Over the last 5 years, several low-cost laptops were introduced expressly for educational systems of the developing world. Starting with the XO-1 laptop from One Laptop Per Child, and expanding to include the ClassmatePC, these computers then spawned consumer netbooks like the Asus Eee-PC, which could also be used for education. Now we have tablet computers like the Amazon Kindle and the Apple iPad that also can be used in educational settings. In fact, there is a whole plethora of low-cost ICT device options for educators.

So which one of these computing platforms is the best for education? Which form factor can help students learn better and allow teachers to reach greater educational outcomes in the classroom and across school systems? Is there a single laptop that works better than the rest?

Let us first learn more about the four main types of low-cost computers that are widely used in education

Which one is the best?

This is a great loaded question as there isn’t any one device that is best for every situation. In fact, experts in ICT for education (ICT4E) deployments have come up with six success criteria for educational ICT projects that should be considered long before choosing the hardware:

1. Infrastructure:
   ICT4E projects require a significant infrastructure in order to run effectively. This infrastructure need doesn’t just include technical aspects such as the availability of electricity and Internet access but also logistical aspects such as how to efficiently and reliably distribute hundreds of thousands of laptops in some of the remotest regions of the world.
2. Maintenance:
   Regardless of how robust an ICT device or software solution is there will always be issues with a certain percentage of them. This is especially true when computers are deployed in rugged environments, which are dusty, hot, and humid, and the main users are young children. As a result processes and solutions need to be developed to address how to repair broken equipment.
3. Content and curriculum:
   One of the core requirements for ICT4E projects is appropriate e-content and e-curriculum that enable the technology to be used as a tool for learning. Simply scanning in existing books and making them available digitally doesn’t come close to utilizing the full potential of a digital and connected device such as a laptop or mobile phone. Hence interactive learning content the supports the local curriculum, and supplemental materials such as digital multimedia libraries, need to be developed to effect learning, regardless of the hardware chosen.
4. Community inclusion:
   One component that often seems to be underestimated in ICT4E projects is the importance of community inclusion and the buy-in from key stakeholders such as teachers, parents, principals and administrators. Grassroots support is the main requirement for enabling initial adoption, daily project support, and long-term sustainability.
5. Teacher training:
   Using a new tool and approach is always hard, particularly when we’re talking about something as complex as learning and education. Therefore it is vital that teachers receive adequate training on how to efficiently and effectively use ICT such as laptops as a tool for education. Training people is both very resource-intensive and complex, yet without it ICT4E projects are very likely to fail.
6. Evaluation:
   Last but not least, evaluating the impact that ICT4E has on learning, and the broader society, is a key criterion. Unfortunately, appropriate baseline data is difficult to acquire in many cases, hampering the project evaluation process. Evaluation is often an afterthought that only receives attention once technology implementation has started. This is too late to gather baseline data. Ideally, evaluation is started in early project stages as well as a continually used toolset to refine and improve a project.

Recommendation to policy makers

Note what is not listed in the six criteria for success: the actual hardware form factor or its unit cost. In fact, research on the cost of ICT interventions in education by Vital Wave Consulting found that hardware was not the main cost in ICT4E activities:

Governments need to consider the entire cost of school computing solutions, rather than merely the initial expenses. A total cost of ownership model takes into account recurrent and hidden costs such as teacher training, support and maintenance, and the cost of replacing hardware over a five-year period.

Support and training are recurrent costs that constitute two of the three largest costs in the total cost of ownership model. They are greater than hardware costs and much higher than software fees.

So it is my continuous recommendation to policy makers to focus on the educational ecosystem, and support the change management that is required when introducing a new tool. Because no matter if it’s a “$100 laptop” or a magical iPad, the success (or failure) of ICT interventions in education is directly related to the supporting investments in teachers, administrators, community leaders – people not devices.

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If there’s one country that has taken the notion of “one laptop per child” very seriously then it’s Uruguay.

As mentioned in the OLPC in South America introduction to date the country has distributed approximately 400,000 of OLPC’s XO-1 laptops, thereby equipping every single pupil and 18,000 teachers of its public primary education system with a laptop. Not stopping there, the country is now in the process of rolling out 100,000 laptops – 90,000 of them being OLPC XO-1.5 HS machines, with the remaining 10,000 being Intel Classmates – in its secondary education system.

