Computer labs were established throughout the University to expand access to computers for students. There are just over 5,000 computers available for students in more than 100 computer labs, and this number is increasing annually. The ratio of computers to students is approximately 6:1.

Infrastructure was put in place, and training courses have been introduced to enable academics to optimise the opportunities that web-based learning can bring and to further enrich the learning environment. Infrastructure was also put in place for lecturers to communicate with their students via SMS technology.

The University also uses Blackboard as its learning management system (LMS). This system was specifically adapted to suit the needs of the University of Pretoria and is called ClickUP. All students receive an e-mail address by default when they enrol at the University, and can access the University’s online environment via their student number, not just on campus, but from wherever they are. All contact students must successfully complete a compulsory semester course in computer literacy in their first year of study.

The growth in the number of modules with online (Click UP) support has grown substantially in all faculties/schools since 2005. The total percentage of modules with web support grew from 37.7% in 2005 to more than 75% in 2010.

The table below provides an overview of the growth in e-teaching and learning at the University of Pretoria since 2002. In 2009, all academic departments at the University made use of online teaching and learning to a greater or lesser extent.

E-assessment has also developed momentum since 2002. More and more academics started to introduce e-assessment, with the result that more than 380,000 e-tests were conducted in 2009 and 405,877 in 2010.

The profile of the University of Pretoria, as described above, mirrors that of any good university in any developed context. The reason why the University embarked on this e-learning strategy is because the technology is available, affordable, and appropriate to use. Any university that ignores the enrichment that online programmes can bring is irresponsible. It is, however, also true that, universities that embark on IT-enabled learning that cannot be supported by the bandwidth, financial resources, adequate hardware and a target market that can access the technology can be described as irresponsible.

The problem in all developing contexts is that the distribution of ICT is limited to “developed” pockets in these countries. This is also true for South Africa, and is clearly evident in the distance programmes of the University of Pretoria.

In 2002, the Faculty of Education at the University of Pretoria established a Unit for Distance Education to manage the distance education initiative of the Faculty. The Faculty of Education is the only faculty at the University that also presents dedicated distance education programmes over and above the contact programmes. Thousands of teachers (specifically black teachers) were seriously disadvantaged in the apartheid era by inadequate and low-quality teacher training programmes at inferior teacher training colleges established specifically for black teachers.

These teachers teach predominantly in rural areas throughout South Africa. The only way that these teachers can improve their qualifications is through the mode of distance education. In order to play a constructive and significant role in the upgrading of teacher qualifications in South Africa, the Faculty developed distance education programmes in specific subject areas.

In 2002, the University recognised that the student population for distance education differs in many ways from that of contact students. It was therefore decided that the presentation of the distance programmes should predominantly be paper-based, with structured opportunities for face-to-face sessions and other student support services. It was decided that, once students enrolled, an analysis of the student profile would be done to direct the introduction of appropriate ICT to support and enhance learning. The LMS and necessary ICT infrastructure for contact students was available to deliver the distance education programmes online.

Since 2002, just over 39,000 students have enrolled in the distance education programme. Since then, almost 17,000 have graduated. At present, there are approximately 20,000 students in the programme. The distance education students at the University of Pretoria are all teachers with a minimum three-year qualification. Almost 80% of these students are women and more than 85% are older than 35. Just over 50% of the student population are graduate students. The majority, by far, lives and teaches in rural communities throughout South Africa. This profile differs fundamentally from the profile of the University’s contact students.

The technology profile of the distance education students in 2002 and 2003 showed that almost all students had access to or owned a mobile phone. Very few students indicated that they had an e-mail address. Fewer than 5% of the students indicated that they had access to a computer at home or at work. Only 1% indicated that they had access to the Internet.

Profile of students who enrolled for the first time: 2002 to 2003

The above statistics directed the University’s decision about whether or not to introduce the web based/online delivery mode for distance students. This profile also prompted the University to start exploring ways of using mobile phones in its distance programmes. A decision was taken to load all the programme material, with the exception of the textbooks, on the University’s LMS (ClickUP). It was, however, decided that this would not be an interactive site, but only a depository where distance students could access their learning material, as well as the latest tutorial letters and administrative information. Information on the availability of learning material on the website and how to access the site is continuously communicated to existing and new students. Almost no students have ever accessed the site over the years.

Profile of students who enrolled for the first time: 2004 to 2006

For the period 2004 to 2006, the mobile phone profile stayed the same. The number of students who have an e-mail address remained very low. This is also the case for Internet access.

