,000 – 250,000 trainers for these teachers

Can we really rely on training more teachers alone?

Obviously, the numbers given above are rough ballpark estimates. But it is clear that “invest in teachers and schools” often means “double or triple the number of your teachers”. A truly gargantuan task.

There is an important question that has to be answered before such an effort is undertaken.

Why is it that there are not enough teachers in the first place?

It is not that training teachers is an unknown art. Teachers have been trained for a century now. Why is the world short of tens of millions of teachers?

It is not for a lack of trying. Ever since development aid became into existence somewhere after WWII, it has been known that more teachers are needed. But somehow, the developing countries have been unable to supply them. There are many reasons for this shortage, underfunding, bad working conditions, labor migration away from rural areas, competition from other employers, low social status, bad organization etc. These are social problems. And we know that social problems are the hard problems. And there are as yet no convincing ideas on how to solve these very hard problems.

So, that is why I think any plan to “invest in teachers, not technology” is bound to fail. There is simply no known policy that can solve the problems that plague teacher recruitment and training in less than a generation, if they can be solved at all. Trying to recruit and train millions of new teachers is simply going to fail. Any attempt to just throw money at the problem will fail just as badly as all the other cases where a solution was dropped on the developing countries.

I like the idea of supplying every child with a well trained teacher in a class with only 30 pupils. My sole objection is, it cannot be done. And even if it could be done, what should be done for the children that enter and leave school in the meantime?

Technology to the rescue

Compare the problems of supplying children with teachers to supplying them with technology. If we would supply the roughly 900 million children in dire need of education with OLPC laptops over a period of 5 years continuously, this would cost around $40B a year, worldwide. (200 million laptops a year at $200). I can write a small encyclopedia with all the objections to spending $40B/year on OLPC laptops. But we all know that it is actually possible to produce and distribute 200 million laptops per year. It costs money, but it can be done. This is technology, and technology is easy.

As education will have to rely on the existing workforce for the foreseeable future, their work, and that of their pupils, should be made as easy and productive as possible. In a service industry like education this means using technology, i.e., ICT. But we should not forget that a lot can be done using less glamorous technology. For instance, in many regions in the world, a bicycle may improve mobility of children and teachers alike and enable children to continue further education (Indian Times, 2009).

Without light and heating, education would have to be curtailed severely during the winter in my own country. But such measures, e.g., electrification or increased mobility, have obvious positive impacts on economic development. Such measures do not have to be argued. Here I would like to concentrate on ICT4E, the advantages of which are much more contentious.

ICT4E has the same problems as ICT4D(evelopment). It is inconceivable that a solution to every local problem could be devised by a person sitting behind a keyboard in Western-Europe. People on the ground, locals, know what is needed and what is available. Bicycles can help some children get to school in the Netherlands or regions of India, but it would be a complete waste to send bicycles into other areas, e.g., the Andes or Himalaya. However, there are many “simple” problems that crop up everywhere in the world, and might be solved by a single tool or technology. Just like the blackboard solved a problem experienced in every classroom in the world, there might be technologies that are valuable everywhere.

In our quest to look for eligible technology, I would like to stick to ICT solutions that avoid the “Top 7 Reasons Why Most ICT4D FAILS” (Rogers, 2010, a nice YouTube movie). The video explains it all so I will not repeat them here.

The central question is how to make ICT useful for schools. Received wisdom is that technology should be integrated in community life before it can be really useful. It is instructive to study cases where this received wisdom has been flouted. Prime examples are radio, television, and mobile phones. History has shown that these gadgets have been embraced by almost all communities, even those that lacked any understanding of the underlying technologies. In a completely different field, the simple formulation of Oral Rehydration Therapy helps local staff tackling one of the leading causes of child mortality in the developing world without lengthy training or expensive infrastructure.

The successful electronic consumer gadgets all have in common that they require zero maintenance and are robust in normal use. The only consumables of the gadgets are electrical power or batteries. A costly infrastructure is needed for all three, but this is both outside of the view of the consumers and the costs are shared by all.

