Many of us have witnessed firsthand this kind of wasted investment—i.e., underutilization of equipment—but how many of us are still around to see the long-term consequences of high-input ICT projects, such as those designed to give every child access to computers, either through large computing labs, mobile laptop stations, or one to one computing?

• What happens when those computers reach the end of their lifecycle?
• Who is responsible for disposing of them when the project that purchased them is no longer active?
• How many projects today are integrating this type of foresight into their design and costs?
• What donors are requiring that type of planning from their implementing partners?
• Which client governments are requiring such action as part of international aid programs?

For the past three years, the ICT for Education and Training group at RTI International has been looking at these questions, and developing strategies and protocols for approaching ICT in education interventions with a focus on realistic, effective inputs for the present, while planning for the effects of those interventions in the future.

Why? Because although some may argue that informal electronics recycling—i.e., picking and sorting through piles of electronics at the dump—provides a reasonable income for some people (for example, a Kenyan can earn up to $3/day; in Guiyu China, about $8/day—much more than farming), the question is whether or not it is safe and adequate. In most cases, it is not. When we don’t properly recycle, there is human and environmental damage from direct contact with toxic substances, inappropriate methods for extracting raw materials, hazardous working conditions, etc. Additionally, we are ignoring the market potential for additional sources of sustainable and safe livelihoods, while losing raw materials that will have to be re-extracted (with all of the associated environmental problems that come with that.) Thus, the idea of e-waste for us is more than just a by-product of development projects; instead, it can become “the development project”, led by countries in an effort to spark new, safe, and sustainable economies. It is a human as well as environmental concern, both of which have long-term impact on development and improving the human condition, our key mission.

What can be done?

Recycling is just one possible approach to e-waste management, and a broad one at that. The least desirable approach to e-waste management is no management at all, but rather the direct disposal of unwanted equipment and materials using environmentally unsound practices, such as dumping and incineration, and bypassing all efforts to reuse or recycle. We talk a lot about how to use ICT in education, for good reasons. But we don’t talk enough about how the principles of “Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle” should be integrated into ICT in education projects.

Reduce
Purchase smaller devices—tablet computers and mobile devices, for example; purchase more energy efficient devices; purchase fewer but sufficiently powerful devices (i.e., Thin Clients); extend the lifecycle of the equipment that you have through effective preventive maintenance, proper handling by users, and repairs–this also provides an opportunity for vocational and technical training within the school, organization, or community.

Reuse
In addition to the preventive maintenance described above, when equipment can truly no longer function as its original purpose, it can still be reused or repurposed. For example: refurbish one new device out of parts from other non-functional devices; use non-working devices in vocational and technical training courses to understand parts and how, for example, a computer is put together; repurpose devices into totally different objects, for example computer chips and circuit boards have been “upcycled” into luggage tags , jewelry or art.

Recycle
Despite best efforts, there will always be parts of equipment that cannot be reused or repurposed. The key is to ensure that prior to disposal one considers all responsible recycling options: plastics can be ground or shredded and sold back to plastics manufacturers; parts can be sorted and resold for refurbishing purposes; metals, primarily gold and silver, are recovered by commercial recyclers. The recycling option should aim to create new, viable and safe sources of livelihoods in the community, such as sourcing, separating and sorting parts and then reselling them to appropriate manufacturers.

Examples of Success

In Egypt’s Manshiyat Naser district, also known as “Garbage City”, girls come one day per week to learn how to turn trash into income. With the help of a trained teacher, the girls break down non-working computers collected by the Zabaleen (garbage collectors) or donated to the association, and rebuild them into working computers. Each working computer can be sold for approximately $300 on the local market, with half of the proceeds going directly to the girls, and half funding the warehouse facilities and trainer. The parts that can’t be repurposed into a new computer are sorted for recycling, including the valuable gold and silver of microprocessors, motherboards and circuit boards.

Kenya is emerging as one of the leaders in e-waste management, having convened The National Stakeholders Workshop on Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (e-waste) Nairobi 2010. They are also one of the first African nations to have a comprehensive-government-led e-waste policy and strategy and there are recycling facilities set up to handle it. Computers for Schools Kenya (CFSK) a non-governmental organization, dismantles computers into metals, wires, plastic, aluminum, copper, monitors and electronic boards which are then sold separately. CFSK also converts the monitors into television sets by replacing its boards with those of televisions.

An eWaste “code of conduct” for development partners?

When engaging in development activities, particularly ICT in Education projects that aim to introduce considerable amounts of technology infrastructure, we must act responsibly with regards to e-waste. There are many opportunities, or “entry points” to integrate responsible e-waste management into our projects.

At the proposal stage:

• Build e-waste considerations into the proposal, with budget (for example, budget for responsible export of e-waste, local recycling if possible, for training and advocacy events, etc.)
• Integrate partnerships with IT companies, private sector partners, community-based organizations, and waste management facilities
• Budget for a rapid situation analysis of government policies and procedures surrounding e-waste management.

During project implementation:

• Require eco-friendly materials, or manufacturer take-back agreements (‘producer pays principle’) as part of hardware specifications and evaluation criteria for large procurement contracts.
• Include in training programs strategies to help extend the lifecycle of computers, and clear instructions for what to do with non-functional equipment.
• Conduct advocacy and policy support by work with government counterparts to advise them on long-term considerations and collaborate on developing appropriate actions and solutions

At project exit stage:

• Ensure proper handover of used equipment–including project office equipment–to local organizations that have the capacity to restore, refurbish and recycle it.
• Insist on transparency in reporting to project donors, stakeholders, clients, etc. on both successful and challenging aspects of electronics recycling and ensure that they have a road-map for the future based on project experience.

However, e-Waste management cannot be externally driven in the long term. Therefore, our most critical responsibility is to support national governments to address this issue and to increase their own capacity for end-of-life processing of e-waste. We can:

• promote and support the establishment of recycling facilities as part of economic growth and workforce development projects.
• participate in and foster effective environmental lobbies in countries where we work so that citizens also put pressure on governments to create such facilities and enforce appropriate legislation.
• encourage governments to develop appropriate legislation to protect themselves and promote development; for example, by outlawing the importation and dumping of foreign e-waste.
• encourage the re-use of electronics through social programs that donate equipment to schools or hospitals, and subsidize recycling of e-waste when reuse is not possible.

Further research needed

As a community, we can make a larger impact faster by working together. First, we need more information on who is doing what, which donors and which governments have policies and procedures related to e-waste, and where we can find common ground. Some important questions remain from an institutional perspective:

• What is our e-waste “tolerance”?
• At what point does this become a clear “hazard” that cannot be ignored?
• What constitutes a “significant” amount of technology input in a project?
• Is this only relevant to ICT in Education projects?
• What about our project offices?
• Do we practice what we preach in our institutions both at home and abroad?
• Do smaller devices necessarily contain less e-waste per unit?
• Are donors likely to view e-waste considerations as a positive or a negative contribution to projects where it is not expressly requested?
• What about the health and environmental effects of the use of electronic devices even before reaching the disposal phase (i.e., increased electricity consumption and hazards related to long-term exposure to cell phones, wireless internet, etc.).

We welcome your contribution to this ongoing research, by sharing your experiences, activities and opinions.

A version of this piece was previously presented to the 54th annual conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) in Chicago, March 3, 2010. Background research was commissioned by RTI and carried out by Amos Cruz, and submitted to RTI International as an unpublished research paper entitled “Electronic Waste: Considerations and Solutions for Integration of Information and Communications Technologies in the Developing World”, August 29, 2009. A multimedia version of the presentation is also available

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Calls are frequently heard for improving schooling by closing the gap between children’s life out-of-school and traditional learning styles, and by broadening the space and span for life-long learning opportunities. The Math4Mobile development endeavors to engage all students with mathematical ideas. It provides a collection of tools that could be included in a variety of activities to support students’ mathematical skills, conceptual understanding, and creative mathematical thinking.

Computerized tools have been shown to provide important support for achieving these goals. Three decades of using technology in mathematics education provide clear evidence that the tools designed to support a well-defined educational agenda were the most successful ones. In general, technology achieves its most important gains in settings in which it is available for long periods of time, and when it is designed to be incorporated regularly into the learning process. I suspect that an important reason for the slow pace of change in this area is that ubiquitous, long-term access to technology is yet to be achieved in most learning environments.

Given the high rate of increase in the number of mobile phone owners worldwide, the computational capability of most phones, and the widely available communication infrastructure, we have been looking for ways to turn the available and relatively cheap personal mobile technology into a relevant learning tool in and out of school.

Meeting the challenges of computation, communication, and usability

Understanding the computing potential: The Math4Mobile project has been developed based on VisualMath, which was found to be a successful technology-based curriculum for changing the ways students learn geometry, function-based school algebra, and calculus. The Math4Mobile project started as yet another cycle of development of already existing WEB tools, but working under the constraints of the new hardware and enablers has led us to ideas and challenges beyond hardware-related problems. To support cognitive empowerment for the learning of mathematical content, our first challenge was to plan a variety of well-recognized useful applications. Design decisions were to focus on:

1. Applications that have already been recognized as successful in using technology for learning: Graph2Go, a graphing calculator that serves a wide range of users at different levels and in various fields of learning; Quad2Go, a dynamic geometry environment that allows constructing and analyzing while dynamically changing the various available quadrilaterals, mostly supporting primary school geometry.
2. Applications that could be useful in motivating learning out of the classroom: Sketch2Go and Fit2Go, which support recording and mathematically analyzing temporal processes that students might face in a task out of class.
3. Design applications supporting scientific inquiry; all applications designed to include embedded feedback in a variety of representations, to encourage observation of multiple examples, and at the same time to support the development of mathematical skills through intensive practice (for example, Solve2Go).
4. Applications that first and foremost can be easily operated “on the go,” with a numeric keypad being the only necessary requirement, although navigation keys can also be used. Because typing mathematical signs and expressions can be extremely tedious, our design strategy is to provide ready to work but easy to alter mathematical objects such as expression or equation clusters, iconic graphs, geometric shapes, etc.
5. Applications that are appropriate to use by children and that comply with hardware, resources, and infrastructure constrains. Our intention is to develop for everyone, closing rather than widening the social gaps in the process. Thus, we plan for minimal air time and the lowest possible end, and for widely used hardware that does not require compromising on essential learning goals. We chose J2ME as the development language because it supports the visual mathematical representations assumed to be essential for conceptual learning and design that works for users of small screens.

Understanding the communication potential: According to social-cultural theories of learning, collaborative thinking is an essential component of scientific inquiry. Whereas the social studies and humanities are better known for providing opportunities for sharing, mathematics is assumed to be practiced and developed individually. The choice of mobile phones provides an opportunity to create incentives for collaboration that are authentic learning processes for a community of math learners at all levels. We examine designs of three types of communication:

1. Each Math4Mobile application includes Phone 2 Phone collaboration via SMS center. Students can use it to share their work, post it to receive critical comments from their peers, analyze and propose improvements of others’ work, and submit their work to the teacher.
2. We identified two challenges for our future development work: multi-user communication, where users can share their work interactively, and communication between phones and computers. Advancing in this direction, we developed the Click2Go Classroom Interaction System, currently piloted in schools. Click2Go allows students to use the local communication infrastructure to respond to teachers’ prompts and present the collated students’ responses to promote whole-group discussion.
3. Another channel of communication, the Augmented Textbook, works with the Math4Mobile application to augment paper textbooks with mobile applications that include interactive diagrams, a counterpart to printed diagrams.