For the period 2007 to 2009, a growth started to be observed in the percentage of students with both e-mail addresses and Internet access. The growth in Internet access rose annually from 2% in 2007 to 7% in 2009, while growth in e-mail use grew from 20% in 2007 to 35% in 2008. However, it declined again in 2009 to less than 20%.

Profile of students who enrolled for the first time: 2007 to 2009

There is, however, a noticeable growth in ownership or availability of computers for distance education students from 2002 to 2010. The figures below give a clear indication of this trend.

The technology profile of the distance education students at the University of Pretoria mirrors the reality of the broader technology profile in South Africa and also in Africa. There are those communities – especially in urban areas – that have comprehensive and adequate ICT connectivity, while the majority of the population living in rural areas have limited or no ICT connectivity.

It was mentioned earlier that, as early as 2003, the University accepted that the technology profile of distance education students differs significantly from that of students on campus and that the delivery of distance education programmes should reflect this reality. It was, therefore, decided that the University should continue to improve the quality of its paper-based learning material and expand and strengthen its student support services within the limitations of the technology profile of the students.

Over the years, the University carefully monitored the technology profile of its students and introduced – in a carefully planned manner – technologies that were accessible, dependable, and affordable to students. This included extensive use of SMSs and, because of the growth in ownership/access to computers, the inclusion of CDs in the learning material. However, because not all students have access to a computer, the information on the CDs is not compulsory content, but information that will enrich their studies, for example, an e-library with recommended readings.

Because a greater number of students have access to computers, more students are typing their assignments and the University has even experienced a rise in the number of students who submit their assignments via e-mail.

The University will continue to monitor the technology profile of its distance education students and introduce appropriate use of technologies to suit this profile. The University foresees a time when the distance education programmes will migrate from being predominantly paper-based to being predominantly delivered online. This is, however, not likely to happen in the near future.

In 2002, a decision was taken to develop a comprehensive and integrated SMS support service for distance students.

The table below provides an overview of the number of SMSs students receive in the course of a year.

In the first two years, students received a limited number of SMSs. These were mainly to remind them about due dates of assignments. From 2004, the student database was adjusted so that, when a parcel is sent to students, they receive an SMS with the tracking number of the parcel by default. The University also moved away from ad hoc SMSs to a structured SMS communication plan that was carefully designed to enhance and support learning.

It was clear from the start of the study that SMSs could not be used for in-depth academic conversations or to convey complex academic content. It is more about students’ perceptions and how they react when they receive an SMS from the University. In a study among 3,121 students conducted by the Unit for Distance Education (Hendrikz, Viljoen and Adams, 2006), students indicated that they like receiving SMSs from the University. They reported that the SMSs made them feel closer to the University, supported them in structuring their studies, and increased their level of motivation.

The University also embarked on a pilot project to use academic SMSs to support learning. The purpose of this was to try and mimic what a lecturer does in a classroom situation and to translate that into an SMS to support distance students academically.

Conclusion

The Internet and mobile phone penetration rate, as well as South Africa’s ICT development index (IDI), is reflected in the ICT profile of the University of Pretoria as a micro reflection of the reality of South Africa. The University is capable of delivering online distance education programmes, but that would have excluded thousands of students from continuing their studies.

Africa needs to guard against ignorance about the realities of the availability and use of ICT. It must not pretend that it is on par with the developed world and should avoid introducing strategies that are not in line with the realities and context of Africa. Millions of dollars have been wasted on poor ICT decisions in Africa because strategies are not aligned with the realities and context of this continent.

Africa can learn a very important lesson from the experience of the University of Pretoria. One could argue that, if the most advanced sub-Saharan country in Africa reflects this reality in its student population, this student population should be very similar to that of other African countries. We are challenged by the ICT realities in Africa to carefully plan and contextualise our e-learning strategies before introducing them.

In education, it should not be about technology, but rather about how we can expand access to study and how we can improve support to our students in a way that will at least give them a fair opportunity at success.

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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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Less Top-Down Approaches

In this post, I frame the discussion somewhat differently. I assert that different communities are going to allocate their limited resources differently – not exactly a stretch. Economics, infrastructure, inertia, and pedagogy all play a role. Typically, there is a inhomogeneous collection of old and new, mobile and desktop, network-enabled and stand-alone machines available in a school, at home, and in the community at large.

This situation might change over time as in-bulk purchases for “top-down”, government-sponsored deployments of one-to-one laptop programs or terminal-server solutions become more common place, but such deployments remain the exception, not the rule. One size doesn’t fit all.