These technologies fitted every human society because they were transparently enabling some of the most basic human needs: Exchanging stories, gossip, and news and playing music. This acceptance is not a matter of User Interface or ease of use. Text messaging on a mobile phone must count under the worst User Interfaces ever invented. But because the feed-back is immediate and transparent, even small children are able to put up with it (and often can do the task blindfolded).

So we need turn-key drop-in technologies that have zero-maintenance, are robust in the field, including fields of the green and grassy type, and latch into basic human behavior. Mobile phones might be the best examples, as they require little more than electricity and a (prepaid card) number. They are easy to carry and protect: Just keep them out of the rain or in a pouch. And they help people to do what they seem to like most, talk and write to each other.

A last feature of successful technology introductions is a long technological horizon. Anything that takes so much effort to introduce should last a long time. We can expect our children to still use something that functions as a phone or a TV. The actual device might look different, but we should be able to recognize the function. Especially in education, new technology should last a generation. The children of the pupils that are introduced to the new technology should be expected to use something alike. So if no continuous upgrade path is expected over the next decades, I think the introduction of a technology should be seriously reconsidered.

To summarize, the kind of technological solutions that I am looking for would fit all of the following (think radio, TV, and mobile phones):

• Solves a global problem or need
• Robust in normal daily use
• Turn-key drop-in
• Zero-maintenance
• Consumes only electricity, and very little of it
• Connects to content or communication channels (including surface mail)
• A long technological horizon

Note that the technological solutions discussed are intended to solve serious problems. Nowhere is it assumed that technology should improve education if there are no real problems. Technology does not replace a teacher, but it can help her teach and help the children learn.

My archetypal example of successful educational technology is the blackboard. The blackboard solved a huge educational problem in teaching for large groups: A simple, flexible, and cheap method to present text and diagrams to large groups of pupils. It allowed to effectively display and explain complex concepts so that children in the back of the classroom could see them too. It is a pity that you need chalk to write (a consumable), but that proved surmountable.

Two examples will explain these bullet points: The pocket calculator and desktop PCs running Microsoft Windows.

Pocket calculators, or better, graphical calculators, were introduced in secondary education in Europe at the end of the 1970s. The problem they solved was that some important mathematical concepts could not be taught because the calculations on anything but toy problems were too cumbersome. With these electronic calculators, realistic problems in statistics, matrix algebra, and function theory could be introduced into secondary education. As these calculators can be used in class and at home, their use can be easily integrated into the relevant courses. Moreover, pupils learned how to perform arithmetic on real calculators like they would need in working life later.

So using the calculators solved a small, but very real problem in the teaching of mathematics, economics, and science. Obviously, a pocket calculator fits all of the other bullet points. They run for months or years on a single battery, get their contend from the text books, and they have been in continuous use for over 30 years now. A clear success story.

On the other hand, desktop PCs in school running Microsoft Windows defy every bullet point. The only general problem that is solved by a PC in school is Internet access. But there is little use for direct Internet access in class. Desktop PCs can be used in courses directed towards computer use, but even that is hardly useful in school. At home, PCs do have general practical value, but that has little to do with the limited presence of PCs in school. Introduction of such desktop PCs in schools in the developing world generally ends in a deception.

An important problem is that Microsoft Windows has a tendency to break in daily use, especially when the computer has an Internet connection. The hardware of desktop PCs is not designed for a tropical climate. Moisture and dust can easily break the hardware. Installation and maintenance are difficult and require special skills and knowledge. Desktop PCs consume a lot of power and, therefore, cannot run on batteries. So their use is very limited in locations with unreliable power supplies. Connectivity is good, if a wired or wireless Internet connection is available. And they can be used with CD/DVD disks or USB memory sticks.

The technological horizon is more complex to judge. In future generations, we can expect to see screens, keyboards, and computers of some kind. However, I still remember a quote from a parent in the 1980s. When asked why she preferred the use of MS Dos PCs over Apple Macintosh computers in primary school she answered “Because when my child will go to work, it will have to use MS Dos, and not the fancy graphical interface of the Apple Macintosh” (paraphrased from memory). And it has been this way ever since.