Understanding the Usability Potential: Pilot experiments involving teachers in schools and pre-service teachers were part of our development work. In each experiment we designed activities relevant to the curricular agenda. The learning was recorded and analyzed, and usually the results showed the direction of required improvements of the application. After analyzing the learning and teaching opportunities, we design scenarios that can be relevant to the following pedagogical and technological variables:

• Space: activity suited for use in class, in and around school, or anywhere
• Size: to be used by an individual student, in collaboration in a small group, in the course of a whole-class discussion
• Learning mode: exploring, practicing skills, or solving problems
• Teacher’s role: teachers could use the tools and the activity to deliver instruction, moderate group collaboration, assess individual performance, or observe student activities out of the classroom
• Means of use: online, offline, asynchronous, synchronous
• Infrastructure media components available (ubiquity): the ideal setting for the activity also includes, in addition to the personal mobile phone, a “smart board,” a website, a desktop application, and an augmented textbook
• Phone resources: camera, calculator, stop watch, dedicated applications

Educational impact: Patterns, scalability, and sustainability

Since 2008/2009, downloads range from hundreds to thousands monthly, the more frequently downloaded being Graph2Go and Solve2Go. Most applications can be downloaded from the site free of charge. There are many options to download the applications from a variety of sites that adopted them as favorite educational resources. The applications also spread virally. We therefore assume that the above figures are only partial.

The geographic breadth spans the globe and includes India with thousands of downloads yearly, and African countries (Cote D’Ivoire, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Mozambique), South American countries (Argentina, Mexico), and Asian countries (Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines) with hundreds of downloads a year. Clearly, the development is attractive, sought after, and useful in rural locations and in less developed communities.

Users: We suspect that the applications are being used by students in a wide range of ages and settings. We learn from teachers around the globe who occasionally write to us about their use of the applications in their schools, from teachers’ centers using the applications for professional development at teachers’ workshops, from secondary and higher education students reporting and asking for further improvements, and from resources being created for Math4Mobile independently by users.

Development challenges

The lack of standards has been a major difficulty. Several years ago Symbian and J2ME were supported by the majority of mobile phones. This is not the case anymore, and since 2010 the market share of Android and iPhone systems keeps growing. This continuing fragmentation is a major obstacle for the scalability and sustainability of the development. It requires constant investment in parallel development (different languages and mathematical packages) for a variety of systems and hardware, that have different capabilities even when operating under similar system. It also requires software verifications and quality assurance that are not easy to do in educational environments.

Developing high-quality applications is relatively expensive. Math4Mobile, an innovative experiment, has been developed in an academic R&D center by faculty and students. To scale it up, it requires economical models that would support free personal use and also provide sustained support for further development and implementation.

Designing human-computer interfaces that take into account the yet unknown health effects of extensive use of mobiles by children. For example, current design is aimed at maximizing offline use.

Investing in a variety of application types such as games and location-based applications that have been shown to be important for learning.

Pedagogical challenges

At present, educational systems own the hardware and software required for learning. Mobile personal phones are a different ball park, in which the centralized models do not seem to work well.

Taking into account the new meaning of students working with their own personal tool is a challenge. A major threat to teachers is the misuse of the communication tools during school time. Another threat is use of applications that students upload to their mobiles (or of resources such as video clips) that interrupt class work. Yet another popular use that can be interpreted as misuse of a cell phone in a classroom setting is recording with the camera and mailing paper resources. It requires imagination and creativity to turn these affordances into constructive learning situations. Projects that involve children in the design could be important in establishing new learning norms.

Tools should support teachers in managing the load of students’ personal work. Following the first design experiment, a full archive system was developed for each application. It was required because the traffic of work sent by SMS between students and the teacher was enormous. The development of Click2Go, which collects and organizes personal data on a server that can be accessed by the teacher, is another model for organizing assessment. Further enhancement of ubiquity that would easily make the same applications work with a variety of media is essential.

Math4Mobile provides and updates activities and teaching ideas at its site. We hope to create professional development models using new means that assume the active involvement of such media as blogging, mobile communication, and sharing mLearning scenarios used around the world throughout social networks. We continue developing instructional materials to be used with existing curricular standards and platforms that allow phone users to communicate with colleagues and mentors worldwide, even when they have no access to computers (as we recently prototyped in India with www.mobilegurukul.org).

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Mobile digital devices rocketed to popularity around 10 years ago with the release of the iPod. Mobile computing went mainstream with the release of the iPhone in 2007. With the release of the iPad just one year ago, we are now seeing a significant shift in the dynamics of computer purchase and practice – moving away from desktops and laptops to iPads and other mobile devices. Their cost relative to laptops along with the promise of mobile computing has raised tremendous interest in iPad use in education.

I don’t believe Apple anticipated the demand for iPads as educational devices. When they were first released, more than one Apple sales representative suggested that iPads were designed for personal media consumption and laptops would be a more appropriate investment for schools. In response to overwhelming interest among educators, I started our online community – iPads in Education – within weeks of the iPad’s release.

The site is an online network that provides guidance on educational usage, allowing users to ask questions and gain from others’ experiences. In the past several months we’ve learned a significant amount about how mobile tablet computing may impact education now and into the future.

The Promise

• Form factor: Anyone that has used an iPad can attest to its compelling form factor. It just feels right. Light, portable and easy to hold or lay in your lap. As opposed to a laptop where the upright screen acts as a barrier between people in classroom settings, the iPad tends to be used more organically; it’s small, lays flat and is easily shared and passed around.
• Long battery life and instant-on: Continuous, transparent access to information is a key educational goal and these are two core requirements. The long battery life of iPads allows you to charge them overnight and use them throughout the school day without any need to pull out messy power cords or search for sparsely located electrical outlets. Additionally, they power up almost immediately. Teachers have little class time to meet increasing demands and don’t need to be wasting five or more minutes every lesson waiting for students to open laptops, power up and log in or shut down. The iPad simply flips open and it’s on. Importantly, as with other mobile devices, this also enables natural, almost transparent educational use. You’re more likely to just spontaneously turn to it for information in the course of a discussion. Students can carry it around easily and instantly access and integrate information and tools into discussions and educational activities.
• Price: The cost of computer implementations has been a stumbling block for many communities and countries. The advent of cheaper alternatives – netbooks, smartphones and iPads – are closing the digital divide and making computing increasingly accessible to more people.
• Touch interface: When combined with the simplicity of the screen layout, the touch interface is a key element of the iPad’s popularity. Most notably, you will observe how young children instinctively take to it without instruction – the web is replete with examples. From my own experience, I find that younger children adapt to the interface even more naturally than teens.
• Improved digital reading: The crisp quality of the display, especially when combined with the light weight and portability, enables a far superior reading experience than currently exists on desktops and laptops. Along with the iPad’s light weight and portability, this finally opens the door to the possibility of utilizing eBooks in education in place of their far heavier and more expensive paper counterparts.
• Integrating multimedia: We live in a society that increasingly expresses itself in images and video. There is an abundance of apps delivering high quality multimedia content to iPads, allowing for integration of fantastic media experiences into educational activities. This is especially applicable to news events where fresh, sharp video footage and images are easily accessible and can spark valuable class discussion.
• Special education: Increasingly we are hearing how the iPad has been a huge success within special education. The simplicity of the touch interface is making it an extremely popular device for students with special needs.
• Connecting: The educational value of social networking lies in its ability to facilitate the growth of impromptu virtual learning communities – connecting people around the globe to share opinions and experiences. Social networking applications are an integral part of iPad usage – whether connecting users to news events, industry experts or video-conferencing with students and classes in other countries.

Consumption or Production?

Much has been written about the opinion that iPads are great consumption devices but are less stellar at allowing students to express themselves creatively. I don’t entirely agree. Firstly, it isn’t simply a consumption device – it’s an extraordinary consumption device – and the role of information acquisition in education shouldn’t be under-valued.

Also, as the application market matures we’re starting to see an evolving depth in the creative opportunities. Music applications, digital storytelling, animation, mathematics … now with the addition of a camera to the second generation iPad and the hallmark release of core Apple applications such as iMovie and GarageBand, the creative possibilities are expanding rapidly.

Some Considerations

• Sharing: iPads are intensely personal devices that record your digital footprint – logins, preferences and more. There’s no login process. This makes them difficult to share. A 1:1 iPad implementation requires very different planning than an implementation that shares iPads among students. My hope is that educational app developers will see the obvious need for sharing in schools and add login layers to their apps.
• They aren’t laptops: You can’t manage iPads in the same way as laptops. Imaging and synchronization processes, content management, application purchasing – they all raise specific issues that require thorough discussion and planning.
• Keyboard: The touch screen keyboard is not popular with all users. I find that it’s more than sufficient for smaller typing tasks such as emails, notes, blog posts and more …. but I believe we’re approaching the end of qwerty typing in computing. The popularity of tablet computing may end up stimulating development of alternative, more efficient input methods that also utilize voice and video.
• eTextbooks: At this point, the promise of eTextbooks still exceeds the reality. There aren’t enough quality books available in digital format and frankly, most still stem from a model that is built upon their physical, paper counterpart. It’s not enough to simply translate textbooks to digital files – we need new models that utilize the media and interactivity capabilities available on iPads. A digital textbook should be cognizant of what the learner has mastered and where he/she needs assistance. It should customize the content to the reader’s strengths and weaknesses and report the student’s progress to the teacher. Effective use of multimedia – interactive multimedia – will become core elements of new eTextbooks and eCourses. There have been some excellent first attempts and eTextbooks and eCourses will improve as the market matures.

The Immediate Future

• The app market will mature and we’ll move from single task, short session apps to more sophisticated offerings. The release of GarageBand and iMovie are the first steps in that direction.
• The barrier to entry for creating and distributing eBook content will become lower. Increasingly, teachers and communities will create their own eBook content.
• Social reading is an imminent phenomenon that combines the reading of eBooks with social networking. When reading eBooks users can connect to friends and other readers, asking questions and sharing notes or opinions. Apps such as Inkling are a bold first step in that direction.
• While the iOS browser is adequate it still lags behind desktop offerings. As mobile continues to expand we can expect a consolidation of desktop and mobile systems and browsers resulting in better mobile web editing, more collaboration tools and support for a wider range of web technologies.

Finally, it’s still a free-for-all in the mobile tablet market. The huge popularity of the iPad is spawning a wealth of new applications and cultivating the development of a host of competitive products that will only serve to strengthen the overall educational value of mobile tablet computing.

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)

With the rise of the iPad, Kindle, and similar eReaders and touchscreen devices, tablet-shaped form factor computing power has become much more portable and yet sizable. This holds great promise for educators on par with the introduction of slates, which swept across classrooms at the turn of the century before last. Back then, the personal transcription device of chalk and stone slate tablets was seen as revolutionary.

Now we can envision one iPad per teacher and student

The digital equivalent has an equal promise in revolutionizing both teaching and learning activities. Teachers can have instructional support, literally at their fingertips, in the learning environment. In fact, David Stevenson of Wireless Generation says that 7-inch tablets are perfect tools for classroom teachers. Students can also be empowered with individualized instruction – think Teachermates on steroids.

But is this just hardware hype?

Yes, the iPad is intuitive, the Kindle and Nook are cheap, and Android is Open Source, yet is the tablet form factor really all that? There is the immediate e-reader usage model, but what other roles can tablets play? And are those roles most cost-effective with digital devices vs. analog or even paper technologies?

Or might tablets just be the OLPC of 2011? Will touch screen tablets be exciting until the real costs for change become apparent? Or are iPads, Kindles and the like a real opportunity for innovative instruction that will surpass laptop and mobile phone promise and usage in the classroom?

Our goal: explore the potential impact of tablet computers in education

In this month’s Educational Technology Debate, we’ll hear from experts in education and technology on the promise and pitfalls of tablet devices in the developing world. We’ll also welcome participation with Slide2Learn – a conference on iOS device usage in education, April 18-19 in Queensland, Australia.

Please join us by subscribing to our posts and commenting on each with your thoughts, opinions and insights on using this new ICT in education.

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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

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

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(Caveat: Because this article was written for an audience most interested in government-funded primary and secondary education in developing countries, words like “wealthy,” “average,” and “typical” should be read with that context in mind. But, the conclusions are relevant for a broad class of primary and secondary schools in developed countries, as well.)

To back these assertions, I’ll draw on four different lines of evidence.