Switzerland of South America

It’s not hard to argue that in many ways Uruguay presented the perfect environment for a country-wide 1-to-1 computing in education project. Pretty much regardless of which metric one looks at, Uruguay is always in the upper segments, particularly within the South American context:

• Literacy Rate: 98%
• Human Development Index (HDI): 0.865
• GDP per capita: $10,079 (2009)
• Internet users: 40 per 100 (2008)

Especially when it comes to primary education, Uruguay provided a stable foundation to build on given that practically every pupil finishes the six years of primary school and as a result literacy levels are very high. At the same time the physical infrastructure in terms of reliable access to electricity and the Internet also existed in many parts of the country.

It’s within this context that then-president Tabaré Vázquez first announced “Plan Ceibal” – Ceibal being both the acronym for Conectividad Educativa de Informática Básica para el Aprendizaje en Línea – Basic educational connectivity for online learning as well as being an emblematic Uruguayan plant. The corresponding presidential decree was signed in mid-April 2007 and in then-president Vázquez’s own words:

“[Plan Ceibal's] longer-term objective is to promote social justice by promoting equal access to information and communication tools for all our people.”

Distributing the aforementioned 400,000 XO-1 laptops was thereby the first step of a larger process, and that ambitious first goal was completed at the end of 2009. Hence Uruguay is the first country to achieve full device saturation in its public primary school system. This makes the county and excellent example of having transitioned from the “should we do it” and “which technology do we use” stage to the more important, and more complicated, question of “how do we do it”?

Status quo

Now as indicated in the introduction the main indicators of Plan Ceibal I was looking at during the two weeks I spent in Uruguay in July are what I call the six criteria for successful implementations of ICT for Education projects in developing countries.

1. Infrastructure

Laboratorio Tecnológico del Uruguay

On a logistical side it is impressive to see how approximately 400,000 OLPC XO-1 laptops were distributed within 24 months. An interesting side-effect of that distribution was that the country discovered several thousand children which previously hadn’t been officially registered. Registering the children included them and their families in social services and support.

Almost all of the schools are connected to the country’s electricity network. The few remaining schools are planned to receive solar panels over the coming months with 10 schools currently being part of a pilot project to get the details right.

In terms of Internet connectivity, 98% of the primary schools involved with the program now have Internet access and 150,000 children can walk less than 300m to the next public WiFi hotspot. Additionally various community and youth centers, cooperatives, and other organizations have started providing public WiFi hotspots in many cities and towns across the country. An important note to make, is that Plan Ceibal closely collaborated with ANTEL, Uruguay’s largest telecommunications company which is government-owned, to provide this high degree of connectivity at a subsidized price.

Canal Ceibal TV studio

Going a step further, Plan Ceibal also developed Canal Ceibal which is a special television program that is focused on presenting various ways and methods of how the XOs can be used for learning. The program is broadcast over the cable network and more recently the various segments have also been uploaded to YouTube.

As of early October more than 200 videos had been made available and Uruguayan volunteers recently compiled a detailed overview of approximately 50 videos that show which subject, grade, and software is being demonstrated.

All of these activities are coordinated by approximately 180 people who work at a newly created organizational unit called CITS (Centro para la Inclusión Tecnológica y Social – Center for Technological and Social Inclusion) within LATU (Laboratorio Tecnológico del Uruguay – Technology Laboratory of Uruguay). LATU is the organization that then-president Vázquez had tasked with executing the technical and operational implemention of Plan Ceibal. This is an interesting decision given that in most cases it’s the Ministry of Education itself which runs ICT4E projects.

So in terms of the infrastructure it has built up Plan Ceibal is undoubtedly very impressive and will greatly benefit from this solid foundation in the future.

2. Maintenance

One of the biggest issues that Plan Ceibal has encountered so far is extensive breakage of the XO-1 laptops it has distributed. An official survey earlier this year found that 14,2% of the laptops were broken in one way or another and that an another 13,2% were in an “unusable state” due to currently undergoing a repair process, being locked down by the country’s XO security system or a variety of other issues.