If we look at the developments of computer use in the last years, we see perpetual shifts. Nowadays, the shift is towards a completely different model of computing with the integrated User Interfaces of mobile phones (iOS and Android) becoming the standard for tablets, netbooks, and upwards into other computers. So the technological horizon of standard desktop computers has always been very short.

An example of new technical gear: The OLPC XO

As an illustration of a recent project, compare the above with the OLPC XO laptop. The design goals of the XO laptop came very close to the ideal of a no-worry drop-in technology.

The software is distantly related to the Android mobile phone operating system with a zero-maintenance update and security model. The laptop was designed to be robust and the only consumable was electricity. The laptop was easy to carry and protect. It enabled access to the Internet for video and voice connections, email and Instant Messaging, and you could also use it to play music. Connected to the Internet, it could replace radio, TV, phone, and music player.

The laptops could double as book readers and store a complete library, allowing schools that could not even afford textbooks to get a library for each child. On top of it, it could also be used as a computer. The technological horizon looks promising as some kind of small, mobile computer with a simplified interface is likely to be around for the next decade or so.
What went wrong with the first version of the XO laptop?

Basically, the execution fell somewhat short of the design goals. Quite a number of laptops were rolled out before the software was finished and these laptops suffered from a lot of very annoying bugs. These bugs could not be solved by the normal update mechanism, but required replacing the operating system itself. The logistics of supplying a new operating system image to laptops in the field proved to be impractical.

On the hardware side, the keyboard was not robust enough and broke in too many laptops, as did the trackpads. And power consumption was still a bit too high for many locations. The mesh network to share Internet connections did not scale well inside schools and did not deliver the planned connectivity. Supplying Internet connectivity to schools proved to be the Achilles heel of the project. And without an Internet connection, the laptops became much less useful for their intended purpose.

In then end, the first generation of the OLPC XO laptops came very, very close to achieving the status of a no-worry drop-in technology. And where there was Internet, they seem to function as intended. But without a solution for the Internet connectivity, the laptops are much less useful. Had there been Internet connectivity at home, we can be pretty sure that the children would have found out how to use the keyboards and navigate the User Interface. If primary school children can find out how to send text messages on mobile phones without formal instruction, they can learn to use the OLPC’s Sugar interface.

But even if the XOs function as intended, there remains the logistic problem of giving out and replacing laptops and delivering electricity and Internet connectivity. In general, all technological solutions require logistics to distribute the gear (TV sets, mobile phones), the electricity (or batteries, or solar panels), and the connections (transmitters, cell towers). These will always be a problem for rural areas in the developing world. But these factors affect each and every attempt to solve problems in the developing world as they are at the heart of the economic under-development to start with.

As many technophiles, I really love the OLPC laptop. But I know that was not the question. What we really want to know is whether there is a technology that solves the problem at hand. However, this discussion is targeted at a global audience, and we know that the cost of technology depends on the production volume. The very first radio was extremely expensive, the billionth transistor radio is a free promotion item. So I will look here at global problems with high volume solutions.

Example of a global problem and solution: Textbooks fantasies

To illustrate the ideas presented above, I will fantasize about a real global problem in education and a technological solution.

Textbooks are a necessity in school, but they are expensive. My country spends around 300 euro ($400) a year per pupil on textbooks in secondary school. For this money, each pupil could get a laptop and a broadband Internet connection at home for the duration of her education. With some change to spare for electronic textbooks. Most of this cost is the result of monopoly rents by the publishers, as it is in many developed countries. But even at half the price, each student could get an ebook reader with a lot of money to spend on electronic books and prepaid mobile Internet.

The root of the textbook problem lies in the cost of production. Textbooks are a difficult market, with high investments in writing and printing and high distribution costs. And it is an all or nothing market. Either your book is selected for the curriculum, and you sell big, or it is rejected and you sell nothing. Moreover, to stay up-to-date, textbooks have to be revised very often. A lot of insider knowledge is needed to produce a textbook that fits in the standard curriculum. As a result, the market for textbooks for primary and secondary education is always limited to a single school system (country).