1. The history of electronic technologies in schools is fraught with failures.
2. Computers are no exception, and rigorous studies show that it is incredibly difficult to have positive educational impact with computers. Technology at best only amplifies the pedagogical capacity of educational systems; it can make good schools better, but it makes bad schools worse.
3. Technology has a huge opportunity cost in the form of more effective non-technology interventions.
4. Many good school systems excel without much technology.

The inescapable conclusion is that significant investments in computers, mobile phones, and other electronic gadgets in education are neither necessary nor warranted for most school systems. In particular, the attempt to use technology to fix underperforming classrooms (or to replace non-existent ones) is futile. And, for all but wealthy, well-run schools, one-to-one computer programs cannot be recommended in good conscience.

All of the evidence stands on its own, but I will tie them together with a single theory that explains why technology is unable to substitute for good teaching: Quality primary and secondary education is a multi-year commitment whose single bottleneck is the sustained motivation of the student to climb an intellectual Everest. Though children are naturally curious, they nevertheless require ongoing guidance and encouragement to persevere in the ascent. Caring supervision from human teachers, parents, and mentors is the only known way of generating motivation for the hours of a school day, to say nothing of eight to twelve school years.

While computers appear to engage students (which is exactly their appeal), the engagement swings between uselessly fleeting at best and addictively distractive at worst. No technology today or in the foreseeable future can provide the tailored attention, encouragement, inspiration, or even the occasional scolding for students that dedicated adults can, and thus, attempts to use technology as a stand-in for capable instruction are bound to fail.

With respect to sustaining directed motivation, even the much-maligned rote-focused drill-sergeant disciplinarian is superior to any electronic multimedia carnival. (In an October 2009 ETD article, James BonTempo also highlighted the importance of motivation. But, while BonTempo suggested that we should seek technologies that motivate both teachers and students, I believe today’s technology is not up to the task. [Note: The author retracts this statement and agrees with BonTempo, as his articles actually suggest that even this is not possible if neither teachers nor students are motivated to begin with.])

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The Repetitive Cycle of Technology

For anyone concerned with high-tech in schools, two books are required reading as histories of technology and education. The first is Larry Cuban’s Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920, which overviews the history of films, radio, television, and computers in American education up to the early 1980s. The second is Todd Oppenheimer’s The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology. Oppenheimer also focuses primarily on US education, but updates and expands on Cuban’s findings for computers in schools through the early 2000s. Both authors consider the record of technology in schools and find it wanting. They reveal that while technologies can have positive educational impact in restricted instances, successes pale in comparison to failures overall. By not knowing this past history, we seem condemned to repeat it over and over and over.

One point that both authors make is that there is a repetitive cycle of technology in education that goes through hype, investment, poor integration, and lack of educational outcomes. The cycle keeps spinning only because each new technology reinitiates the cycle. In 1922, Thomas Edison claimed that movies would “revolutionize our educational system.” In 1945, William Levenson, a Cleveland radio station director, suggested that portable radios in classrooms should be “integrated into school life” alongside blackboards. In the 1960s, governments under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson invested in classroom TV. In an irrational leap of reasoning that is symptomatic of technology in education, Johnson went from a valid lament, “Unhappily, the world has only a fraction of the teachers it needs,” to a non-solution… to meet the challenge “through educational television.”

The hubris and failures of technology projects are detailed by Cuban and Oppenheimer, but with hindsight available to all of us, we know that none of these technologies has delivered on their promises. If anything, we have become wary of their educational power. For example, on the one hand, television excels as a medium for delivering information. Seduced by this capacity in 1964, Wilbur Schramm, the father of communications studies, asked “What if the full power and vividness of television teaching were to be used to help the schools develop a country’s new educational pattern?” He was thinking, in particular, of mass media’s potential to transform education for developing countries.

The transformation never occurred, probably because as motivational as television can be, it still falls far short of generating the motivation required for education. For every person who falls prey to Madison Avenue’s latest advertisement, hundreds of others just ignore it or turn the channel – if that’s true of the most persuasive television commercials, why should we expect television to be able to regularly sustain the motivation (and not just the attention) of easily distracted children to do the cognitive push-ups that education demands?

In the meanwhile, many of us have come to sense television’s shortcomings. Educated parents restrict their children’s time in front of the TV, and many households ban television altogether – at its best, television is considered a cheap babysitter to hold a child’s attention when adult attention is scarce; at its worst, television caters to our weakest impulses, glamorizes materialism, desensitizes us to violence, and lulls us into a zombie-like trance. As a result, most people today would laugh at a school system based on watching broadcast television programs, however educational. Yet, that was exactly the idea behind an experiment in American Samoa in the mid-1960s, where the “education” of 80% of students was based on watching educational telecasts. The program was dismantled several years later as teachers, administrators, parents, and even students expressed dissatisfaction with the students’ academic performance.

Computers: The Latest Technology Cycle

Today, computers and mobile phones are the shiny new technologies, and they offer an even more seductive promise. One argument goes that it was the passiveness of older technologies that was the problem, so today’s interactive digital technologies are the perfect solution.

Patrick Suppes, a pioneer in computer-aided learning suggested in 1966 that computers can “adapt mechanical teaching routines to the needs and the past performance of the individual student.” But, neither interactivity nor adaptive capacity are sufficient – the key challenge in education remains the long-term, directed motivation of the student – something which no technology today can deliver on its own, but which good teachers deliver regularly.

Of course, computers are different from radio or television, so if they are able to prove themselves in education, we should use them. Alas, the research on computers in education consistently arrives at a single conclusion, which at its most optimistic could be stated as follows:

Computers can help good schools do some things better, but they do nothing positive for underperforming schools. This means, very specifically, that efforts to fix broken schools with technology or to substitute for missing teachers with technology invariably fail.

Mark Warschauer, the foremost authority on technology in American classrooms, has spent countless hours studying computer projects. He writes of underperforming US schools, “placing computers and Internet connections in low-[income] schools, in and of itself, does little to address the serious educational challenges faced by these schools. To the extent that an emphasis on provision of equipment draws attention away from other important resources and interventions, such an emphasis can in fact be counterproductive.”

And, as for technology’s capacity to even the playing field of education, he says, “the introduction of information and communication technologies in [...] schools serves to amplify existing forms of inequality.” This is a specific instance of a broader thesis I argued recently, of technology’s role as an amplifier of existing institutional forces.

In the international arena, and using experimental methodology, economists confirm these findings. In rigorous large-scale studies in both India and Colombia, Leigh Linden at Columbia University found that while PCs can supplement good instruction, PCs are a poor substitute for time with teachers. Furthermore, large-scale computer roll-outs in these countries showed no significant educational outcomes compared against students who didn’t receive computers. He suggests that one problem is that teachers don’t successfully incorporate computers into their curricula. (Nor are teachers to blame – technology programs routinely fail to account for teachers’ needs.)

Ana Santiago and her colleagues at the Inter-American Development Bank find a similar story for a Peruvian One Laptop Per Child program. Three months after a large-scale roll-out, and despite teacher, parent, and student excitement around the technology, students gained nothing in academic achievement. Santiago also notes that even during the initial three months, the novelty factor of the laptops appears to wane, with each week seeing less use of the devices.

None of these results run counter to the few research studies that show how computers can benefit education in limited ways. But, all positive instances of computers in schools are built on strong institutional foundations that are exactly what is deficient where technology is expected to save the day. Without the institutional base, technology’s impact is zero or negative. This should immediately cause anyone hoping to fix an underperforming classroom to cross off technology as any part of the “solution.”

As Wayan Vota notes in a May 2009 ETD article, unless the institutional foundation of teachers and administrators is built and funded properly, technology is pointless. With the lens of motivation, it’s easy to understand why. Bad schools are unable to direct student motivation towards educational goals. Since technology itself requires proper motivation for its benefits to accrue, any school that can’t direct student motivation capably will fail to do so with technology, as well (or worse, allow technology to distract students).

The Cost Implications of Technology Investments

Educators often parrot that “technology is not a panacea,” by which they mean either:

1. that technology doesn’t cure all educational ills or
2. that technology alone is insufficient as a solution.

Though these acknowledgments are far better than a blind faith in technology, they still belie hidden, unjustified expectations of technology. The first interpretation suggests that technology cures some maladies in education. But, this is exactly what doesn’t happen – the prevailing evidence shows that technology does not cure unhealthy educational systems; at best, it only augments healthy ones. The second belief is more dangerous because it is factually correct but misleading for policy. It implies that technology can be a good solution as long as other investments are also made; what it leaves out is that if alternate investments of the same magnitude were made to support education directly (and not indirectly to support technology), the educational results could be far greater.

The issues here are cost-effectiveness and opportunity cost. Of course, if the net impact of a technology solution is zero or negative, it’s pointless to implement it however low the cost. But because many educators are tempted by technology’s supposed ability to lower costs, it’s worthwhile to consider actual costs of well-implemented technology.

The most common error in computing costs is to assume that hardware and software are the dominant costs of technology. In reality, the total cost of ownership (TCO) for information technology is comfortably several times the cost of hardware, with a range of 5-10x being a good rule of thumb. Beyond hardware, necessary costs include costs of distribution, maintenance, power infrastructure, teacher training, repair and replacement, and curriculum integration. (In a May 2010 ETD article, Sam Carlson, who unlike me believes in technology for education, nevertheless highlights just how much of an investment teacher training requires.) Additional costs often include connectivity, software development, content production, and end-of-life costs. One analysis by Vital Wave Consulting shows the TCO of an ultra-low-cost PC to be in the $2000-3000 range for developing country schools. A similar analysis by OLPCnews suggests $972 over five years for OLPC (the very optimistic advertised lifespan of an OLPC laptop), and $753 for an OLPC implementation in Nepal (cf., OLPC’s current cost of $188). These figures are per unit, so a one-to-one laptop program would incur these costs per-student.

Though figures like the ones above show otherwise, technology providers eagerly feed technology-cost misconceptions. Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC, has been recently touting a $1-per-week total cost for his laptops. But, a dollar a week doesn’t even pay for the device over three years, which many observers agree is a reasonable estimate of its lifetime. It appears his accounting skills are not on par with his salesmanship. Even at $1 a week, though, the price is out of proportion for many developing-country budgets. The government of India, for example, spends no more than $200 per student per year for primary and secondary school, and most of that expense goes to teacher salaries. And, while literacy rates in India are rising, they remain around 60%. Many other developing countries spend even less, with worse results. Does it make sense to take a quarter or more of a struggling school system’s budget and allocate it to technologies that haven’t even proven themselves?

With respect to costs, it’s worth keeping in mind the opportunity cost of technology. For example, research by economists Ted Miguel, Michael Kremer, and others has conclusively shown the value of 50-cent deworming pills for education. The pills free children of parasites and eliminate one of the dominant reasons for student absenteeism in many developing countries. At a cost of only $3.50 per student (over several years), countries with high incidences of parasites can effectively add the equivalent of an extra year of schooling. Similar results can be had from provision of midday meals, iron supplements, and teaching assistants, and all at a much lower cost than that of computing technology.

As for better teaching, educator Doug Lemov enumerates a series of instructional techniques in his book Teach Like a Champion. The techniques were compiled by Lemov after studying hours upon hours of video of teachers who systematically outperform their peers. Most of the techniques are conceptually simple, but have a dramatic impact on the teacher’s effect in the classroom. For example, when asking a question, Lemov’s recommendation to teachers is to pose the question to the class at large, allow some time to think, and then to randomly call on a student. The technique motivates all of the students to think, since any of them could be put on the spot. In contrast, calling only on students who raise their hand or calling on a student before asking the question allows other students to ignore the question entirely. Such techniques require no additional technology and could easily be incorporated into existing teacher training programs with marginal additional cost.

