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

[Edward Cherlin]

On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Satish Jha OLPC<sjha.olpc at gmail.com> wrote:
> While we have taken some time to generate a little traction for OLPC in
> India with over a dozen stakeholders in serious negotiations and requests
> for XOs in six digits, we have been asked a few questions that may hopefully
> be addressed better with the experience of all of us in this community.

These questions and answers should be on a Wiki page.

> It may seem rather obvious to most of us. However, its how we address them
> for the benefit of the enthusiasts who are willing to take the next steps
> that may help them move forward.

It is important to note that these questions do not have fixed
answers. The results will depend on how the rest of us respond to the
challenge. Will we leave education to the same political and economic
forces that have created the current mess, or will we create an
education system for citizens? India still has the stratified system
imposed under the British Empire for the purpose of keeping the
colonized population in its place. What is appropriate for free
peoples? Not that, anyway.

I don't expect much on this point from the current generation of
adults. I pin my hopes on the children who will, for the first time,
receive a real education, with access to more information than one can
squeeze into a set of government-approved textbooks, *and* will be put
into communication with each other for the first time.

> For instance, how do we best demonstrate that by introducing XOs, there will
> be significant improvement in the quality of education?

For a start, go to wiki.laptop.org and search for "Academic papers".
The Ethiopia report in particular describes the process of moving from
a pure rote teaching system, with no questions permitted, to discovery
learning, with teachers putting question time into their lesson plans
by their own choice.

We have ample evidence that XOs increase school attendance, and that
they change attitudes to education in general and to others in the
community for the better. In Nepal remedial software designed for
specific community requirements has resulted in students moving from
several years behind in arithmetic up to grade level within a few
months. In Peru, XOs and Sugar have convinced subsistence farmers that
the education will be real this time, and that children should have
time off from working in the fields until dusk to do homework instead.

We also have instances of quite young children finding information
online to help their family farms and open up business opportunities.
India's villages are starved for information and the ability to
communicate with each other. Economic theory states unequivocally that
access to market information is a sine qua non for the existence of a
free, competitive market that drives down costs for buyers and opens
up the maximum opportunity for sellers. (Pay no attention to the
Market Fundamentalists from the US who continue to promote Voodoo
Reaganomics. They have been well paid for showing corporations a way
to increase short-term profits at the expense of everyone else.)

> Are there any studies that refer to some benchmarks and the results compared
> to that?

Not on XOs. They have only been out for 2 years, and the studies in
progress have not been completed. But there is a voluminous literature
on computers in education. See the Bibliography pages on the Wikis.

> Or has something been done by anyone in a controlled environment?

Again, not with XOs, but with many other systems.

> And obviously they want answers from within India rather than from the
> global environment.

Then I refer you to the Hole in the Wall Computer, and to the movie
that it inspired, Slumdog Millionaire. Also the e-choupal project of
ITC, http://www.echoupal.com/ which has been written up in Harvard
Business Review for increasing farm income with the use of one
computer per village.

> Has anyone thought about creating a sustainable model of deploying XOs in
> the context of our school education environment?

When we surpass our original target of a $100 laptop next year with
the XO-2, they will cost less than textbooks. There are lots of free
electronic textbooks catalogued at http://www.librarianchick.com/, and
some of us are working on better designs for digital learning
materials. See my URL below.
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> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/india


-- 
Edward Mokurai Cherlin
Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name, and
Children are
my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/