One Laptop per Child

Welcome to the first post of this blog! This blog is opened for the Social Informatic course I’m taking in Spring 2019 in the University of Tennessee. The following posts will be discussing issues related to social informatics. One of my research interests, and also my dissertation topic, is related to youth and children using technology, or so-called “Youth Informatics.” Therefore, the articles I choose to discuss in my blog will most likely on topics related to young students. 

Source: https://goo.gl/images/ERCrm3

Today, I’m going to share my opinions on the article, One laptop per child: vision vs. reality. This article is written by Kraemer, K. L., Dedrick, J., and Sharma, P. in 2009. I will also have a brief discussion on the project, One Laptop per Child (OLPC). 

OLPC project is originally a project introduced by the professor in MIT, Nicholas Negroponte, in 2004. The mission of this project is to provide educational oriented technology devices for children in developing countries to help them with learning. In 2006, the United Nations Development Program announced to cooperate with OLPC to work on developing affordable laptops (XO laptop) for children in a poor area all over the world. And OLPC is founded as an NGO to run this project. The initial planned cost for each laptop is $100. The hardware is developing, and support is provided by Quanta Computer, manufacture of electronic hardware in Taiwan. (This is another reason I choose this article because I’m from Taiwan! I’m proud of the hardware industry in my country!) According to the official site of OLPC, now is over 3 million children and teachers have xo laptops in countries including the US, Peru, Uruguay, Rwanda, India, etc.

OLPC aims to develop and distribute low-cost and high environmental flexible (e.g., low power cost, strong Wi-Fi antenna, dust- and water-proof) devices for educational purpose. The laptop is designed for children to speak a different language and live in various areas. It applies an operating system called Sugar that is Linux based. By adopting the open source ware, it can reduce the cost and enhance the system flexibility. OLPC believes that this project can arise a paradigm shift of early education in developing countries. To be noted, the laptop supports basic programming software that encourages students to explore the tech world. Here is the introduction by the New York Times.

I personally love the idea and vision behind this project. It is not just simply giving western-oriented devices to children in poor areas. It considers the real environment, the different cultural and language background that these children live in, which to some extent is from a UX perspective. Moreover, I think the programming and cooperation feature has the capability to empower children. Because they do not just get plain information from teachers and books, instead, they can play with small pieces of technology (programming codes) and facilitate the learning experience with friends and classmates. As described in the following video, the principle I think the most important is that “children keep the laptop.” This means they can engage in self-learning activity in their community, and education is no longer limited in schools. Another idea I like is that “Buy one Get one”: people in the US purchase two devices, and one of them will be sent to developing countries. This creates an atmosphere of social engagement and raises more attention to children empowerment in public. 

However, there are many criticisms of OLPC. In the article I’m going to discuss, the authors stated that OLPC only pays attention to the hardware development without considering the “soft cost.” First, there is a lack of training. Actually this is the biggest critique of OLPC. Some scholars stated that OLPC is not able to provide enough training as supportedd resources for teachers and local tech support people. The phenomena of digital divide appear between developed and developing countries. Teachers in these areas mostly are not savvy in technology. Without the budget of training, teachers may feel unconfident to guide children to use the laptop.   

As shown in the Innovation Diffusion Curve, the XO laptop development team (or maybe people who familiar with technology in developed countries) can be seen as the innovators or the early adopters. However, those who in developing countries may be laggards. These people even don’t have opportunities to encounter basic technology. As they are given a cutting-edge innovative education concept, they may not prepare enough to embrace the education paradigm shift.  

Source: https://goo.gl/images/synWgP

Second, the durable issue is criticized a lot, too. Originally, the OLPC claimed that it would only cost $100 per XO laptop. Under this limited budget, how to make the devices durable enough is a huge issue. As Adi Robertson mentioned in the article, OLPC’s $100 laptop was going to change the world — then it all went wrong, the XO laptop even broke in UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s hand during a demonstration.    

Third, the local technical support is challenged.  As Julius Bizimungu mentioned in the article “Meet the Rwandan innovation for One-Laptop-Per-Child”, although the XO laptop is designed to fit into a low-tech environment that has an efficient battery, charging laptops is still a burden of local schools in Rwanda. 

    

Forth, the marketing issue of the industry should be considered. The OLPC is a NGO that aims to empower children in developing countries. But the manufactures in the industry aim to make profits! As more and more new and low-cost devices for customers in the Western world developed, those who are in OLPC project seem not necessarily to choose XO laptops that are not using the mainstream standards. (Further reading: Has One Laptop Per Child Totally Lost Its Way? By Dan Nosowitz in 2013)

No matter how harsh scholars and the public have been criticizing OLPC, this project do bring positive outcomes. In the scholarly paper, Technology and child development: Evidence from the one laptop per child program, written in 2012 by Cristia, J., Ibarrarán, P., Cueto, S., Santiago, A., and Severín, E., these authors applied large-scale randomized evaluation of the OLPC program. The data collection lasted for 15 months in 319 primary schools in rural Peru. They found that OLPC greatly enhanced children’s access to the computer both in schools and at home (from 0.12 computer /per child to 1.18 computer /per child). This had a positive impact on children’s cognitive skills development.

A recently published paper in 2018 about OLPC in Uruguay also presented positive results. In the article Technology and Educational Choices: Evidence from a One-Laptop-per-Child Program, Yanguas, M. L. found that students who had been supported by OLPC project are more likely to choose department related to technologies, which have better employment prospects. (Further reading of OLPC in Uruguay: Managing Devices of a One-to-One Computing Educational Program Using an IoT Infrastructure by Osimani, F., Stecanella, B., Capdehourat, G., Etcheverry, L., & Grampín, E.in 2019). 

Is OLPC successful or failed? In a short term, OLPC may be suffered from a limited budget of training, technical support and durability. However, providing technology access in early education in developing countries has an empirical positive effect to the society in a long run.