And in the end, the textbooks are not that great at all. Ansary (2004) gives an illuminating and entertaining, but also infuriating, account of the way text-books are produced in the USA. Quite often it is a pain to use these textbooks. Most teachers have to create extra “cheat-sheets” to supply missing material and explain incomprehensible portions of the text. Beyond all these problems with the content, there is the daily wear and tear of paper books that makes every textbook usable for only a few years, if well cared for.

In accounts of classroom practises in the developing world, we often hear of whole classes that spend their day copying the complete text of a textbook from the blackboard into their notebooks. This seems a waste of time. When copying large amounts of text, you are unable to think about the text or even remember it. However, supplying the books themselves to the children was obviously not possible. So copying a book wholesale might be the only way the children can ever get hold of the text. Still, we will all agree that it would be better if the pupils had the same textbooks as the teacher. The teacher could then spend her time explaining the material in the textbook and children could spend time learning and practising the skills covered by the textbook.

So here we have a truly global problem: Expensive, outdated, low quality, and cumbersome textbooks that are often not available for the children in the developing world. Can we fantasize about a better system? One that gets both teachers and children the books they so desperately want and need?

There is a very good idea that was actually embraced by (some) politicians in the developed world, the Open Textbook Initiative. Creative Commons electronic books produced by authors and teachers in Wikipedia style (Creative Commons, 2010; Beshears, 2005; Durbin 2009). In principle, this can be applied world wide. The ministry can give grants for writing specific electronic textbook, or volunteers and teachers can write their own. The textbook are licensed under some Creative Commons license that allows free distribution and adaptation. The books are archived and made available in a repository and distributed electronically as ebooks.

Teachers, scientists, and students can add and submit changes in Wikipedia style. It cannot be said that ebooks are better than paper books, but they will be preferred over no books at all.
And the costs? As I wrote above, for what the developed countries pay for textbooks now, they can supply top of the line ebook readers and Internet connections to the students, and have massive amounts of money to spare for grants to write the books. And if you ever tried to lift the school backpack of a high-school student over here, you know that ebooks would take a heavy burden from their shoulders.

In the developed world, the Open Textbook initiative solves kind of a luxury problem. The developed countries can actually pay for the costs of over-priced paper books. They just feel they do not get quality for their money. And often no quality at all. The question is, could such an Open Textbook initiative work in the developing world, where paper textbooks are problematic?

Here we have to look again at our technology bullet list. The Open Textbook initiative does serve a pressing need for good and affordable textbooks. We can be pretty sure that every teacher in the world would welcome better, up to date, textbooks. So, provided a collection of good textbooks can be produced by way of government grants or volunteer work, this part is covered.

Current ebook readers are constructed for indoor use in the developed world. They do have too many unprotected openings and fragile components for a developing world environment. However, covering up these holes and putting in more robust components is not very difficult, the OLPC has done most of that work already. For most ebook readers this would be a minor, and cheap design change, not a problem.

The use of ebook readers is quite simple. You drop in an ebook (or a shelf of ebooks) and you start turning pages. Apart of language and date and time there is not much to set. So, indeed turn-key drop-in technology. Theoretically, you can update the software of an ebook reader, but there is not often a need for doing that. An ebook reader can in most respects be considered to have zero-maintenance.

And last, but not least, ebook readers using electronic paper displays have extremely low power use. Their requirements are low enough to make charging with small solar panels feasible. Current retail costs for cheap ebook reader offerings are below $100 for consumers. Ebook readers cannot be repaired (easily) in the field, so any program to supply them should stock for replacement readers.