Assuming that the results of the survey are representative for the whole country this means that in total 27,4% of the laptops – more than 100,000 in total – weren’t usable as of April 2010. Similarly an independent report by volunteers of the RAP Ceibal San Jose group that was released in August 2010 indicated that only 68,3% of the XOs in the surveyed homes were working without any issues.

Plan Ceibal has since been working hard to adapt and improve its maintenance system in order to deal with this issue. Originally all of the broken laptops were repaired in a central facility in Montevideo. This required parents to contact a call-center, receive a shipping number, and then go to a post-office from where the XO was sent in free of charge. The repair center then evaluated whether the breakage was covered by the warranty provided by the government or whether the parents had to pay a fee for the repair.

This approach proved to have some limitations as people didn’t know the phone number of the call center, were reluctant to call it due to fear of an expensive phone call, weren’t willing to send their children’s XOs away via the post office, and had a variety of other concerns. This lead to the situation where only a third (official survey) or fourth (RAP Ceibal survey) of the broken machines had actually been sent in for repair.

A common sight: a broken XO keyboard

In the recent months Plan Ceibal has expanded its repair process via several significant steps. The first one was to establish about a dozen mobile repair teams which go out and visit schools, particularly in rural areas. As many laptops as possible are fixed on-site with the remaining ones being entered into the repair system.

Secondly the project has started partnerships with already existing computer-repair shops and businesses across the country. They are taught how to repair XO laptops and then serve as local repair facilities in their respective cities and regions.

Additionally Plan Ceibal has built up significant capabilities when it comes to being able to deal with complex breakages. Previously these would have meant that an XO or its motherboard would have to be discarded. Thanks to investing in special equipment and training staff they can now do a lot complex repairs – such as ones of broken motherboard chips – in-country. Similarly Plan Ceibal has closely collaborated with OLPC’s engineering team to work on improvements of the XO laptops to address certain weaknesses. One example is the thickness of the XO-1’s keyboard membrane which was increased after reports of keys frequently ripping off after a few months of use.

All of these measures however only cover scenarios where the laptops are already broken. An equally important area to focus on is the mitigation of these breakages. To that end some volunteers in Montevideo as well as other cities have started organizing parent information events before the laptops are handed out in the first grades. While no evaluation has been done to record the effects of these meetings, many volunteers agreed that they’ve seen significant drops in the number of broken machines in schools where parents were told that the XO is an important learning tool for their children and not, as it is often perceived, a toy.

Overall I believe that Plan Ceibal will soon be able to address the high breakage rates they’re currently seeing. This process could likely be both accelerated as well as improved by dedicating more resources to mitigation-strategies as well as extensive outreach to schools and communities in critical urban and rural contexts.

If you’re interested in more information about this topic then I’d recommend reading the article XO Breakage Rates and Mitigation Strategies in Uruguay which I published on OLPC News back in July.

3. Contents and materials

A basic manual for eToys

One of the key components of any ICT4E initiative is the educational content and materials that pupils as well as teachers use for learning and teaching. Now an interesting aspect here is that people define “educational content” in many different ways.

Some argue that a country’s curriculum is that educational content since it contains a list of all the things pupils should know and be able to do at a certain age. Hence the argument goes that the only question that needs to be worked on is how this content will be taught with the help of new tools such as the XO laptops.

On the other hand there are people who strongly believe that the use of technology enables new forms of content, and this content needs to be specifically developed. Current content is seen as only making use of the benefits provided by current tools such as chalkboards, books, pens and paper.

Plan Ceibal in many ways tries to embrace both approaches. Ceibal’s teacher training (see the corresponding section below for more details) has generally been focused on how to use the existing Activities that the XO laptops are shipped with for different subject areas and grades. At the same time Plan Ceibal has supported the development of new educational software and content in a variety of ways and helps distribute it via Plan Ceibal’s Educational Portal.

One example of new content creation are idea competitions where teachers can submit their own visions of educational content or software. The best submissions are selected by a jury and subsequently funding is made available to turn the initial idea into a digital learning object.

