[OLPC India] Some questions this community may like to address

[K. K. Subramaniam]

On Saturday 22 Aug 2009 10:15:05 am Satish Jha OLPC wrote:
> For instance, how do we best demonstrate that by introducing XOs, there
> will be significant improvement in the quality of education?
Less than 12% of children complete school. Can it get any worse? At this 
level, any intervention will be an improvement :-). I believe we need to look 
at the feasibility and sustainability rather than effectiveness at this level.

>For instance, how do we best demonstrate that by introducing XOs, there will
>be significant improvement in the quality of education?
Paper is becoming a scarce and expensive resource. It is seriously impacting 
practice of basic competencies like reading, writing, drawing. A4 page is 
about 5gm per sheet. A modest per-day requirement of 5 A4 pages each for 
reading, writing and drawing for 200 days/year translates to 15 
kgs/child/year. For 280 million children we need over 4 million tonnes/year! 
We are running out of trees very fast.

Machines like XOs can try to supplement paper in the beginning. Higher level 
usage will follow once basic needs are sated.

> Has anyone thought about creating a sustainable model of deploying XOs in
> the context of our school education environment?
Sikshana (www.sikshana.org, sikshana.blogspot.com) studies sustainable models 
as part of a social intervention. Using computers to supplement paper is one 
of the initiatives.

Regards .. Subbu