Maine's laptop learners

Even in places where such programs are being put into place on a large scale, sustaining the deployment is often a local burden. (The Maine Learning Technology Initiative has evolved along these lines – local townships are being asked to fund the “refresh” of the program, which is resulting in more diversity of both equipment and configurations across the state.)

Further, the way in which these resources are used is quite varied from place to place and program to program. Again, making reference to the Maine program, the choice of whether or not the laptops go home with the children is a decision made at the school or even the classroom level. In the case of computer labs, the schedule of access also varies – from daily use across all classes to occasional, specialized use.

Empowering a Bottom-Up Approach

It has be argued that teachers are able to incorporate computers into their day-to-day teaching only when they themselves are comfortable with the technology and cognizant of its promise. How can we help teachers and learners experiment and explore, regardless of the configuration or setting? How can we support a teacher with computers in the classroom but – as is most often the case – no administrative access to those computers and little support from the central information technology (IT) department? How can we support a school that has a computer lab, but again with little customized support from central IT?

At Sugar Labs, we are trying to address the diverse needs mandated by heterogeneous computer environments while trying to support “bottom-up” grassroots adoption by teachers, parents, and informal learning communities. Regardless of the constraints imposed by a school-district’s IT, we want to maximize learning opportunities and provide a consistent framework for teachers and students.

Taking advantage of the Fedora LiveUSB Creator, it is possible to store everything you need to run the Sugar Learning Platform on a single USB memory stick (minimum size of one GB). “Sugar on a Stick” gives children access to a personal Sugar environment on any computer with just a USB memory stick.

Sugar on a Stick on Classmate

It is the Sugar Learning Platform packaged onto a memory stick that can be plugged into almost any computer and run without affecting its “host”. It bypasses the software on the hard drive. In fact, Sugar on a Stick will work even if the host computer does not have a hard drive!

With Sugar on a Stick, the learning experience is the same on any computer: the operating system, the Sugar software, and the child’s work are stored on the stick, ensuring a consistent learning experience in school, in the classroom or the lab, and after-school, in the library, the museum, at home, or at grandmother’s house.

The initial targets of Sugar on a Stick are early-adopter teachers with “geek” parental support; but the model can be readily adopted more widely across a school district. There are a number of advantages to the Sugar on a Stick approach:

1. It reduces costs with flexible hardware choices by allowing institutions to continue using their existing investment in hardware while reducing support costs and user frustration.
2. It enables low-cost options when purchasing new computers.
3. It also makes it easy to accept donated older machines; it increases the life of older computers, reducing disposal costs and enabling the reuse of existing resources.
4. It provides a coherent and consistent computing experience even during times of fluctuating technology funding and changes in hardware choices.
5. It allows communities to take advantage of the increasing household computer ownership, while still providing a consistent, comparable computing environment.
6. It gives learners access to the projects and creations and explorations they have previously done regardless of where they did them.
7. It provides off-line access to applications and content: not every learner has access to broadband or the Internet in the classroom or at home.

Platform Agnostic Yet Education Focused

Live USB distribution need not be restricted to the Sugar Learning Platform. For example, there is a beta version of “Squeak on a Stick” being developed by Bert Freudenberg that would enable access to the Etoys environment in much the same way as Sugar on a Stick allows access to Sugar.

Also, harking back to last month’s Educational Technology Debate on the potential of mobile devices for learning, essentially the same “bits” that go on a LiveUSB image also run in a virtual machine. We are exploring the use of a Sugar VM on a mobile phone (of course, this would require a relatively high-end phone) that would provide many of the same advantages outlined above.

Our goal at Sugar Labs is to put an emphasis on learning through doing and debugging: more engaged learners are able to tackle authentic problems. Sugar on a Stick combines powerful tools with a simple and flexible medium of distribution. All of the necessary tools for guide discovery are on the stick. It is also possible to include training and curricula materials targeting specific audiences on the stick. Sugar on a Stick allows one to experience learning software with almost no effort and no risk.

The Live USB approach to distribution of learning tools to a large extent by passes the theme of this debate. The Sugar on a Stick approach allows us to emphasizes access to a learning process over any specific technology or platform.

It is great that there are many different such platforms being developed: a diversity of hardware configurations is necessary to meet the demands of schools, budgets, and cultures. But one can remain agnostic about hardware platforms and configurations, while providing a great learning experience, better utilizing the installed base of computers while tapping the potential to engage every child in critical thinking, arming them with the complementary tools of science and the arts.

“It’s an education project”, after all.