A second approach are open competitions for companies or organizations. CITS basically puts out a call for these entities to submit their software or content for review with the goal to obtain limited rights to distribute the best submissions on the XOs in its school system.

National game competition poster

A third model is when CITS asks companies for bids to write a specific type of software such as for example a system which helps teachers keep track of pupils’ attendance.

Last but not least there are also external competitions which are run by other organizations or companies. The resulting software and content are vetted by CITS before they’re distributed via inclusion in the standard software release or Plan Ceibal’s Educational Portal. One example of this model was used for a game which resulted from a competition originally organized by the Ministry of Tourism.

The result of all these efforts is a collection of content and materials which is mainly made available via the aforementioned Plan Ceibal Educational Portal. This collection of approximately 500 different objects includes a broad variety of media such as online resources, games, videos, tutorials, guides, as well as links to other Web sites. In terms of subject areas it covers arts, language, mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences, and foreign languages. There are also a number of materials with a health-related focus such as Dengue fever and the dangers of smoking.

The impression I got after speaking to a variety of people in Uruguay is that although these materials exist and are available to pupils and teachers – thanks to the near ubiquity of Internet access in schools – there’s a lack of knowledge of how to actually use and integrate them in the classroom context. Additionally some teachers mentioned being overwhelmed by the broad variety of choices with a subject area rather than being able to rely on a single text book as it’s generally been the case up to now.

This impression might be related to teacher training, yet it shows that simply making content available isn’t enough to ensure that it’s being (effectively) used for learning. One way to approach this issue could be to include guides and support materials for teachers – and possibly also parents – which help them understand how to use each content object with the pupils.

At the end of the day it seems to be clear that digital learning content and materials will need additional support as they’re being phased into the education system in order to convince teachers to use them rather than tried and trusted tools such as text books.

4. Community inclusion

Volunteers of RAP Ceibal in Montevideo

Due to both its vision and its size Plan Ceibal has attracted a variety of entities outside of the official implementation organization CITS who are contributing to the project with a variety of efforts. These initiatives and groups of people play a key role in reaching out to a variety of stakeholders, such as parents, teachers, and school administrators and generally addressing what they perceive to be gaps in the official initiative.

Three initiatives are particularly noteworthy in this context:

Flor de Ceibo is a community outreach project that was started at Universidad de la República – Uruguay’s largest university – in 2008. The program’s three main goals are:

• To create an enabling space for participation in the ongoing and interdisciplinary national effort that is Plan Ceibal.
• To contribute to the closing of the digital divide by involving university students in Plan Ceibal.
• To enable new forms of collaboration between the university and the broader society.

In order to achieve these goals both professors as well as several hundred students are working on a broad variety of projects, e.g. special programs for single-mothers, in this area.

ceibalJAM mascot

ceibalJAM is an independent NGO that is focused on developing high-quality software and content for learning. Some examples of work ceibalJAM has supported are:

• Conozco Uruguay, a Sugar Activity for learning about Uruguay’s geography.
• JAMedia which turns every XO into a TV and radio tuned to Uruguayan online channels as well as being a versatile video- and audio-player.

Additionally ceibalJAM is regularly organizing events and meetings in Montevideo that bring together teachers, parents, students, artists, and other people who are interested in learning more about Plan Ceibal and how to contribute to the project.

Last but not least RAP Ceibal (Red de Apoyo al Plan Ceibal – Support Network for Plan Ceibal) is a volunteer network of individuals and groups of people supporting Plan Ceibal in many different ways. These cover basic activities such as handing out and repairing XOs as well as the previously mentioned compiling of surveys about the state and use of the XOs or introducing parents to Plan Ceibal in general and the XOs in particular.

At one point, 50,000 XOs across the country refused to boot due to a software issue and only the large-scale participation of RAP Ceibal volunteers enabled the issue to be resolved in a relatively short period of time. (More information about RAP Ceibal can be found in the RAP Ceibal – Uruguay’s volunteer network article on OLPC News.)

Additionally some groups and organizations are working on more temporary efforts within the context of Plan Ceibal. One example is eXpO fotos: an exhibition based on photos taken by pupils with their XOs during a series of photography workshops run by a museum in Montevideo.