The next bullet point is connectivity: How to get new books on the ebook reader. Ebooks can be transferred to an ebooks reader by either connecting it to a computer which has them stored or downloaded, or over a wireless connection in the more expensive ebook readers. Most readers have a slot for external memory SDcards, which could be used to distribute ebooks. Even though SDcards might be rather fragile in daily use, they can be distributed over surface mail. So, the connectivity could be handled by sending USB sticks or memory cards with the mail or a messenger. There would have to be some outlet with a computer or laptop to transfer the new ebooks.

Sounds ideal, so why has it not been done yet?

Even at $50 a piece (gross price), a complete roll-out would be a rather big investment for a single purpose gadget. The cost would exceed the total educational budgets of many countries by a large margin. And the organization of a coordinated roll out of so many devices could overwhelm the capacities of most administrations. The cost and organization alone of an ebook reader roll out would exceed the resources of the countries that need them most.

Furthermore, the technology is all very new. If you roll-out ebook readers today, you might miss out on the powerful and cheap tablet computers of next year. A kind of, very realistic, economic deflation fear. So the technological horizon is short, very short indeed with all the new tablet computers coming out. Ebook reader apps are already part of every new smartphone. In a few years time, separate ebook readers will cease to exist and a general mobile platform will have taken over their function.

There is also the chicken-and-egg problem of needing electronic textbooks to use an ebook reader in class, while these textbooks will not be produced if the children have no ebook readers. On the other hand, if there is one thing that can be learned from the history of the World-Wide-Web and Wikipedia, then it is that if there are readers, the writers will come. The real challenge is to get a national Open Textbook initiative going. This will be addressed in the next section.

Teaching the teachers: A program fantasy

From the earlier discussions on Educational Technology Debate, it has become quite clear that the real challenge is not to get cutting edge ICT4E gear in the hands of the children. The real challenge is to ensure that the teachers are able to actually make use of the technology in their lessons. The solution is simple to formulate: Remedial courses for the teachers. But the initial problem was that it was not possible to adequately teach the children. How can we then train the teachers?

First of all, there are much less teachers than children, and they can occasionally travel. So it should be possible to arrange some classes in (semi-)urban areas where it is easier to provide education for adults. On the other hand, children have ample time for learning, adults have other responsibilities. So any courses for teachers must be short, targeted, and effective. The main point is that a one week course during the summer break will not be enough to prepare for a large change in the curriculum including hitherto unseen technology. And for teachers too, it holds that education must be interactive. Simply dumping a large amount of documentation on them will not lead to them actually mastering the subject.

Let us assume some technological solution has been selected for a nationwide roll out. For the sake of argument, our fantasy ebook reader program is introduced in schools which lacked books. The ebook reader program is accompanied by a national Open Textbook program. Now, what follows is my fantasy of a teacher instruction plan to use these ebook readers. It is assumed that the Ministry of Education can hire some local (or international) educational experts to construct a basic curriculum and lesson plan for use with the textbooks on the ebook readers. These plans are the basis for the textbooks.

The current practise is that teachers do group drill exercises, e.g., children copy the teacher’s text book from the blackboard and memorize some part of it. Such drills normally would take most of the in-class time. The task of the training program is to instruct the teacher how to operate and use the technology itself. They should learn how best to teach the children the use and care of the technology. But this introduction to the technology is just the basic part.

The real training must be to instruct the teachers how to use the electronic textbooks in class. As copying and memorizing the text books has become an irrelevant exercise, there is time during class to do other things. So teachers will have to get an idea what these textbooks can be used for. The curriculum will be adapted to reflect the presence of the ebook readers. As other commenters have already remarked, this is not something that can be achieved in a mere 1 or 2 week course.

The solution would be some kind of continuous distance learning program. Any one-time out-of-town courses should be followed by refreshers over correspondence. This could be anything from surface mail of course materials and assignments, special magazines, to special (off-hour) radio and TV programs, phone-in sessions, and if Internet is available, live Internet chat or video conferencing sessions. Given that the whole program will cost quite a lot, a special, one time a week radio or TV show will not be that expensive. Tapes can be send to those who cannot listen or watch life.

