Evidence from the One Laptop per Child Program in Rural Peru (nber.org) 38
The abstract of a paper on NBER: This paper examines a large-scale randomized evaluation of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program in 531 Peruvian rural primary schools. We use administrative data on academic performance and grade progression over 10 years to estimate the long-run effects of increased computer access on (i) school performance over time and (ii) students' educational trajectories. Following schools over time, we find no significant effects on academic performance but some evidence of negative effects on grade progression. Following students over time, we find no significant effects on primary and secondary completion, academic performance in secondary school, or university enrollment. Survey data indicate that computer access significantly improved students' computer skills but not their cognitive skills; treated teachers received some training but did not improve their digital skills and showed limited use of technology in classrooms, suggesting the need for additional pedagogical support.
The point of one laptop per child (Score:3, Informative)
These programs work well in intensely impoverished areas where the school systems have broken down or just never existed in the first place and information isn't available. Places where you're lucky if the kids are taught to read.
Information access is killing religious extremism (Score:3)
That's a good example of something like a one laptop per child having a direct tangible effect in a positive direction. Albeit not as a charity case but just as a consequence of cheap elec
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Where is this evidence? I've only seen and had more exposure with religious nutcases and the internet let them go even more stupid. Now perhaps it's because I live near a foobar christian college which has been expanding ...easily 2x in the last few decades. The only data I've seen is non-religious rising to around 20% in the USA with Catholics going downward, so the top 3 were all around 20%; which was nice to see that about 1/5 are outgrowing religion.
However, I've known non-religious people who are no
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From knowing religious morons, I see them filtering the google results and only clicking and viewing what re-enforces their warped beliefs. They don't even make it into a youtube video long enough to be counted as a view. The systems then personalize results so they are not exposed to ideas outside their bubble and have over the last few decades, become more fragile than they were already. Technology has filtered for them and they filter the rest of it; being even more willing to filter whatever leaks thru.
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In the 1970s Indira Gandhi convinced India's government to spend millions on secondary education, and especially computers. The portion of the world which didn't laugh at the effort was condemning it for not using that money to provide arable land, seeds and clean water (as if governments are unable to do more than one thing at a time). The investment has paid off many, many times.
Re:The point of one laptop per child (Score:4, Insightful)
> These programs work well in intensely impoverished areas
[Citation needed]
I'm not saying you're wrong, or even that I disagree; But the catch here is that the places where this program presumably has the biggest impact are also the places where little to no data is available.
But also, if the OLPC are actually existing and being used... they have network connectivity. Presumably they need some form of internet to "give access to information that otherwise just wouldn't be there" if only intermittently or by proxy, which in turn should provide a way to collect usage statistics and/or track students in these hard to survey populations.
Either way you can't claim they work well in any population without actual data or reports to support that claim.
=Smidge=
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This was much of the problem, lack of connectivity. In Paruro where my brother-in-law lives when they distributed the OLPCs the only option for Internet connectivity was an expensive ISDN line, and later an extremely congested 3G tower. In Paucartambo, where our niece taught, there was no connection for the first couple of years.
Another was that teachers were not provided with OLTPs, only students. I got a couple on Buy One/Get One and gave one to our niece, and my sister-in-law used the ancient creaking
Worksheets (Score:5, Interesting)
My kids (in the US) have school laptops and the only thing they do with them is worksheets. Nothing interactive. It's just to save paper and check the box that they're using computers.
On the flip side, one of my kids had a paper take home test with some questions where the answers were drag and drop. The teacher just printed out an online test and didn't even read it first.
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Laptops and Cognition (Score:4, Insightful)
Given what we now know [nih.gov] about screen time and cognition and limits of electronic devices as educational tools, the conclusion above should surprise no one.
Given what we know about the links between poverty and levels of educational attainment [harvard.edu], the conclusion below should likewise surprise no one.
"Following students over time, we find no significant effects on primary and secondary completion, academic performance in secondary school, or university enrollment"
Since the abstract recommendations are so vague and the full article is paywalled, it is hard to know what useful conclusions one might draw.
Re: Laptops and Cognition (Score:1, Flamebait)
What if access to information leads one to question authority and educate yourself as you see fit, rather than meekly follow a frustrated teacher's orders?
Remember the saying "I never let my schoolkng interfere with my education"?
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Very Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting. But not entirely surprising.