The situation in Uruguay offers interesting insights into the role the various groups mentioned above as well as others play in ensuring the sustainability of a project such as Plan Ceibal. The case of the 50,000 disabled XOs is an important example that shows how informal communities or independent NGOs can often address needs and situations that more traditional organizations and hierarchies such as Ministries of Education – or in Uruguay’s case CITS – aren’t well equipped to deal with. Similarly these entities can provide grassroots, community, and service components that are often underestimated key factor in ensuring the support and buy-in of stakeholders such as parents, teachers, and school administrators.

5. Teacher training

Teacher training within the context of Plan Ceibal has undergone a number of iterations over the past three years. With the pilot project in 2007 no teacher training took place before the laptops were handed out which led to a variety of issues.

In 2008 the training was focused on building capacity of regional inspectors as well as informatics teachers who were in turn supposed to train all the other teachers in their region or school. This approach combined with a broader lack of understanding of the laptop’s abilities and potential resulted in the training being too focused on how to use the machine itself, and not focused on how to use it in the learning process.

In 2009 the concept of champion teachers and “formadores” (teacher trainers) who were meant to lead and inspire by example was introduced. It turned out that the several dozen people in these roles, in combination with a revamped training program that focused on learning how to use individual applications, also didn’t have the desired large-scale impact.

Using XOs to learn about the environment

Now in 2010 the training program was again radically redesigned. This process was still in somewhat of a limited pilot phase when I visited Uruguay in July, and it is supposed to be introduced nation-wide towards the end of the year. So it remains to be seen how things will work out over the next 12 to 18 months. In any case some key components of this new model are:

• The introduction of support roles such as “maestros de apoyo Ceibal” (Ceibal support teachers) and “amigo Ceibal” (Ceibal friend) who train and help teachers both inside as well as outside the classroom
• The creation of groups and meetings in and between schools to facilitate the exchange of experiences
• The start of the television program Canal Ceibal
• The inclusion of distance learning via a learning platform built around Moodle
• A redesign of Plan Ceibal’s Educational Portal
• Separate training sessions for teachers working in special schools

Given the large scale and long-term vision of Plan Ceibal another important component are efforts to better integrate the knowledge about the educational use of technology in the education and career paths for future teachers. While some ideas and initiatives in this area were discussed, to me it seems like there’s a lack of a comprehensive plan which ensures that the next generation of teachers is well versed in the tools they will encounter in the classrooms.

Overall I would argue that teacher training efforts within Plan Ceibal are still in an early experimental stage. Different approaches have been tried out over the past three years but it seems like none of them managed to meet the required combination of effectiveness and efficiency. As a result the 18,000 teachers aren’t utilizing the laptops as extensively and effectively as envisioned.

There’s no doubt that good teacher training is one of the most important, complex, and expensive parts of any ICT for Education project. 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

6. Evaluation

Downloading new Activities from the web

Given that Uruguay is the first major country to actually have given a laptop to every child in its primary school system there’s of course a significant amount of interest – both inside as well as outside the country – in seeing what the results and impacts of Plan Ceibal are.

In broad terms there are two different categories of impacts that are being evaluated in ICT4E projects, and Plan Ceibal is no different here:

Educational impacts can cover a broad variety of topics such as school attendance rates, attitudes towards school and learning, grades, cognitive skills, acquisition of ICT abilities and many other metrics.

Social impacts can include looking at secondary users and potential beneficiaries of ICT4E projects, the reduction of the digital divide, use of the Internet outside of school, use of Internet based communication services such as e-mail and other aspects concerning the use and impacts of laptops outside the education setting.

An interesting development in Uruguay is that there several evaluation efforts are underway in parallel. CITS itself has a small team of pedagogists and sociologists whose work encompasses both the educational and the social dimension. Additionally an independent project called ILATIS is evaluating Plan Ceibal as part of a larger effort to compare four different ICT4E projects in Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Uruguay. Most recently a local sub-chapter of the previously mentioned RAP Ceibal volunteer network has undertaken its own study to get a better understanding of how the laptops are being used.

