[Olpc-open] Fwd: Defining success

[Samuel Klein]

Replying to the list.

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 4:10 AM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello to you both.
>
> On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 8:15 PM, Ahmed, Farhan
> <farhan.ahmed at chicagobooth.edu> wrote:
>
>> Is there a methodology through which OLPC tracks the concrete educational
>> development a child goes through after he or she gets access to a laptop? It
>> seems that tracking a child's progress over the years will allow OLPC to
>> make substantial scientific claims about its impact.
>
> Agreed.  There is no method shared among all deployments; each
> country/school system has their own set of soft and hard measure of
> development.
>
>> I do understand the limited effectiveness of
>> quantifying "educational development", but I'm sure there's a
>> well-researched methodology widely used.
>
> I don't know that it is theoretically limited in effectiveness;
> however I am not aware of any single widely-used methodology across
> different cultures or systems.
>
>> Furthermore, with regard to the Sugar interface, is it enabled to collect
>> metrics on usage patterns (anonymized, of course)? Information on how often
>> certain activities are enabled and used, the times of day a laptop sees most
>> usage, the average data usage (mesh or the internet) and other such metrics
>> would allow more targeted development and prioritization. Once again, I
>> could not find any such data on the website.
>
> At a low technical level there is some capability to gather data - for
> instance all machines 'call home' once after they are turned on.
> However beyond this it has never been used to my knowledge to do so --
> implementations so far have privileged user privacy over research
> efficacy. I would also love to see (anonymized) collection of data as
> you describe.
>
> Uruguay is the largest deployment that has gathered comprehensive data
> on what activities are used for how long.
>
> You can see theirs and other reports here:
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_research
>
>> My motivation here is to understand how OLPC prioritizes it work and backs
>> its claims on the impact. I am doing this as part of a research project I
>> have undertaken at my university (The University of Chicago Booth School of
>> Business). I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thanks for sharing.  Can you tell us more about your research?

Brian Moss writes:
>> I'm currently writing my master's thesis on the OLPC program and why --
>> despite the most honorable of intentions -- it has largely failed to live up to
>> the hype.

Ditto - can you elaborate on your view of what this means?

Cheers, Sam.