Speaking of teachers, it should be emphasized over and over that they are the primary agents of good formal education. Without good teachers, education fails; with good teachers, education succeeds. Technology is largely irrelevant to this equation. As evidence, we only need to consider world-class school systems that consistently churn out high-performing students. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is the OECD’s latest instrument to measure student performance across countries. 15-year olds are assessed on their reading, math, and science abilities, and the test attempts to measure not just rote learning but some degree of deeper comprehension and critical thinking ability.

Finland is among the countries that routinely perform at the top on PISA, and it is renowned for its low-tech, high-touch approach that emphasizes educational basics and relatively few hours of school or homework. There are also school systems like that of South Korea that use a lot of technology and also do well, but analysis of PISA results fails to show any meaningful correlation between technology use and student performance. (Tim Kelly attempts to use Korea as an argument for technology in schools in a May 2009 ETD article, but that seems an unfortunate confusion of correlation with cause.) Rather, PISA summary documents highlight that the best-performing nations have a political commitment to universal education, high standards for achievement, and quality teachers and principals. Notably absent is any mention of technology as a critical element of a good school system, even though the PISA survey includes data on computers and other educational resources.

None of this should be a surprise. The world had amply demonstrated well before the invention of the personal computer that good education is possible without information technology. Most people born in the 1975 or earlier had no computing in their classrooms, and it would be hard to argue that they suffered as a result; many now lead the world in their respective spheres. Are we to believe that today’s Nobel Laureates, heads of state, and business elite received an inferior education because they were without information technology when growing up?

When Technology in Education is Justified

In order to avoid misunderstanding, I should clarify that some uses of computers in education can be justified, although with the ever-applicable caution that while technology can augment good schools, it hurts poor schools.

• First, in those cases where directed student motivation is assured, technology may lessen the burden of teaching. Some cases of tertiary or adult education may fall into this category.
• Second, targeted use of computers in schools, for example, as an aid to teach computer literacy, computer programming, or video editing, etc., are important as long as those uses are incorporated only as a small part of a well-rounded curriculum.
• Third, technology can help with the administration of schools – record keeping, monitoring, evaluation, etc. – as long as the school system is able to fully support the technology.
• Fourth, in richer environments, where the cost of educated labor is relatively high, careful use of well-designed software may have value in fundamental education, particularly for remedial or drilling purposes. Solutions offered by, for example, Carnegie Learning fall into this category, although it should be noted again that effective use of these kinds of technologies must occur in the context of an otherwise well-run school system.
• Fifth, again in rich environments, where the basics of education are assured, where teachers are facile with technology, and where budgets are unconstrained, widespread use of technology, even in a one-to-one format, might benefit students. Warschauer does find that certain uses of computers enhance computer literacy and writing skills, but these outcomes are limited to well-run, well-funded schools; they are notably absent in underperforming schools, even in the United States.

I underscore that the last two cases are specific to very wealthy, well-run school systems (as a benchmark, the value is unlikely to emerge for school systems spending less than US$8,000 per student per year), and that none of the positive instances above pertain to underperforming schools or to broad dissemination of technology to students.

9 Myths of Technology in Education

I’ve so far argued that technology in education has a poor historical record; that computers in schools typically fail to have positive impact (with the rare exceptions occurring only in the context of competent, well-funded schools); that information technology is almost never worth its opportunity cost; and that quality education doesn’t require information technology.

Though I’ve only presented a smattering of the evidence above, the conclusions are clear. Put together, the strong recommendation is that underperforming school systems should keep their focus on improving teaching and administration, and that even good schools may want to consider more cost-effective alternatives to technology when making supplementary educational investments.

Unfortunately, all of this evidence doesn’t provide the gut intuition required to reject seductive rhetoric. So, I end with a point-by-point refutation of frequently heard sound bites extolling technology in schools.

Pro-Technology Rhetoric 1: 21st-century skills require 21st-century technologies. The modern world uses e-mail, PowerPoint, and filing systems. Computers teach you those skills.

Reality: This is bad reasoning of the kind that, hopefully, genuine 21st-century skills wouldn’t allow. What exactly are the “21st-century skills” that successful citizens need? Some people define them as the 3 Rs and the 4 Cs (critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity). But, aren’t these the same as 20th-century skills? The skills haven’t changed; only the proportion of people requiring them.

Of course, the tools that people use at work and at home have changed, but the use of these tools is easy to learn compared with the deep ability to think and work effectively. As far as I know, not in the 500+ years since Gutenberg invented the printing press did anyone suggest that every school, to say nothing of every student, needed a mini-printing press to learn printing skills. (From the 1960s through the 1990s, schools incorporated typing half-heartedly into their curricula, but even that was relegated to a one-year elective.)

Today, any idiot can learn to use Twitter. But, forming and articulating a cogent argument in any medium – SMS text messages, PowerPoint, e-mails, or otherwise – requires good thinking, writing, and communication skills. Those skills might be channeled through technology, but they hardly require technology to acquire. Similarly, any fool can learn to “use” a computer. But, the underlying math required to do financial accounting or engineering requires solid mathematical preparation that requires working through problem sets – Einstein didn’t grow up with computers, but modern physics would be delighted to have more Einsteins.

We need to distinguish between the need to learn the tools of modern life (easy to pick up, and getting easier by the day, thanks to better technology!) and learning the critical thinking skills that make a person productive in an information economy (hard to learn, and not really any easier with information technology). Based on my own experience trying to teach undereducated English-speaking adults how to use Google, I’m quite certain that what limited their ability to capitalize on the Internet was reading comprehension and critical thinking skills, not computer literacy skills.

Pro-Technology Rhetoric 2: Technology X allows interactive, adaptive, constructivist, student-centered, [insert educational flavor of the month (EFotM) here] learning.

Reality: All of that may be true, but without directed motivation of the student, no sustained learning actually happens, with or without technology. Good teachers are interactive, adaptive, constructivist, student-centered, and capable of EFotM, but on top of all of that, they are also capable of something that no technology for the foreseeable future can do: generate ongoing motivation in students. If education only required an interactive, adaptive, constructivist, student-centered, EFotM medium, then the combination of an Erector Set and an encyclopedia ought to be sufficient for education.

Pro-Technology Rhetoric 3: But, wait, it’s still easier for teachers to arouse interest with technology X than with textbooks.

Reality: Maybe a little bit at first. But, the novelty factor of most technologies quickly wears off, and those which don’t tend to turn viewers into zombies rather than engaged learners.
In addition, this comment is a real insult to good teachers everywhere. Good teachers are exactly those who can engage students creatively, regardless of the aids available to them. Technology might amplify the impact of good teachers, but it won’t fix bad teaching.

Pro-Technology Rhetoric 4: Teachers are expensive. It’s exactly because teachers are absent or poorly trained that low-cost technology is a good alternative.

Reality: Low-cost technologies are not so low cost when total cost of ownership is taken into account and put in the economic context of low-income schools. Furthermore, technology cannot fix broken educational systems. If teachers are absent or poorly trained, the only proper solution is to invest in better teachers, better training, and better administration… even if it’s expensive. As they say in KIPP schools, there are no shortcuts!

Pro-Technology Rhetoric 5: Textbooks are expensive. For the price of a couple of textbooks, you might as well get a low-cost PC.

Reality: Anyone who says this is using American predatory pricing of textbooks as a guide. In India, a typical text book costs 7.5-25 rupees, or 15-50 cents. For $1-3, you could buy all the textbooks a child will need for the year. It can be more expensive in other countries where printing costs are not as low as in India, but there is no reason why a textbook needs to cost more than a few dollars. Please, let’s stop propagating this myth.

Pro-Technology Rhetoric 6: We have been trying to improve education for many years without results. Thus, it’s time for something new: Technology X!

Reality: Technology has never fixed a broken educational system, so if anything is getting old, it’s the attempt to patch bad education with technology. If other efforts aren’t working, maybe the school system needs to be thrown out and rebuilt from the ground up, as Qatar recently did with its education ministry. There are plenty of new things to try that don’t require new technology. (Though, novelty for its own sake doesn’t make sense, either. There are plenty of old examples of good education, too.) It should be cautioned though, that efforts to improve teachers and administrators is itself a multi-year, if not multi-decade effort. Again, there are no shortcuts!

Pro-Technology Rhetoric 7: Study Z shows that technology is helpful.

Reality: Technology can be beneficial. But, it’s always worth looking at two things more carefully: First, how good was the educational environment in Study Z without the technology? Invariably, it will have been good; often, very good. This means it was secret-sauce + technology that caused the benefit, not technology by itself. Second, what was the total cost of the technology (including training, maintenance, curriculum, etc.)? Inevitably, it will be a factor of 5-10 more than the cost of hardware. Both issues suggest that for ailing schools, technology is not the answer.

Pro-Technology Rhetoric 8: Computer games, simulations, and other state-of-the-art technologies are really changing things.

Reality: This article was written with current and near-term technologies in mind. It’s possible that future technologies will not fit the theses. Certainly, a humanoid robot indistinguishable from a good teacher could work wonders! More realistically, it’s likely that sophisticated software could become richer in the range of things they can teach and the degree to which they sustain motivation. But, any such advances should pass lab trials, pilot runs, controlled experiments, and cost-effectiveness analyses before anyone starts advocating them for widespread use. So far, no technology has met this bar – computers running existing software certainly haven’t.

Pro-Technology Rhetoric 9: Technology is transformative, revolutionary, and otherwise stupendous! Therefore, it must be good for education.

Reality: This myth is pervasive because it is so easy to believe and because we want to believe it so badly. After all, with computers, we can publish our own newsletters, buy gifts in our pajamas, and find the best Italian restaurant in town. And, it would be nice if all we had to do was to sit every child in front of a computer for 6 hours a day to turn them into educated, upright citizens.

But, why do we believe this? It makes no sense. We don’t expect that playing football video games makes a child a great athlete. We don’t believe that watching YouTube will turn our kids into Steven Spielbergs. We don’t think that socializing on Facebook will turn people into electable government officials. And, if none of those things work, then why do we expect it of writing, history, science, or mathematics?

A good education is second only to parenting in the importance it has in raising capable, upright members of society. We would never think to replace parenting with technology (and when we do at times, we do it with shame, and only because we’re too damn tired to parent, not because gadgets are superior to us). Why do we keep trying to replace teachers?

Honesty in Technology Failure

As if to underscore these points, last month, the Azim Premji Foundation, a well-funded non-profit in India and arguably the world’s largest non-profit organization dedicated to working with computers in education, made a startling – and courageous – confession. They had worked for over half a decade with tens of thousands of schools, providing computers, training teachers, designing whole software libraries in 18 languages, and integrating material with state curricula. Aspects of their programs and their software could be criticized, but their methods were as thoughtful and as heartfelt as any technology-for-education effort I have witnessed, with frequent research and evaluations to confirm outcomes. Their conclusion?

“[W]hen we took stock at a fundamental level, we realized that [our whole effort in computer-aided learning] was at best a qualified failure… there was practically no impact in a sustained, systemic manner on learning.”

Anurag Behar, co-CEO of the foundation cited a number of issues (the full article is worth reading), but chief among the problems were that any deficiencies in administration and teaching were not overcome by technology. He notes: “At its best, the fascination with ICT as a solution distracts from the real issues. At its worst, ICT is suggested as substitute to solving the real problems, for example, ‘why bother about teachers, when ICT can be the teacher’. This perspective is lethal.” He concludes with a paraphrasing of what he learned from education leaders in Finland and Canada (two countries who consistently do well on PISA): “not a dollar will we invest in ICT, every dollar that we have will go to teacher and school leader capacity building.”

In short, there are no technology shortcuts to good education.

For further reading along these lines, see 10 Worst Practices in ICT for Education, by Michael Trucano, as well as education-focused posts by the ICT4D Jester.

References

Barrera-Osorio, Felipe and Linden, Leigh L. (2009) The Use and Misuse of Computers in Education : Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Colombia. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1344721, retrieved Dec. 28, 2010.