It’s important to note that the majority of the evaluations are still in relatively early stages given that the distribution of the XOs was only completed in late 2009, and hence many schools have barely had them for a year.

Yet when looking at evaluations as a tool for continually monitoring developments it becomes clear that even though in many cases it’s too early to draw any final conclusions there are some trends which can already be observed.

One important comment at this point is that CITS isn’t particularly interested in measuring the impact on traditional achievements such as test results or grades. This is mainly due to Plan Ceibal being primarily meant to be a social equity project which uses the education system as its catalyst. Hence the focus is firmly set on exploring impacts such as ICT skills, collaboration between students, group learning, critical thinking, and autonomous learning.

One fairly simple metric that is gathered is how often teachers plan to use the XOs in class. According to this early CITY evaluation report from December 2009 a bit more than half of the teachers were planning on using the XOs once or twice a week for individual or group activities during class with 12% and 21% using them for these activities on an (almost) daily basis. Tasks to be completed on the XO at home were significantly less frequent with 33% doing this once or twice a week and only 3% on a more regular basis. These numbers also align quite well with the results from the more recent RAP Ceibal San Jose study mentioned earlier.

Looking at use outside the education context it is interesting that early results from 2009 indicate that on average children use the XOs for 10 hours and 20 minutes outside of school with the median being approximately 7 hours. During that time a broad variety of use can be observed which include

Playing a Plan Ceibal detective game

• playing games
• taking photos and videos
• writing
• painting
• looking for school-related information
• downloading videos and music
• composing music
• sending e-mails
• writing blogs

The earlier mentioned broad availability of Internet in schools is the basis for the popularity of the many online services. This applies to both the pupils themselves as well as secondary users such as siblings or other family members. In some cases the desire to be online has also increased the importance of the schools as community gathering centers outside normal school hours. Similarly, another data point which I consider to be interesting is that mothers often seem to use their child’s XOs to search for health-related information online.

Overall it seems clear that many more in-depth evaluations are needed to be able to assess the short- and long-term impact of Plan Ceibal. I believe this is both necessary and beneficiary for Plan Ceibal itself as well as the larger ICT4E community. Such an understanding of the variety of educational and social impacts, both expected as well as unexpected ones, can likely best be achieved via the efforts of different organizations and entities coming at evaluation from different angles.

Summary and Outlook

There’s no doubt that Plan Ceibal has managed to build a solid foundation in terms of technology, logistics, capacity and infrastructure. However in order to utilize the full potential of that basis it now needs to focus significantly more attention and resources on crucial factors such as maintenance, teacher training, and the usage of educational content and materials. At the same time it needs to provide continued support for community initiatives as well as ensuring that internal as well as external monitoring and evaluation efforts receive the resources and attention they require. These are all crucial challenges which mustn’t be underestimated and will require the aforementioned attention and resources to be properly addressed.

Finally, given that Plan Ceibal is the first 1-to-1 computing in education project to reach full saturation there’s no doubt in my mind that it is one of the most interesting ICT4E initiatives at the moment. It is only a slight overstatement to say that the whole world is watching Uruguay closely to see what’s happening, Montevideo will be the OLPC capital of the world, and experiences there will have a large impact on how the whole notion of 1-to-1 computing in education develops over the years to come.

OLPC in Uruguay is part of an overview of OLPC in South America, a first-hand report of XO laptop deployments in Uruguay, Paraguay, and Peru by Christoph Derndorfer.

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I thought I’d jump on the new near “top trends” bandwagon and provide some observations of my own for information technology for development (ICT4D).

Netbook fever and 1:1 computing in education begin to fade into the background

Ever since Nicholas Negroponte launched the One Laptop per Child project and Intel followed with the Classmate PC, the buzz has been about netbooks for classrooms, or 1:1 computing (one computer for each student).

The reality is that the majority of netbooks sold are not sold to schools, but to middle class consumers who are looking for a smaller notebook form-factor. In my 2009 travels, ministries of education in Latin America seemed to be the most notebook centric. Peru had purchased 150,000 XO laptops. Chile wouldn’t even consider anything that wasn’t mobile. As governments’ emerge from budget lockdown, I predict that they will look for more affordable and realistic options, such as PC labs and desktop computing.

