One Laptop Per Child Disappoints in New Study
There is still a big vision behind the One Laptop per Child initiative - a vision that promises educational improvements in countries where children do not usually have access to computers.
However, recently released results of a study conducted by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) indicates that students with access to OLPC computers show no sign of learning improvements.
In their study, the researchers focused on 319 schools in Peru with about 20,000 students. 209 of those schools received OLPCs, while 110 schools were used as a control group to measure potential differences to the OLPC schools. Most results are somewhat obvious. For example, the exposure to computers at the OLPC schools was much greater: There were 1.2 computers per child on average (87 percent of the children had their own computer) while in the non-OLPC schools there was one computer for nine kids (9 percent in those schools had access to their own computer).
In OLPC schools, 80 percent of the kids used the computer at least once per week, but only 40 percent used them at home as not all schools permitted the children to take the device home. In non-OLPC schools only 32 percent of the children were able to access a computer at least once per week, and only 4 percent did so at home. The most popular applications were word processing and calculators (45 percent of the time), games (18 percent), and music (14 percent).
However, the researchers said that there was no notable learning improvement between the schools with OLPC computers and those without. There was no difference in participation in the general education process or academic performance in any subject. A problem may have been that there was no available access to the Internet and no applications that would have supported specific learning topics. The only pre-installed educational app was Wikipedia.
The conclusion of the study? The OLPC does not make necessarily sense in all developing countries. The money that is invested in computers may be better invested in educating teachers and reducing the number of students in the average a class room.
Am I saying that technology doesn't add to the classroom? Of course it does. But right now it's more supplementary than anything in its early stages, and what these countries need are the basics. Classic case of putting the cart before the horse.
Invest the money into health, sanitation, drinking water, food, better books. Honestly, the more I think of this, the more retarded this idea sounds.
Guess what? Everything turned out fine. The kind of learning you do in elementary and middle school, and for the most part high school, you don't really need a computer for. Seems like they want these people to have computers just to have them.
Am I saying that technology doesn't add to the classroom? Of course it does. But right now it's more supplementary than anything in its early stages, and what these countries need are the basics. Classic case of putting the cart before the horse.
Invest the money into health, sanitation, drinking water, food, better books. Honestly, the more I think of this, the more retarded this idea sounds.
Guess what? Everything turned out fine. The kind of learning you do in elementary and middle school, and for the most part high school, you don't really need a computer for. Seems like they want these people to have computers just to have them.
Of course, these countries will inevitably move into heavy computer use at some point, and they'll need to have a generation familiar with them by then. If OLPC isn't hurting other aspects of their education, then it might still make sense.
Again, hardware is useless without software. Quality educatinal app focused on each level of the students syllabus will bring some benefits. But in the end, it's the quality of the teachers and a well thought out education system which will brings the ultimate results. Not a cheap computer or even a super computer with Terraflops of processing power. It don't work that way.
That said, a computer with a build in wikipedia app, and basic notepad and calculator is not going to spark a learning interest in the thing.
People did just as fine if not much better 20000 years ago when there were no schools at all!
Dude, you are not in the 80s now. It is the future! Would you give up your car or your computer or anything else?
It is a different problem.... When our school got shiny new Macs (long before the age of Internet), guess what? They were sitting there and the teacher had no idea what to do with them. Did we learn anything? No! Luckily I was used to computers since the early 80s because of my father. Most of my coevals got a computer only 20 years later.
or is it being a well informed person?
id like to think that most people benefit from a laptop in more than just school learning.
My interest in computers were self-motivated, perhaps due to some educational games if you want to stretch it towards a school setting, but surely the teachers weren't using it actively.
They already did this in a lot of countries and continue to do so(often done in self interest, mind you), the truth is you get neglected infrastructure before long without proper education. It is a band aid fix. Education has to be one of the top priorities if not the utmost otherwise you are just grooming a perpetual handout society that will never support itself. I am disappointed that this did not work out well for them, but you certainly cannot criticise them for trying to make a difference in the only thing that will really help a 3rd world country help its self.
Pretty much this, in the end of the day that's what they need to do to just survive.
Color me not surprised that there wasn't an effect. The schools are going to need to make major changes to the way they teach to take advantage of laptops like this.
Want to improve education? Work with teachers, improving training, continuous training, compensation, material resources and respect for the profession. We should also work with families, integrating them into the school and the education of their children.
"Essentially, there is no education other than self- education, whatever the level may be. This is recognized in its full depth within Anthroposophy, which has conscious knowledge through spiritual investigation of repeated Earth lives. Every education is self-education, and as teachers we can only provide the environment for children’s self-education. We have to provide the most favorable conditions where, through our agency, children can educate themselves according to their own destinies. This is the attitude that teachers should have toward children, and such an attitude can be developed only through an ever- growing awareness of this fact." (Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness)
Did they give courses to the kids / teachers on usage? Kids weren't allowed to bring them home to at least try and do something on their own?
Moronic.
Of course it didn't show any difference... because they weren't being used properly (or at all most likely)