Behar, Anurag. (2010) Limits of ICT in Education. LiveMint.com. Dec. 16, 2010. http://www.livemint.com/2010/12/15201000/Limits-of-ICT-in-education.html, retrieved Dec. 28, 2010.

Camfield, Jon. (2006) What is the real cost of OLPC? http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/price/the_real_cost_of_the.html, retrieved Dec. 28, 2010.

Camfield, Jon. (2010) Total cost of XO ownership for OLE Nepal. http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/price/total_cost_of_xo_ownership_for.html, retrieved Dec. 28, 2010.

Cuban, Larry. (1986) Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology since 1920. Teachers College Press.

Lemov, Doug. (2010) Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College. Jossey-Bass.

Linden, Leigh L. (2008) Complement or Substitute? The Effect of Technology on Student Achievement in India. Jameel Poverty Action Lab Working Paper. http://www.columbia.edu/~ll2240/Gyan_Shala_CAL_2008-05-22.pdf, retrieved Jan. 4, 2011.

OECD (2010), PISA 2009 Results: What Makes a School Successful? — Resources, Policies and Practices (Volume IV). http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264091559-en, retrieved Dec. 28, 2010.

Oppenheimer, Todd. (2003) The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology. Random House.

Santiago, A., Severin, E., Cristia, J., Ibarrarán, P., Thompson, J., & Cueto, S. (2010). Evaluacíon experimental del programa “Una Laptop por Niño” en Perú. Washington, DC: Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo. http://www.iadb.org/document.cfm?id=35370099

Suppes, Patrick. (1966) The Uses of Computers in Education. Scientific American, 215(3):207-220.

Toyama, Kentaro. (2010) Can Technology End Poverty? Boston Review, 35(6):12-18,28-29. http://bostonreview.net/BR35.6/ndf_technology.php, retrieved Jan. 4, 2011.

Vital Wave Consulting. (2008) Affordable Computing for Schools in Developing Countries: A Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Model for Education Officials. http://www.vitalwaveconsulting.com/insights/articles/affordable-computing.htm, retrieved Dec. 28, 2010.

Warschauer, Mark, Michele Knobel, and LeeAnn Stone. (2004) Technology and equity in schooling: Deconstructing the digital divide. Educational Policy, 18(4):562-588. http://www.gse.uci.edu/person/warschauer_m/docs/tes.pdf, retrieved Jan. 4, 2011.

Warschauer, Mark. (2006) Laptops and Literacy: Learning in the Wireless Classroom. Teachers College Press.

Two months ago a heated discussion took place in Educational Technology Debate after an article by C. Derndorfer described what seemed to be a hopeless outlook for the Peruvian OLPC program. What Derndorfer described were not problems with a particular ICT strategy but the daily problems you face when trying to improve an educational system in which many things have been failing at the same time for decades.

You simply don’t get three hundred thousand well educated, passionate, committed teachers overnight, nor you overhaul ninety thousand schools in two or three years. This article describes one possible way to face the challenge of improving the Peruvian public education system by using a mixed strategy:

Let children and teachers have ICT available and explore it in a non threatening way, try not to get involved in the quasi religious discussions between those who “believe” in the Wintel approach and those who interpret Negroponte as an enemy of teachers, and face what happens in the real world where there is no easy way to 100% Internet access, there is no money to give every child one computer, there is no way to “train” teachers who haven’t been properly prepared to teach, and teachers’ salaries will not improve overnight.

This article outlines the considerations for implementation of massive computing access projects aimed at systemic low impact long term improvements through what we call “Technology Resource Centers”, where teachers and students may have access to ICT and additional technologies at their own pace and in their own terms.

Several authors: Holt (1983), Kozol (1993) and Conroy (1987), have suggested that school education, as we know it, has lost its value as an instrument in the development of the individual. With different arguments and perspectives, they point out how the interest in processes and methods has shadowed the required genuine concern for the personal growth of students, transforming the educational system in a purposeless organism where everybody pretends: Teachers pretend to teach by delivering information according to established methods, students pretend they are learning by passing tests requiring repetition of the information received and society as a whole pretends this is good.

Some authors, Perelman (1992), Holt (1964) even suggest that there is no possibility for improvement in school education and the only hope for improving it is to replace traditional education with a completely new mechanism.

Gardner (2000) is more hopeful, he advocates for an Education aimed to the teaching of truth, beauty and morality and questions theorists who focus in the instrument rather than the purpose of Education. What can we do in an educational system where even the traditional is poorly performed and we are not able to attain even the modest aspirations of traditional educational settings? How can we prepare our new generations to cope with the challenges of the XXI century in a system where many want us to believe good teachers are the exception, infrastructure is poor and society as a whole seems to have been ignoring Education (in spite of discourse and writings about it) for decades? Guggenheim’s movie “Waiting for Superman” seems to be documentary aimed to demonstrate how poor is the American Public Education but has been severely criticized (also read R. Weingarten and G. Stager) for its lack of objectivity and biased point of view.

A few days ago I attended the opening of a demo center where a supposedly ideal ICT4E setting was showcased. It was really impressive in terms of the technology available: Fully wireless connected computers of all sizes, interactive networked whiteboards, etc . etc. I really got some really good ideas and information of what is available, my only objections were:

1. It was all conceived based on children and teachers as consumers of content; and
2. In order for the wonderful things described to happen great teachers in charge were needed.

I am not against consuming good contents, my concern is children usually learn more when they are producing contents than consuming it, unless it is really interesting for them, which takes me to the ideas R. Bao and myself wrote about in 2004: the lack of meaning crisis in the educational system. A crisis happening in spite of a well thought sensible curriculum designed and validated to be a tool for development of competences preparing children to succeed in the XXI century. Some specific characteristics define that meaning crisis:

1. Students do not perceive the educational system, as useful, or having a purpose, and conclude education is meaningless. In many cases, failing students regard formal education as useless.
2. School curriculum requires what Spiro calls oversimplification (Spiro, 1990, 1991, 1992) or reductive bias in order to be taught in the required periods. The result is that students usually forget most as soon as they pass tests. This can be easily demonstrated by asking simple questions about any school subject to adults who have been disconnected of the school environment for a while.
3. Teaching methods emphasize memorizing and repeating information. Even when teachers try to change these methods they are not concerned about giving students reasons why it should be important for them (the students) in their real lives to acquire any piece of knowledge. Teaching should emphasize a key factor in knowledge construction: cognitive flexibility (see Boher-Mahall paper)
4. The constructivist approach, which aimed at transferring control from teachers to students and set the foundations for learning in the students’ willingness to learn, can also fail if the teacher lacks the required knowledge to become an informed guide in the quest for knowledge construction. An ignorant constructivist teacher can be as negative as a well informed behaviorist one as described by Cromer (1997).

Let’s try to describe the educational reality of Peru: There are 8.6 Million students: 75% public, 25% private; 80% urban, 20% rural, 200,000 children attend almost 10,000 one teacher schools. Of a total o 490,000 teachers 65% are public school and 35% private; 83% urban and 17% rural. There are 75,000 Schools, 75% Public 25% Private; 52% Urban, 48% Rural. Pre-K & K coverage is 66.3% . Primary (1-6) coverage is 94.4 and 76.5% for secondary school. According to 2009 reports almost 80% children 12-14 have finished primary school (6th grade) and over 60% of 17-19 youngsters have finished school (11th grade). In all cases the trend is growing.

In spite of the above the Latin-American average coverage ratios, quality remains an issue: Peru rated among the worst in Math reasoning and Reading comprehension in 2001 PISA (the last reported year available). Irresponsibly, Peru opted out of PISA and returned in 2009 (results to be reported in 2010). A census evaluation applied to 180,000 teachers in January 2007 showed 62% were below primary school level reading comprehension with 27% at 0 level; also, 92% were below primary school level in Math reasoning. Since then US$ 300 Million have been spent in teacher in-service education.

Test results on entry evaluations to teaching positions show dramatic increases since then. DIGETE alone has trained more than 80,000 teachers but it should be easy to understand these teachers need much more than training, they need to be completely re-educated. The Peruvian response is being developed in several simultaneous fronts:

1. We have developed a curriculum structure which aims to develop skills and competencies and is not based in specific items of certain disciplines to be covered (Ministry of Education, 2004);
2. A massive initiative to improve quality of teachers is being put in place;
3. Information and Communications Technology is being distributed to students and teachers to saturate the system with learning and teaching tools that are simple to use and available in a nonthreatening environment and long term.

The 1 to 1 One laptop per Child approach has been described and is being discussed globally, I will try to describe what we call the Technology Resource Centers as a first step towards 1 to 1 that allow us to get the benefits of ownership without waiting for the computers, connectivity and great teachers to arrive. We will show how this strategy can actually be a leap to better teaching and learning.

The whole idea was born one day Walter Bender entered my office and transformed my personal computer in a Sugar based machine just inserting a memory stick and downloading his Sugar interface into it. He actually transformed my workstation into his computer.

I wondered what would happen if we could find a way of making a child’s own personal computer to reside somewhere in such a way anytime they got hold of any computer it may turn into his or her computer. By then we had already developed the “portable Internet”: a 2GB memory stick with enough content from educational portals to give primary teachers and students the actual feeling of navigating the web without connectivity and more educational contents than would have been expected for their whole lives under their “normal” conditions.

We had also found that children loved to share interesting things like building artifacts with Lego bricks, making videos or solving puzzles (with or without computers). Of course these are not new ideas but would allow us to share resources in such a way that four children working with one Lego robotics kit and one laptop will have the feeling of having all the computers they need. The same thing happens when one teacher shares with the class some interesting contents using one laptop and a multimedia projector for as many as 36 children: Everyone feels they have all the computers they need.

The whole idea was to allow children and teachers to get involved in the construction of personally meaningful artifacts, whether they are graphic presentations, video pieces or computer programs as advocated by Seymour Papert.

Our approach to the project differs with most educational computing initiatives which have not necessarily helped answer the basic question: What purpose does Education serve for students? If we take into account the way Viktor Frankl (1959) quoted Nietzche in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, “He who has a why to live for, can bear with almost any how”, we may conclude that the educational system fails because it is more involved in supplying how’s and lacks the ability to provide why’s.

This also reinforces the findings by De Volder and Lens (1982), because seeing education as instrumental in reaching personally significant goals in the future is providing students with an answer to the basic question of why should I learn what I am expected to.

Systematic observation of schools’ outcome shows that, even for students with high GPA, most of the information acquired during school years, is lost and has to be relearned when it becomes necessary. During a series of meetings with parents associations, school boards, teachers training seminars and educational computing conferences from 1988 to 2001, Becerra and Bao (2004) attendees were asked some simple questions about concepts, facts and figures that are part of the school curriculum. The result was invariably they did not remember anything. On the other hand, skills and information not lost by students share certain characteristics:

• They were acquired in a natural learning process, what Gardner (2000) describes as apprenticeship or Stone-Wiske (2006) calls Teaching for Understanding , and we will call the natural way, i.e. the amount of time involved in learning is short, when compared with the time spent using the abilities acquired during the learning process.
• The role of the teacher during the learning process was to contextualize knowledge, i.e. provide examples of ways to use the new knowledge in solving meaningful problems or to accomplishing personally meaningful goals.
• Students had positive attachments to teachers and viewed them as resources in reaching their personal goals (Bandura (2007).

In most development economies’ school environments it is not unusual to find 45 and even 50 or 60 student classrooms which severely limit the options for school teachers to develop participatory approaches where students can use information to do things, instead of just hearing about them. Lowering the class size has not significantly impacted quality of Education in the developed economies, in spite of huge investments made towards attaining that goal.

The situation is especially critical in multi-grade one-classroom/one-teacher schools in rural zones. Peru has almost ten thousand of such schools where an average of 22 children from first to sixth grade share a classroom and one teacher. As a consequence, the perception of school education as non-instrumental in reaching personal goals for the future is reinforced.

The consequences of this situation are critical for development: Students drop out rates climb, discipline problems increase, teachers commitment decreases, community frustration reaches levels that threat social peace, just to name a few.