Alternative computing models “cross the chasm.”

A desktop PC or notebook computer has typically been the primary way people in the developing world get exposed to computers and the Internet. That is changing rapidly with the introduction of solutions that significantly lower acquisition and maintenance costs and provide increased energy efficiency over a standard PC or notebook. For example, the company I currently work for, NComputing, sells a product that allows up to 30 users to share one, inexpensive desktop PC by hooking up additional monitors, keyboards, and mice to small access devices and costs about 75% less than a PC and uses 90% less energy. In 2009, NComputing reached 15% of the US market desktop computers in K-12 education.

Microsoft has also embraced “shared computing” for education, announcing a new product called Windows Multipoint Server that will be available later this year. Many developing countries, such as India, Brazil, Pakistan and others, now allow these type of solutions to be bid in addition to standard PCs and notebooks. Just as shared access will prevail over 1:1 computing, virtual desktops will become an increasingly popular option given the tremendous cost savings over traditional desktops.

Mobile phones and Computers

The final trend to watch is whether one form factor – the mobile phone or the computer – will win out over the other in ICT4D. With smart phones providing most of the capabilities of a computer, some argue this will be the ICT device that prevails. But is it really a zero-sum game? My opinion is that the computer and the mobile phone will coexist for the foreseeable future.

Sometimes you just need a full-size keyboard and monitor for an application. And sometimes you just have to be truly mobile (and by mobile I mean being able to transact on the move vs. sitting somewhere with a laptop). At Intel we often talked about “three screens” … the small screen (handheld), the bigger screen (computer), and the biggest screen (TV).

But all of these trends should lead to increased development through access to innovative ICT solutions and services that could be created and driven by social enterprises. I’d love to see a special report from BusinessWeek and The Economist on the convergence of these trends and its impact, but if not, we can always blog about it.

Going by some of the comments that follow one could be excused for thinking that the OLPC is the best thing to happen to the world since sliced bread for the XO laptop will magically transform students into self-learners (“peers working collaboratively in teams”). A more balanced followup by Scott Kipp still proposes that thanks to the OLPC, “evaluations, discussions and policy assessments about whether or not to have computers in the classroom will very soon be entirely obsolete, if not already.”

Such overwhelming enthusiasm is surely out of place and perhaps a bit of perspective is important.

OLPC is not “revolutionalizing” education

For one lets be realistic that the OLPC is not “revolutionalizing” education. Yes, OLPC will soon have 1 million XO laptops in circulation. But compare that with 121 million children not in school, 668 million children that started primary school in 2007, or the 774 million illiterate adults and the OLPC does not seem that revolutionary. No doubt, computers will be important in the future to deliver education, but a lot of schools still struggle with having a blackboard or even a building. So lets not overstate either the scale or the impact of the OLPC.

OLPC did not spawn the netbook

Second, it is a stretch to say, as Wayan does, that the XO spawned the netbook. What the XO did do was spawn the Classmate PC. But the next step is a bit of a stretch.
And even if the XO did spawn the netbook, the lesson from this is two-fold.

First, that non-profit initiatives such as the OLPC are particularly well-suited to creating new innovations, particularly for under-served populations.

Conversely, and this is the second lesson, the dissemination of commercially viable innovations is best left to the private sector. The XO laptop still costs upward of the original USD 100 target price.

Meanwhile, the Amazon Kindle costs USD 259, the cheapest netbook now costs USD 98, and in developed countries netbooks are available for free with Internet/data plans. So another lesson is that if you want cheap computers, don’t let a single institution – particularly a non-profit – build it as a monopoly.

OLPC depreciates teachers

A third lesson, to paraphrase Scott, is that teachers are part of the solution – not the problem. This is not wording that OLPC proponents would like because constructionism sees teachers as a corrupting influence. Too much of the broader debate around the quality of education in developing countries also lays blame on teachers – without exploring the context in which they operate.

Yet, is there an OLPC project that has substituted teachers with laptops? So, the third lesson is that if you want to achieve education for all, spend more on teachers and on computers. And if you must choose between the two, spend on the former.