Technology in and of itself doesn't improve education. Even just the value of familiarizing the students with today's commonly used technologies is pretty small. Certainly in terms of laptops. I suspect the technology of the moment in Peru, like most other places, is cellphones, with social media, WhatsApp, and Google.
Having a computer lab would certainly be valuable. OLPC is pointless.
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all that weed is rotting you brain, hippie
Re: Very Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is that the OLPC wasnt a good computer! I own one, I know. Kids should be given Macintoshes. Nicholas Negroponte made a huge mistake by not accepting Steve Jobs offer to put OS X on the OLPC.
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sure, instead of 50 kids with OLPC, you could give 1 mac. Also, what you do with a mac without internet and little included apps? no brew install, no new apps (and fewer free apps, most that exist are paid apps)
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Interesting. But not entirely surprising.
That the main result of giving kids laptops was that it prepared them to be better consumers of Facebook? Lots of people called that early on.
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IIRC Farcebook didn't run on the OLPC, the Sugar OS wasn't designed with interactive image-heavy web apps in mind.
That's rather disappointing, but they had access (Score:2)
That's rather disappointing, but at least they had access to information they would not ever have had otherwise.
Disclaimer: I participated in the original (and very expensive) "Give One, Get One" program.
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I also thought they could have done much better had they not used exotic, new technologies like the transflective screen, weird LCD color pixel layout, WiFi mesh, and the whole custom operating system and that incongruous "Sugar" desktop interface.
At the time I had other machines with similar specifications that ran regular Linux and Windows just fine. They just piled on too many new and exotic technologies to the XOPC.
At least they ditched the silly hand-crank battery recharger, but dropping other weird,
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I think they had three generations of devices, then it kinda sputtered out.
Re:That's rather disappointing, but they had acces (Score:4, Informative)
Oh? When I was a teen (no Internet), I spent a lot of time in the local library reading about countless things that interested me. You know what rarely saw there? Other teens. The problem with most people is not access to information. The problem is lack of interest in information.
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This was the situation at least as far back as the '70s, when I was generally the only under-30s person in the adults section of the library except for college students.
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Yep. I do not think this has changed today. If you want to know, it matters little whether it is a trip to the library or to wikipedia.
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Among other things, young people are overwhelmingly more likely to be interested in academic topics if their parents also were (and you can spend arbitrary amounts of time arguing nature-vs-nurture on this; my conclusion is that it's both, and they're usually in synergy with one another on this issue), and statistically that means they are overwhelmingly more likely to be
Re:That's rather disappointing, but they had acces (Score:5, Interesting)
One generally overlooked thing that it did was launch thousands of children on careers that didn't entail plowing with the chakitaqu'lla to plant potatoes or spending interminable days herding sheep. My brother-in-law knows an accountant who was the first in his town to use a computer, lured off the farm by the realization that they were just a tool and even people like him could learn to use them.
And nobody with a clue is surprised (Score:2)
I have been saying that 25 years ago when looking at computer based "education".
Bummer (Score:3)
That's too bad. I donated to this project, thought it might do some good, and was excited by the prospect of a clean slate design opportunity. The lessons here are:
1. You don't create new opportunities with information tech, you expand existing ones.
2. Computer skills are essentially manual skills. Doesn't make you smarter, just more efficient.
3. Information tech is overhyped. AI won't make us smarter, either.
Microsoft "open source hardware" (Score:2)
Microsoft Emails on OLPC [olpcnews.com]:
‘Remember that a key part of our strategy is to create a situation where even if Nick rejects us for philosophical reasons there is a long and visible history of our attempts to work with them and then we have to ask to get a license for the "open source hardware" and we will make our own offering on the commercial side.’
I had thought OLPC's goal was to provide textbooks (Score:2)
Many many years ago, I bought an OLPC, actually a pair, one for me, the other they sent to Africa or some other place. I do not remember the year even vaguely. I do remember it had a crank to windup and charge the battery. I bought the two because (from memory) the purpose of the laptop was strictly limited:
* Carry all textbooks on one laptop, instead of having to walk miles to school and back with a heavy backpack.
* Have modern eBook textbooks, not fifth generation hand-me-downs which had been written
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Huh. I coulda sworn mine had the crank. On the other hand, maybe they only promised it for later delivery and I barely used it after a few days experimenting, since it was so limited, and eventually tossed it along with a lot of other eWaste.