In a situation like this, when Information Technology is introduced in the classroom, the results are what Forrester (1971) called the counter intuitive behavior of complex social systems, with the result that the attempt to reform education using technology makes worst what it aimed to improve. 20 years of multiple educational computing projects in Peru does not seem to have improved the system as a whole, in spite of promising, but isolated, results.

Examples of the above mentioned situation are classes where students learn the parts and components of a personal computer, or spend one school year learning numberless functions of a word processor or spreadsheet or programming language, without ever having the opportunity to produce something useful with the knowledge they are supposedly acquiring.

In many development economies, this situation is aggravated by the fact that computer courses in schools are taught by technicians with little or no background in Education. It is a hopeful symptom, however, that teachers are increasingly taking control of Computer Lab’s as was the case with project “Huascarán” whose driving factors were pedagogical rather than technological.

There are almost 36,000 public primary schools. Prior to 2007, as many as 3,000 schools have been receiving computers, as part of different government programs. In 1987 there was a National Committee for Educational Computing who developed a program to introduce computers in education. The emphasis was on CAI (Computer Assisted Instruction) packages and teaching programming languages.

During 1988 and 1989 a group of 200 public school teachers were given sabbatical time, to attend a program developed between the Ministry of Education and the National University of Engineering. As in most programs, the results were never evaluated or published. From the original 200, just 50 teachers concluded the program. It is very probable most of them are now working as computer programmers, since that was the emphasis of the whole program.

In 1989 the Ministry of Education announced a national contest for teachers to design CAI packages. The results were never reported, the packages were of dubious quality, mainly because the schools didn’t have the tools to make the development of such packages possible and the whole program for computers in education faded until the committee was dissolved.

During the nineties Peruvian teachers involved in ICT4E felt in love with Seymour Papert’s ideas. Constructionist projects mushroomed and the seeds of many projects still alive were sowed. G. Ruiz, who had founded INEDIC, an education research group, organized a live video conference with Seymour Papert; and the local representative of Lego Education translated the robotics software into Spanish and Quechua. Many of the kits acquired by the Ministry of Education back then, are still in use, which was an incentive to think of Educational Robotics as an important component of a Technology Resource Center.

Since those initial efforts, the number of computers in public schools by 1997 was estimated by the Ministry of Education, to be any number between 10,000 and 15,000. It was not known how many were operative and/or used. The configuration ranged from 8086 diskless machines with monochrome monitors, to some 486 processors with multimedia, the later ones acquired during 1995. There had also been a public effort to formalize the software licenses for all the computers since most of them were acquired with no software.

There was no evaluation of the official programs to provide schools with computers, but it was generally accepted the results had been poor or null. The main reason for this was the lack of support to the program, from the educational point of view. Most teachers had to improvise what to do with the computers; many of them took courses at local training centers, just to be able to use the computers for word processing and to be able to teach some programming.

In the 6 years of Huascaran, there was a strong will to improve the situation but it was not initially clear how this could be accomplished, since the results obtained had led many people to the conclusion that computers were of little or no use in education and it seemed there was evidence to support this idea.

There were also private initiatives aiming to improve the situation; in 1995, the Catholic University in Lima was the first Higher Education institution to introduce Technology in Education as part of the curriculum in the Faculty of Education and established a Research Laboratory for Computers in Education. It was expected this laboratory would be instrumental in the development of policies to improve the support for the use of technology in education.

The University Of San Martín De Porres put in place an Educational Computing strategy, which allowed a cadre of university professors to obtain their Masters’ degrees in Educational Computing and Technology at the University of Hartford, Connecticut. This seminal group served as an internal motor to transform ICT usage at the university and led to the creation (December 2003) of a Master’s Degree Program in Educational Computing in Peru. Eventually one of the members of that initial group of professors was appointed as the highest Education government officer in Peru (Mr. Jose-Antonio Chang, current Minister of Education since July 2006).

During the late 90’s, the Ministry of Education, supported by the World Bank, established several pilot programs to evaluate different approaches to integrate Information and Communications Technology in Education under an umbrella project named National Program to Improve the Quality of Education. The main approaches chosen were:

• Lego-Dacta material for primary schools
• Internet access for secondary schools

Each approach had some variations, which developed into sub-projects. This time the driving force behind the project was mainly educational not technological and the results seemed to be more rewarding. Evaluative studies showed the projects were yielding better results than their predecessors. But there still seems to be ample room for improvement, especially in the training of teachers which seems to be the critical success factor to those approaches.

It is becoming clear that a constructionist approach as the one suggested by Papert (1980, 1993) and others (Harel, 1991; Kafai & Resnick, 1994), by helping rethink the role of Technology in Education, may in fact do to Education what Reengineering has done to Business Administration (Hammer & Champy, 1993). Technology can be a powerful resource for the improvement of education, specially the development of critical thinking skills (Jonassen, 2000), and if it hasn’t yet it is because its use has not been properly directed and supported.

The emerging and increasing role of INTERNET in building school and classes networks (Lucena, 1997, 2002) with its almost infinite capacity for sharing and accessing information, paired with the availability of ever faster and more powerful computers and communications facilities is rendering the role of teachers, as sources of information, obsolete.

This of course does not mean, as some naively think, there will be no place for teachers in the schools of the future; teachers are the key success factor for learning in the classroom if they are prepared to assume a new role in the knowledge building process, because it is becoming equally obvious that students need informed guides to survive in the avalanche of information of dubious quality now available. Postman (1996) quotes several examples of utopian views of teacher-less education making it clear the proposed remedy could be even worse than the problem.

A recent report by McKinsey&Company (2007) shows how the best educational systems in the world are those with the best teachers and the best teacher selection processes. At the same time information is available, the need for critical judgment becomes a crucial necessity, in face of the vast amount of information now at the students’ fingertips. The paradox of being thirsty and unable to drink from the firemen’s pipe exemplifies the new kind of needs that education must satisfy.

As Stone Wiske (2006) explain there is a growing need to define the new role of teachers, as guides and counselors in the students’ quest for understanding; and also the role of schools as places where students will share and construct positive images of their personal futures and find ways to acquire the skills and competencies necessary to make them possible.

Our initial experience in Arahuay as reported by Carla Gomez (Arahuay Chronicles) and Businessweek journalist Gerry Smith (slide show) showed how lives of children could change if we provided them an environment where they could work with tools allowing them to reach personally meaningful objectives whether they were recording their favorite singer from the scarce radio receivers available in town, making digital pictures of their families, reporting the local festivities in video or finding out the meaning of words in the “Real Academia Española” dictionary available in Internet. Even the apparently trivial task of copying what teachers wrote for them in the blackboard acquired a new meaning because all involved felt their school was getting into the future. This kind of feeling and improved self esteem is the first step of any growth project.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program in Peru responds to the growing demand for quality and equity in education. It is aimed to provide one laptop to each child living in areas of extreme poverty countrywide. These are mostly rural areas with high rates of illiteracy, social exclusion and human development in general. An April, 2010 study published by OECD (Are the New Millennium Learners Making the Grade?) has found a positive correlation between frequent home use of computers and no positive correlation between frequent school use of computers. This finding was a really welcome boost to our approach of letting children and teachers use the computers in “their own ways” and gave more confidence to the team who had worked on the framework for the Technology Resource Centers.

The pedagogical approach is Constructionist as described by Papert (1980, 1993). Students have access to a set of technology components, much in the way kindergarten teachers set their classrooms in special interest areas (“rincones de interés” is the Spanish name). The Technology resource Center is comprised of:

• A group of XO laptops enough to allow individual work by children at least two hours a week during class time and free access during off school hours. The XO is a versatile tool that enables them to use individual learning styles, offering a variety of learning applications, ranging from visual tools (still-image and motion camera with sound recording) to advanced programming environments of easy usage, to sophisticated music production software that is accessible to children as young as 5 years old. The laptops’ collaborative tools and immediate networking capabilities foster cooperation among students and between them and their teachers, thus contributing to raise students’ self-esteem and social skills. As mentioned earlier each of the 1.7 million students in connected schools will have an individual environment defined in the Internet Cloud (we use Google Apps and Microsoft Life@edu). Non connected students will have their environments defined at the “local cloud” residing in a school server.
• One Educational Robotics module enough for a group of 16-20, allowing children to work in teams of 4-5 kids sharing one computer. The idea is children will enjoy building models while learning teamwork and curriculum matters will be built into the construction process. Sensors will allow to explore science in a recreational way.
• One server to function as the “local cloud” and access point to Internet where connectivity is available. The offline portal is loaded at the server where there is no connectivity.
• One conventional laptop and a multimedia projector to allow teachers to project contents when required.

The strategy is completed with Technology Resource Centers being provided to every public higher education institution in order for them to provide pedagogical and technical support. The Technology Resource Centers will also leverage local government initiatives, like the one in place at Los Olivos where children produce TV programs that are broadcasted through Internet. By mid 2011, more than 800,000 XO laptops equipped with webcams will have been deployed so the 1,7 million children in connected schools, the Los Olivos pioneering experience of learning through video producing will be expanded nationwide.

The Technology Resource Centers will allow the integration of ICT taking into account fundamental capacities: development of creative thinking, critical judgment, problem solving and decision making, as established in NCD.

The initial experience which began in May, 2007 with ten schools around the country will by 2011 have expanded to 100% of K-11schools countrywide. By then, the longer running school will be “Apostol Santiago” in Arahuay, at 2,600 meters above sea level in the Andean mountains 4 hours from Lima. In general terms there is a new work dynamics at the school: teachers’ attitudes have moved from resignation to enthusiasm and development of new teaching strategies.

The sense of self control given by the ownership of laptops helped teachers plan more carefully and better organize class time. Of course this is not a panacea; the complete overhaul of the Peruvian education system will take 10 to 15 years of multiple strategies consistently put in place, meanwhile there will probably be many schools where the impact will be far from expected but we like to compare our strategy to Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) The Star Thrower story.

Perhaps the most surprising and unexpected result was the impact on the community as a whole as reported by Associated press journalist Frank Bajak in the Herald Tribune, where a wide commitment to support children development has emerged and a inner sense of proud can be noticed widely.

Apostol Santiago School has three levels: Pre-School, Primary and Secondary. 110 students are enrolled in those three levels, 47 of them in primary:

• First-Second grade: 8 students
• Third-Fourth grade: 21 students
• Fifth-Sixth grade: 17 students

Most students are required to help their parents with agricultural chores and this means they miss school several weeks a year when their crops require more attention. Since many of them live more than 4 hours away from school (walking time) a board house has been implemented where children spend from Monday to Friday in order to be able to attend school.

The secondary section of the school participated in Huascarán project and one computer classroom with a VSAT connection is available. It should be noted how technology guided the localization of the classroom because it was placed far away from the school (for technical and security reasons) and its usage is very limited and isolated from NCD.

From the beginning, OLPC was different from the previous approach:

• Students would be given the laptops to own them as an educational resource (same as textbooks or notebooks), they would take them home and bring them back to school every day. Intentionally, no special care instructions were given in order to test the laptops ruggedness.
• Teachers were offered limited and only basic operation training, in order to validate a model that might be easily replicable countrywide.
• The computers use would not have specially allocated time slots. Each teacher and student will use them as they think it best fitted their style, need or willingness.

The initial laptops used to implement the project were B4 prototypes of the XO laptop which by now have long been replaced by the 1.0 version, designed by OLPC foundation of Cambridge, Massachusetts. 120 units were donated by OLPC to the Ministry of Education in April, after an evaluation visit to their headquarters by a research team of the University of San Martin de Porres. The computers were equipped with several Linux based applications:

• Abiword (basic text editor)
• Paint (drawing tool)
• Video and camera (digital photography and video recording)
• Web navigator
• Calculator
• Tam Tam (music creation)
• E-Toys (multimedia programming environment)
• Block Party (logical game)
• News reader and PDF visualizing software

Prior to the beginning of the project a baseline evaluation test on reading comprehension and mathematical skills was applied. Data on the December 2006 national evaluation to second grade students is also available. A survey on attitudes towards ICT was applied to students and teachers.