OLPC distorts funding choices

Finally, it has also taught us that policymakers don’t always make the most judicious use of taxpayer money. The approximately USD 150 million spent on XO laptops, for instance, is the same annual amount needed to achieve 100% literacy in Brazil.

Yes, the OLPC has certain other benefits, such as evaluating the impact, benefits and drawbacks of computers in the classroom. But at a potential price-tag of USD 66.8 billion for all the world’s primary school children, it would be a very expensive experiment indeed.

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So the debate we’ve been asked to participate in is to posit which computing model is better suited in the developing world to proliferate computers to enhance learning and education.

Intel's Classmate PC

Back in 2006, when I was co-General Manager of the computer division at Intel that was developing the Classmate PC, Intel was heavily promoting notebooks (which had higher average selling prices and higher margins than desktop CPU’s).

It may surprise some given my involvement with the Classmate PC, and Intel’s overall strategy, that I was not a proponent of 1:1 computing in the developing world. My passion for significantly increasing the access to computers for those in the under-served markets ultimately brought me to the role I have now at NComputing.

Access to fully functional, ultra-low cost, highly energy efficient connected computing is a critical component of enhancing and enabling the learning experience. My belief continues to be that shared access continues to be the best starting point for developing countries that are introducing computers to their schools for the first time.

First and foremost, if mature markets have not adopted 1:1 computing in any great degree beyond higher education, how can we realistically expect emerging markets with more limited budgets to adopt 1:1 computing?

The math is simple. Is it better to have 1.8M students share access to 50,000 computers for the first time vs. wait until the government can afford to proliferate notebooks to the same 1.8M students.

In the 1:1 model, who get’s these computers first? This particular example is from the state of Andra Pradesh in India:

The government saved $20M by deploying the shared model in acquisition, maintenance and electricity costs. They were able to

1. deploy more computers and
2. purchase generators to keep the computers running during power outages.

The $100 target price of the OLPC laptop was originally only the purchase price, regardless of being able to achieve it or not. There are other significant costs occurred during the life of a single computer, including maintenance and electricity. Secondly, where is the point of diminishing return where the farthest extreme is having a computer at a student’s fingertips 24/7?

As a longtime professional in the IT industry, I would be lost without my notebook by side. Blackberry’s, iPhone’s, etc. have reduced that dependence. But what about the kindergartner or sixth grader. I would agree that having increased access to shared computer model (more than one hour a day) would be better, but surely these students don’t need a computer with them all the time?

You could argue by digitizing textbooks you reduce their backpack load, but I have not heard of an outbreak of K-12 student back problems.

The portability aspect is another challenge, especially in developing economies. Kids drop and lose things in general. They have not developed their judgment skills to a point where they can be responsible for a notebook. I finally broke down and got my son a mobile phone – he lost it within six months, and if you looked at its shell, it is considerably marred.

I am not entirely against 1:1 computing, and in the subsequent debate we will discuss hybrid models that could work, but when it comes to primary and secondary schools, I do feel strongly that economic realities strongly support shared usage. I try to illustrate this in the chart below:

This is not a hybrid model. This is an evolutionary model. As students’ age/mature/progress, the need for a computer all the time becomes more critical. In addition, everyone has different needs, abilities, talents and skills. Some will gravitate towards the computer as if it is an extension of their body. Others will find it mildly useful but will prefer paper, pencil, books, etc.

This is where “try” vs. “buy” comes in. I would argue that 99% of people in the developed and developing world over the last 30ish years since the PC was introduced “try” before they “buy.” Whether it is a parents PC, a school lab, a cyber café, telecentre, or work place, they will be exposed first then build the interest and knowledge.

This is why, at Intel, before the Classmate PC “creosote bush” squashed all other projects (Rural Community PC, Amazon Kindle… yes, we were partnering with Amazon and e-Ink on a text book replacement product, and more), we had a significant push towards “shared access.”

In conclusion, I laud the efforts of Intel and OLPC who have significantly increased awareness of the importance of computing in education. The question and debate remains, though, as to how computing is deployed. The most economical and scalable solution is shared access computing.