For our ebook reader program, the reading and audio materials can be mailed on a USB stick. We can nicely integrate the distance learning course with the Open Textbook initiative. Instead of dumping the textbooks on the schools, it would be nice if the teachers would get a say in what would become part of the textbooks. So, part of the assignments could be to suggest improvements to the textbooks. Maybe write or edit paragraphs. And send back the notes. Nothing fancy, pencil and paper would already be enough. These notes can be processed by the editors of the textbooks. Best to keep a list of contributors at the back of the final textbooks.

Obviously, there is not a lot that can be done in the one to two years in the run up of a large roll out. Especially as the teachers will have their normal responsibilities and duties, which would already take up their time. A course with associated book, magazines, and radio and TV programs would probably be the best option.

This is a format that is used world-wide for teaching languages. There is a lot of experience with such TV/radio courses. The exact formulation will obviously depend on local circumstances and customs. The real advantage of such a program is that it can be produced and staffed by locals. Teachers “on the ground” can be interviewed, and radio shows can contain phone in question and answer sessions as well as listener feed-back. This is all quite ordinary practise in most countries.

It would be unrealistic to expect that all teachers will have opportunity and time to fully participate in the interactive and collaborative aspects of such a program. But the more teachers have a chance to be active in the program, the better it will take root. And for teachers too it will hold that peer instruction is the second best thing after teacher instruction. So if the program can reach a large fraction of the teachers, we can hope that their knowledge will diffuse through the whole community. And there is no reason to stop the information program after the roll out is completed.

Discussion and Conclusions

It is obvious that developing countries will not be able to double or triple their number of teachers in the short term. So for the next decade or so some solution will have to be devised and implemented to improve education for the children entering school. Beyond more teachers, there are only few options left. Technology is one of them. To increase the chance that the chosen technology will actually be effective, some precautions should be taken. Basically, the probability of success will vastly increase if the technology can be used and maintained by children for the intended purpose. Which is basically the main aim of the small bullet list above. Anything more complex or demanding risks being relegated to gather dust in a corner.

But after we have the wonderful gadgets and gear, it should improve education. As teachers will have to change their teaching habits, it is very advantageous to instruct them in using the technology to improve their lessons. Given the other obligations that occupy teachers, any face-to-face training courses have to be short. To make the changes permanent, an interactive follow up is needed over the months that follow the face-to-face courses. A large number of options exist for semi-interactive distance courses and follow ups: magazines and tapes in the mail, radio and TV with phone-in, or question sessions by mail or phone. All these are distance learning practises with a long history. Only think of all the language courses broadcast around the world.

Under-development and over-stretched schools have shown to be very hard problems to solve. Although some kind of technological progress will be involved in the eventual solution, it is still unclear whether introducing any single technology can actually help. But as technologies like radio, TV, mobile phones, and even Oral Hydration Therapy have shown, the dire effects of important global problems can be alleviated by introducing certain types of technology. With only limited instruction, I think it will be possible to find solutions to help alleviate some of the educational problems that result from a chronic shortage of qualified teachers in the developing world.

References

Ansary (2004). A Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education: A former schoolbook editor parses the politics of educational publishing, Tamim Ansary

Beshears (2005). The Case for Creative Commons textbook, by Fred M. Beshears, U.C. Berkeley, April 07, 2005

CESifo. Class size and student-teacher ratio, CESifo DICE Report 4/2009

Creative Commons (2010). Open Textbook,

Durbin (2009). Durbin Introduces Legislation to Make College textbook more Affordable (press release)

Huebler (2008). International Education Statistics, Analysis by Friedrich Huebler, Pupil/teacher ratio in primary school, Pupil/teacher ratio in primary school

Indian Times (2009). CM gives Rs 15,000 and a bicycle each to girls, Feb 4, 2009

The Times of India (2009). India has one of the lowest teacher-student ratios: Expert,, Nov 7, 2009

Rogers (2010). Top 7 Reasons Why Most ICT4D FAILS – Dr Clint Rogers

UNESCO. Table 11: Indicators on teaching staff at ISCED levels 0 to 3, (accessed 02022011)

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