The initial teacher training session was one day long and teachers were left with the laptops for one week without supervision. After one week a second session was held and the laptops were distributed to children during a special meeting with parents and authorities present. The principal reported it was the first meeting with 100% attendance in the school history. The objective of the meeting was getting everybody’s commitment to help the project succeed. Each child received a XO laptop and the whole community celebrated the event with a traditional ancient Inca meal. This kind of meetings has been replicated in over 10,000 towns since 2007.

The first day after receiving the machines, students had already explored them on their own and were eager to find out what could be done. Teachers kept on teaching, letting children explore their new laptops and encouraging them to do the class work. The children did all the activities. Some would put away the laptop while writing on the notebooks. Some others would write quickly on the notebook and then start punching here and there on the laptop.

Still others were totally into the laptop and so excited that they would be doing something totally unrelated to the class and calling the teacher to come and see what they had discovered. Teachers were pleasantly surprised by the little attention they had to pay to disciplinary problems so usual before.

The electric layout was not prepared to support so many devices connected simultaneously and some kids got entangled with the cables and some machines felt down, a few of them stopped working but students were able to fix them with their teachers help and the little training teachers received from the deployment team. Eventually, secondary students were trained as “support team” and they learned how to disassemble and reassemble the computers in order to fix minor problems.

Some software and hardware glitches were found and reported to the development team in Cambridge to be fixed in ulterior versions. About a month after the initial deployment, an OLPC server arrived and was installed at the school, making it the first OLPC server installation worldwide. It worked seamlessly and allowed easier communication and smoother Internet access.

Of course the initial enthusiasm has since then faded and the work done has settled to a more nature one with new teachers being trained by the senior ones and their students on the different ways they find the XO’s useful for school work.

Really important and unexpected collaboration came from international graduate and undergraduate students. The OLPC foundation helped the Ministry team to promote support missions to the Andes among American universities. Since 2008, about 100 students have gotten funding to spend 5 weeks in rural communities helping them take advantage of the XO’s received. Among them was former IBM Thinkpad University World Program manager Man Bui and his son who spent 5 weeks travelling through the Peruvian Andes helping students and teachers find their way with the XO. The French Peruvian Mision Andes Foundation has also supported more than 50 French students support missions to Andamarca in Ayacucho. German, Finnish, Spanish and Argentinian volunteers have also participated in support missions throughout Peru.

Some important considerations to engage in a project like the one described that we have found important are:

Students:

• Absenteeism and dropout rates in rural schools tend to be high. As a result of OLPC projects, a dramatic reduction in these rates should be expected and planned for in terms of machines availability and school service level.
• Students’ interest level in school matters increase and, as a variety of new class activities emerge, a robust support structure to capitalize on it is required.

Teachers

• The 24×7 availability of a personal computer will modify pedagogical strategies. Teachers will be able to personalize curriculum development planning. It was important that the new NCD allows for great flexibility in terms of localization and introduction of new resources. A rigid curriculum would definitely jeopardize the outcome of an OLPC initiative.
• Teachers’ engagement in discovery of new tools will require a support team to help them master them in their classroom settings.
• Time for student teacher interaction should be planned. The improved communication between teachers and students will require more teacher time than the traditional class schedule. Not planning for it might result in frustration. Rural schools will probably be better of than urban schools where teachers could be part time or have double jobs.
• Increased attention from students will mean additional pressure on teacher class preparation quality. Teachers should be prepared to expect more questioning and engaged participation in their classes and prepare accordingly.
• Improved peer to peer communication among teachers will help cope with the challenges posed by the new technology and must be encouraged and supported.

Technical Aspects

• Internet connectivity is a very important factor; when not available, a local server or a memory stick with the offline Internet application is used instead. A periodical refresh process is planned based on teachers’ feedback and request. Since most rural school teachers travel periodically to urban centers, their visits are ideal refreshment vehicles we are planning for.
• Electricity tends to be scarce and poorly reliable in rural areas. Plug outlets are scarce and one per classroom in the best cases. Children are not used to electrical devices and it is important, at least in the beginning, that teachers organize the battery charging to ensure safety. Community involvement in cabling and connectivity improvement is encouraged though there is a long way to go, mainly due to limited resource availability in extreme poverty areas.
• Solar power is an option for places where regular supply is not available. Location and scheduling becomes critical in this case and require special attention.
• Rural schools are usually isolated and hard to reach. Maintenance of sophisticated equipment could become a burden to any attempt of improving Education with technology. The special design of the XO laptops deals with this issue by allowing self maintenance service by students and teachers, however, lack of confidence is still a major obstacle in this area which we expect will reduce in time and with the involvement of nearby higher education institutions.

Other factors

• Many stakeholders’ interests are being affected by large scale project deployment. Lobbying and public arguments take significant amount of time and many times jeopardize the implementation. Hardware and software vendors advocating for particular products may and in fact attempt to affect the outcome of the project. A solid educational and technical deployment team is crucial to cope with these issues. We have to keep working on this matter.
• Educational theorists and opinion leaders who did not have a direct role during the planning process usually question the pedagogical approach or implementation. A sensible communication strategy is necessary to ensure all genuinely interested parties’ contribution will be capitalized and taken advantage of. So far we have failed on this, the project execution has taken most of our energies, leaving little time for “advertising”.
• The focus on fixed features and decreasing prices that is behind the XO laptop design guidelines goes against the ICT industry trend of increasing features and more or less constant price. Since these affect major players’ bottom lines, an aggressive reaction from their sales teams has been an important factor. Careful attention to common and conflicting interests between Public Education and commercial enterprises is hard to implement. We have partially succeeded in this, with Microsoft being a specially committed partner whose approach has been able to balance a genuine interest in education support with their logical expectations of market share. We try to work in order to ensure mutual gain whenever possible and minimizing of conflict in other cases.

In summary, the OLPC experience has renewed our hope that school education has not lost its value as an instrument in the development of the individual. Committed teachers can benefit of ICT availability and, without abandoning their concern for processes and methods, they can improve their performance with genuine concern for the personal growth of students, resulting in improved learning outcomes and commitment levels to school.

We are convinced the educational system can abandon the image of a purposeless organism where everybody pretends and get involved in a meaningful system providing not only instruction but the most important ingredient to success: Hope in a better future that may be beginning to be built now. December, 2007 seems long ago now, but we still remember our surprise when we found sixty Arahuay children reading comprehension level had risen 100% above the national average when the base line showed 0% performing at the expected grade level. Initial intrinsic motivation measurements in 139 schools showed dramatic improvement after the first year, though the results are not statistically reliable. The Interamerican Development Bank has committed the funds for an impact study which is underway. As expected no significant results have been found after 6-12 months and we are waiting for the second year evaluation which will be available by March 2011. So far, a more critical student body and increased community self esteem are on the positive side, while need for more teacher training is on the negative side. The last can be explained in the poor quality of teacher education, which has been an endemic problem in Peru for the last decades and cannot be solved with ICT training to in service teachers.

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At first sight the Peruvian OLPC project “Una laptop por niño” is quite similar to Uruguay’ Plan Ceibal. In both cases the projects are national initiatives which are strongly pushed by the respective governments.

In terms of their current size the projects are also comparable: Uruguay has so far distributed approximately 400,000 XOs and is currently adding 100,000 more laptops to its secondary school system. Peru on the other hand has distributed slightly less than 300,000 XOs to date and recently announced its intent to add another 300,000 over the coming year.

This however is where the similarities end. Uruguay’s 400,000 XOs result in full saturation of the country’s public primary school system whereas Peru’s 300,000 only cover a small double-digit percentage of its primary school pupils. This example already demonstrates what I consider to be a key difference between the two countries: the size of the challenge to make “one laptop per child” a reality.

Of course it’s not just the size of the population (Uruguay: 3.5 million, Peru: 29 million) which makes a big difference here. In many ways Peru’s population is also more varied than Uruguay’s as exemplified by the fact that Peru has two official languages: Spanish and the indigenous Quechua.

When it comes to the current state of the education system Peru is also in a different situation than Uruguay. Whereas Uruguay’s literacy rate is 98%, Peru’s is estimated to be between 90% and 92% with rural areas being closer to 80% where children often also don’t have the opportunity to proceed beyond the first few years of primary school.

Last but not least Peru’s geography – being roughly seven times larger than Uruguay and consisting of the desert coast, high Andes mountain ranges, and inaccessible jungle – and the associated difficulties of building and maintaining infrastructure such as roads, an electricity grid or Internet connectivity also present additional challenges to a project such as Una laptop por niño.

It’s within this context that Peru first announced that it was interested in OLPC in 2007. Similarly to Uruguay and Paraguay the first step was a small pilot project with 60 XOs which started in the village of Arahuay in May 2007. What is important to note at this point is that Una laptop por niño was originally specifically targeted at rural multi-grade schools with a single teacher. While this focus has shifted in the recent past I feel it is worth pointing out that within an already difficult environment Peru certainly picked the most challenging target schools one can possibly imagine.

1. Infrastructure

Charger and non-connected network plug

As already indicated in the introduction the setup and subsequent maintenance of any sort of technical or logistical infrastructure faces tough challenges given Peru’s geography.

On the technical side these challenges certainly haven’t been adequately addressed as a recent evaluation by the Inter-American Development Bank found that almost 5% of the schools which have already received XOs don’t even have electricity yet. In terms of Internet access only 1.4% of the schools are connected at the moment. It’s clear that such a situation makes the implementation of a 1-to-1 computing in education project very hard indeed.

The fact that laptops were distributed to schools without electricity points to several underlying issues. The first one is that the Ministry of Education’s data on the infrastructure available at schools doesn’t seem to be up to date and accurate enough. One example is that a school with a single outlet in the principal’s office is officially listed as having electricity yet obviously this isn’t going to be enough to power several dozen laptops.

Secondly it seems like not enough time was spent on planning the implementation of Una laptop por niño. An example in this area is the way Peru handles the activation and anti-theft system on the XO laptops. Uruguay keeps a database of which child owns which specific laptop (identified by its serial number) which allows for laptops to be remotely disabled when they’re reported stolen. Peru’s database however only includes information as to which batches of laptops were sent to which schools. This lack of granular information means that an anti-theft system such as the one used in Uruguay simply can’t be implemented.

Some of these problems might also be explained by how the implementation of Una laptop por niño is organized. Whereas Uruguay, Paraguay, and most other countries have separate entities focusing on their OLPC efforts in Peru it’s only one of several initiatives that the Ministry of Education’s DIGETE (Dirección General de Tecnologías Educativas – Directorate General of Educational Technologies) is tasked with. In combination with a relatively small number of staff this results in seemingly not enough time and resources being available for Una laptop por niño.

Overall it’s quite obvious that the infrastructure within which Peru’s OLPC project is taking place leaves much to be desired. Whether it’s very obvious problems such as the lack of electricity at schools which received XOs or less obvious ones such as the lack of a central database matching pupils to laptops it’s clear that they will negatively impact the project and make things significantly harder.

One of 45,000 solar panels

Many of these issues seem to be the result of planning oversights and while these can undoubtedly be corrected it will require a significant overhaul of the whole strategy as well as the availability of additional resources. A first step into that direction was the purchase of 45,000 solar panels which are currently being distributed to schools without electricity access. While this will certainly improve the situation in many cases it’s still not a perfect solution given that many of the schools are located in regions with extended rainy seasons which will render solar panels useless for extended periods of time.

2. Maintenance

When it comes to maintenance Una laptop por niño is very much relying on existing infrastructure and responsibilities within the education system to deal with XOs that aren’t working.

