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

Intel's Classmate PC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Tim says, “device convergence” will make this a stale debate, but not yet. Comparing computers and phones is like comparing “apples and oranges”, we can (and will) eat both, as Allen suggests. But, for the sake of this debate, let’s stick with the artificial choice of either/or:

Phones can indeed be a distraction device. We are seeing them banned in many schools (including the USA, as Wayan rightly notes). We are at the same time seeing parents lobby in some countries against such bans, arguing that they need to be able to connect to the children in the case of emergency.

Cheating with phones, cheating with computers, cheating with calculators, cheating with crumbled up pieces of papers. While mobile phones do perhaps offer certain advantages in this regard, I don’t know that any device as a monopoly here.

Indeed, phones are out of reach of most students and teachers in most countries, and smartphones are even further out of reach. But what if we extend our time horizon a bit? Smartphones are coming faster than we think. Can anyone who has seen the explosive growth in mobile phone use over the past five years doubt that cheaper, more powerful, more widespread smartphones are coming, and soon? Government policies and plans often look 5-10 years in the future. A fixation on the ICT form factor of the past — the PC/laptop — seems to me to be terribly short-sighted.

Are there currently abundant, compelling uses of mobile information devices, something that I will label a ‘mobile phone’, for lack of a better term, in widespread use today in the education sector? Aside from uses of PDAs and calculators, all of whose functions will presumably be subsumed within the functionalities of the ‘phone’ at some point, the answer today is largely no. This answer, I would like to submit, will change.

Of all the commenters who have posted insightful remarks on this site, I must confess that I agree the most with Alex’s points.

Seeing phones as destinations for education content and applications ported from PCs is an unnecessarily limitation on our vision here. Simply digitizing textbooks and making them available for use on a computer has not proven to be terribly effective. Why should we expect content developed for 15″ computer monitors to work on 2″ screens?

The success of the iPhone is showing that there are many types of compelling content and applications that only make sense to develop for the phone — and that there are critical masses of software developers willing to do such development.

Only five years ago, the use of the mobile phone for access to banking services had been largely abandoned in ‘developed’ countries. ‘Why would we use the phone to access our banking information, people asked, when we had access to a much richer experience using PCs and the Internet?’ At about the same time, firms in the Philippines were finding many users were quite willing to use their phones in slightly different ways to transfer money to/from their banks — and each other — in ways slightly different from how such practices were envisaged in OECD markets. Learning from such experiences, Safaricom rolled out its version of m-banking in Kenya last year with explosive results.

Just as computers offer certain key andvatages over printed books (and vice versa), so too do mobile phones present us with certain opportunities that computers do not. These are some of the key attributes of mobile phones that make their increased use in education inevitable:

1. Personal.
2. Mobile.
3. Always-connected.
4. Cheap(er).
5. And increasingly ubiquitous.

While I agree with Bob and Alex (and so many others here) on many issues, I disagree a little bit on one final point. Yes, the eventual impact of any technology to transform teaching and learning in the classroom does depend on larger, fundamental educational reforms. But I think we need to think a little more broadly here. One recurrent lament in educational technology circles is that ‘ICTs are revolutionizing education everywhere but in the classroom’. Reform of educational systems takes time — often a long time.

But going forward, the rapid growth of mobile phone use, especially in developing countries, and the inevitable development of education content for use on such devices, highlights an important opportunity for individual learners outside of the classroom to engage in meaningful education activities whenever, wherever they want. This is of course no substitute for formal schooling, and certainly no substitute for the critical relationship between teacher and student and teacher at the center of most learning processes.

The importance of such outside-the-classroom use should not be discounted, and, to the extent such use is increasingly effective and widespread, it may turn out to also be an important trigger for larger educational reforms within the formal education system.