On the lowest level teachers receive some basic training to deal with issues such as failures of the activation system or other software problems which can be fixed relatively easily. If a problem that can’t be solved at the school itself is encountered, the next level of support is provided by the local UGEL (Unidades de Gestión Educativa Local – Local Education Management Unit). On this level, generally one person who is responsible for all technology-related education projects has received additional training to deal with more complex software issues as well as simple hardware repairs.

The next step up the ladder is the DRE (Direccion Regional de Educacion – Regional Directorate of Education) which provides a stock of spare XOs which can be used as replacement units or as a source for spare parts. Only if none of these entities is able to fix the laptop, is it then sent to a central repair facility in Lima.

Una laptop por niño repair center

While this system might look good on paper it runs into a variety of issues in practice. The first problem is that many teachers don’t have a USB flash drive which allows them to store the data needed to fix simple software issues. Secondly these repairs also seem to overwhelm teachers, many of whom had never used a computer before they received their XO. The fact that the commands required to fix common issues are in English, in combination with the lack of handouts or digital guides, provides another barrier.

As a result many laptops remain unusable once they’re broken as teachers aren’t able to repair them themselves and when their schools are located in remote regions, it might take several weeks or months until they can be handed over to the respective UGEL. Similarly the UGELs and DREs often don’t have the spare parts or extra machines to deal with breakages either, and getting new stock from Lima often takes more than three months.

The overall result of this situation is that broken machines don’t get reported and don’t get replaced, which means that there are pupils who often have to share their XO with someone else rather than having their own laptop. While I’m not aware of any larger evaluation of this situation, my own experiences as well as those of people I talked to indicate that this is indeed a country-wide problem.

In the end Una laptop por niño demonstrates that even a theoretically well planned maintenance system can run into serious issues in practice. The lack of USB flash drives for teachers for example may seem like a neglectable detail at first but it has a significant impact on the whole system.

3. Content and Materials

Using the XO to learn about geometry

When it comes to content and materials Una laptop por niño’s approach is similar to Paraguay as the focus is very much set on how to use the existing Activities on the XOs to teach certain subject material, rather than developing new interactive learning content. Una laptop por niño’s Web site provides about a dozen or so guides which cover how to use the laptops to teach topics such as geometry, writing poems, and dental hygiene.

Additionally DIGETE has also produced several manuals and guides which focus on how to use the XO laptop, what functionalities the various Activities provide, and similar topics.

Other materials which could be very useful for teachers include the “La laptop XO en la aula” (“The XO laptop in the classroom”) manual which was independently written by Sdenka Z. Salas, a teacher in the South of Peru, and contains a lot advice and suggestions on how to use the various Sugar Activities for teaching.

The problem is that neither the teachers – nor the teacher trainer – who I spoke to were aware of the availability of these materials. Since almost none of them have Internet access at school and only very few of them have USB flash drives there is no way for them to access the content and materials that DIGETE and others – such as for example the OLPC projects in Uruguay and Paraguay – create.

Guide for teacher training

In my opinion this issue really exemplifies why ICT4E projects that don’t provide its participants and stakeholders with Internet access are very hard to implement. Of course there are other offline distribution methods such as USB flash drives and printed materials. However in most cases these alternatives require an additional logistics infrastructure and associated resources compared to being able to point people to a Web site and ask them to check it regularly as part of training efforts.

In light of these circumstances Una laptop por niño recently purchased large quantities of USB flash drives – several hundred thousand from what I gather – to distribute to teachers and pupils. These USB flash drives will come preloaded with a selection of educational content, most likely the documents which are currently available on Una laptop por niño’s Web site. This would provide teachers but also pupils and parents with a baseline of materials to build on. At the same time it would enable teachers and administrators to independently exchange materials which they could access in Internet cafés or while they’re visiting local or regional offices.

It’s clear however that until these USB flash drives are distributed, the grand majority of Peruvian teachers simply will not have access to any content and materials that help them integrate the laptops in the teaching process. As a result the overall impact and usefulness of the few resources that are available today is very small.

4. Community involvement

Unlike its counterpart in Uruguay, Una laptop por niño so far hasn’t created a broader community of people and organizations involved with the country’s OLPC efforts. This isn’t necessarily due to a lack of interest by the broader society but rather seems to be the result of a lack of support for people and groups who are independent of the Ministry of Education.

One group that does exist is Sugar Labs Peru which is based in and around the southern city of Puno and consists of several teachers as well as software developers. Sugar Labs Peru is involved in a variety of activities such as creating manuals for teachers on how to use the XO in a classroom and organizing workshops focused around Sugar Activities.

Another effort that is somewhat community related is OLPC’s Intern program in Peru. The program regularly enables mostly North American students to support teachers in schools with XOs over the course of several weeks.

XO bag designed by Peruvian volunteers

Other individuals and groups who had been interested in contributing to Una laptop por niño in various ways were often discouraged by a lack of support from DIGETE. One such example are students from one of Lima’s private universities who were interested in working on thesis and research projects but ended up going into another direction after their repeated requests for information and official support remained without a reply.

Hence it comes as no surprise that overall the number of people outside the traditional education system contributing to Una laptop por niño is relatively small. Given the limited resources available to DIGETE and the need for a broad variety of support measures – and the impact they have in countries such as Uruguay – this is a shame and an example of a missed opportunity. Again, this is an area were improvements are still possible, however it seems that a lot of the initial good will and desire to support the initiative might have been lost already.

5. Teacher training

As mentioned in the introduction as well as the subsequent articles about OLPC in Uruguay and Paraguay I consider teacher training to be a key component of a successful ICT4E initiative. Similarly to Paraguay I was again lucky enough to be able to attend a teacher training session during my stay in Peru.

In general teacher training in Peru consists of two components: One training session which ideally takes place before the laptops are handed out and then a yearly refresher course. The training that I observed was a voluntary 2-day refresher for teachers who had received the XOs roughly one year earlier.

The initial training consists of 40 hours during a week-long course. Given that many teachers have never used a laptop before the training starts with the very basics such as how to turn on the XO, how to keep it charged, how to navigate using the touchpad, how to type on the keyboard, etc. Since a significant amount of time is spent on these topics there is little left to discuss the educational use of the laptops in the school setting.

Voluntary refresher training course

In the refresher course which I attended again a lot of time was dedicated to dealing with fundamental questions about how to resolve minor software issues and learning how to use some of the Activities. While some ideas on how to use the laptops to teach certain subject matter were discussed overall again too little attention seemed to be given on how to integrate the laptop with the curriculum that teachers need to get through.

The lack of quality teacher training, combined with the aforementioned lack of support materials and manuals or the ability of teachers to exchange ideas or access content online, results in teachers being inadequately prepared to use XO laptops in the classroom.

The effect of this situation is that if teachers use the laptops they mostly ask pupils to transcribe a text from the blackboard or school book in their word processor. Similarly in many cases the use of the XOs seems to drop off significantly two or three months after they are first handed out. This can be interpreted as a sign that the novelty factor is wearing off without teachers seeing a purpose in really using the laptops in schools.

Teacher training could be a way to compensate for many of the infrastructure and content related deficits and difficulties that exist for Una laptop por niño. However in its current state it doesn’t seem to be able to convince the majority of teachers that the laptops are a valuable tool for learning let alone address these additional complexities.

It is worth pointing out that progress in an environment where many teachers have never used a computer before will undoubtedly be slow. However a more intensive initial training combined with regular follow-ups as well as support in the form of manuals could go a long way in enabling teachers to effectively start using the laptops inside the classroom.

6. Evaluation

Early IADB evaluation report

In terms of evaluation of Una laptop por niño the most significant effort is being undertaking by a consortium consisting of the Peruvian Ministry of Education, the Inter-American Development Bank, and GRADE, a Peruvian NGO. The first preliminary report (in Spanish) from that evaluation was recently released and the results are quite sobering.

Similarly to what I outlined above the evaluation for example found that there’s a strong demand for better and more extensive training and technical as well as educational support for teachers. As a likely result of the lack of these supportive measures the use of the laptops drops off significantly after two to three months. The study also indicates that the learning outcomes by pupils who had received a laptop aren’t significantly different to their peers. Additionally it also revealed that only slightly more than half of the pupils are allowed to take the laptops home thereby significantly reducing the potential amount of time that the pupils can use them. Overall the two main vectors that one might consider positive at this point are that pupils’ abilities to use computers has increased and that parents and teachers have a more positive attitude towards schools.

Apart from that ongoing effort some Peruvian researchers previously also published results from independent evaluations that they worked on. While these are obviously based on a much smaller sample of schools, about a dozen or so in some cases, their findings are in many ways quite similar to the IADB evaluation. One such example is a report by Carlos David Laura of Peru’s Economic and Social Research Consortium (CIES) which found that teacher training is lacking and that pupils’ learning achievement hadn’t improved.

One lesson to be learned from Una laptop por niño is that small independent evaluations can often provide first indications and vectors about how an ICT4E project is going before larger and longer-term studies are available. In this sense they can provide a much needed external monitoring tool which provides information and insight which can be the basis for modifying implementation details and strategies.

Overall the efforts in Peru are a good example of the value that both small, short-term and large, long-term evaluations can provide to ICT4E initiatives. Of course considering its size one would expect to see more independent efforts looking into both the educational as well as social impacts of Una laptop por niño. However as described in the community involvement section this also requires institutional support which at least in some cases wasn’t provided in Peru.

Summary and Outlook

Undoubtedly Peru’s Una laptop por niño offers many valuable lessons for ICT4E projects however in the grand majority of cases these will be how NOT to do something. There is no doubt that of the three South American countries I visited, Peru is the most physically challenging environment for a nation-wide 1-to-1 computing in education project. Even with a perfect implementation this would be a difficult undertaking, and with the plethora of issues and problems that the project’s execution has exposed, the results and impacts – or lack thereof – are bound to be underwhelming.

This is not to say that everything about Una laptop por niño is bad. It has undoubtedly opened enormous possibilities for thousands of teachers and pupils which will come up with interesting and creative ways to use the XOs and learn a lot in the process. Yet there’s no doubt that the majority of teachers and pupils as well as other stakeholder such as administrators and parents will hardly see any benefit from the initiative.

While not necessarily directly related to the early lackluster evaluation results, it is interesting to see that in mid-2010 DIGETE significantly changed the strategy of Una laptop por niño. While the main target until then had been rural multi-grade schools with a single teacher, the upcoming 300,000 XOs will be distributed to larger and often urban schools. At the same time this phase of the project will no longer be traditional 1-to-1 computing. The new XO laptops will be used to set up CRTs (Centro de Recursos Tecnológicos – Center for Technology Resources) – basically mobile computer labs – at every remaining primary school in the country. This is indeed a very intriguing development, and I’m sure many people will closely watch how this new strategy works out compared to the old one.

OLPC in Peru 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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Mobile phones are becoming ubiquitous in the developing world – almost everyone can get access to simple voice and SMS text messaging phones. With the introduction of $100 Android smartphones, real computing power is coming to mobile phones at a price point that can be affordable for educational systems.

One powerful smartphone per teacher, or a combination of voice/SMS phones and smartphones for teachers and students, have the potential to actually achieve the unfulfilled technology saturation promise of One Laptop Per Child.

But before we get lost in the possibilities of mobile phone usage in the classroom, lets look at the practicalities – programs that are already using existing mobile phone technology to reach educational objectives inside and out of the traditional classroom. In this month’s Educational Technology Debate, we’ll look at several mEducation initiatives where mobile phones are reaching and teaching students across the developing world:

• Janala Project in Bangladesh
• BridgeIT in Tanzania
• Project ABC in Niger
• Yoza Cellphone Stories in South Africa
• SMS:Learning in Nigeria and Uganda
• Jokkoo Initiative in West Africa

Yet these are not the only mEducation projects. Please be sure to add your favorite use of mobile phones for education in the comments below. We’ll collect all the examples for a mEducation directory at the end of the month.

Don’t miss a moment of the action!

Subscribe now and get the latest articles from Educational Technology Debate sent directly to your inbox.