A report from the Peru OLPC deployment [LWN.net]

For those in a hurry, the Economist has a brief and mostly negative summary of a report on the benefits of the One Laptop Per Child program in Peru. "An evaluation of the laptop programme by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) found that the children receiving the computers did not show any improvement in maths or reading. Nor did it find evidence that access to a laptop increased motivation, or time devoted to homework or reading."

For those with more time, the actual report is more nuanced. "Results indicate limited effects on academic achievement but positive impacts on cognitive skills and competences related to computer use. Cognitive abilities may arise through using the programs included in the laptops, given that they are aimed at improving thinking processes. However, to improve learning in Math and Language, there is a need for high-quality instruction. From previous studies, this does not seem the norm in public schools in Peru, where much rote learning takes place".

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A report from the Peru OLPC deployment

Posted Apr 7, 2012 18:31 UTC (Sat) by mstone (guest, #58824) [Link] (6 responses)

One of my favorite things about laptops is that their software can be cheaply updated years after they were built and deployed to respond to problems and needs that weren't addressed the first time around. Consequently, if you'd like to see the numbers in reports like this one improve, please head over to the OLPC wiki or to James Simmon's book on how to Make Your Own Sugar Activities (also available on Amazon).

Alternately, if you think there's more to be gained by fixing lower-level scalability and ergonomics issues in the platform, then you might enjoy some of our recent thoughts on how to compensate for the uneven availability of high-quality instruction mentioned in the IADB report with a personalized, growth-oriented narrative interface called "Nell".

(Disclaimer: I worked for OLPC as a software developer and release manager from 2007-2009 and have remained peripherally involved as an occasional volunteer contributor since then.)

A report from the Peru OLPC deployment

Posted Apr 8, 2012 2:22 UTC (Sun) by filteredperception (guest, #5692) [Link] (5 responses)

"
a personalized, growth-oriented narrative interface called "Nell".
"

One wonders if this is an obvious reference to Neil Stephenson's Diamond Age's Princess Nell character, and her bildungsroman experience with a personal portable educational computer. I like the concept, and much was good about the novel, but the choice to have the protagonista raped by the oncoming horde in the end, makes it not top my favorite sci-fi list.

Princess Nell

Posted Apr 8, 2012 11:14 UTC (Sun) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (3 responses)

It's a frustratingly familiar structure for Stephenson. When I got to the inevitable (in the sense that I've come to expect it from the author rather than it was necessary to the narrative) attempted rape in his current novel I just sort of sighed and turned the page.

Still, I really like Diamond Age and the Primer is a fun (albeit technologically very distant) idea. But even with the Primer actually Nell is utterly reliant upon the protection of her brother, the judge and his assistants, and the citizens of a local Victorian enclave. Giving deprived children a networked computer is not step one.

Princess Nell

Posted Apr 8, 2012 13:06 UTC (Sun) by mstone (guest, #58824) [Link] (2 responses)

> It's a frustratingly familiar structure for Stephenson.

It's a frustratingly familiar reality (CDC report, WHO report) that we are also working slowly but steadily in our own small ways to fix.

> Giving deprived children a networked computer is not step one.

Two thoughts:

With problems of this size, there may be no single "step one"; instead, there is your step one and my step one, hopefully followed by our step two.
Actually, giving kids powerful things to think with seems like a pretty darn reasonable place to start to me...

Princess Nell

Posted Apr 9, 2012 5:36 UTC (Mon) by filteredperception (guest, #5692) [Link] (1 responses)

"
> It's a frustratingly familiar structure for Stephenson.

It's a frustratingly familiar reality (CDC report, WHO report) that we are also working slowly but steadily in our own small ways to fix.
"

Since I started the dig, I'll clarify- I have no problem with fictionalized rape, for these reasons, playing a large role in a lot of novels. But having it done to the _main protagonistsa_ in a bildungsroman/child-to-adult-growth-epic, without blatant foreshadowing, i.e. as a shocking ending, is what I object to in a catcher-in-the-rye critique sort of way. I'm deluded enough to have written my own scifi novel where the protagonist gets skullf'd by Dick Cheney, but I mention it in chapter 1, so that readers can just toss the book asside if thats not their thing. Having Stephenson, such an A+++ author throw that in, only at the end, after a truly amazing and prophetic, and intelligent novel about nanotechnology, written in 1993-ish just ticked me off a bit. Of course there is the chinese judge torturing a character named phyrefox to get his information about the elusive CryptNet in the beginning, but still- raping your protagonista shockingly at the end of a long, great tech-fiction book... eh.... Seemed like something I'd only do after being tortured by the Chinese government into writing a totalitarian-apologist novel with the theme that protecting your daughter from the oncoming uneducated horde is a good reason to discard democratic free-speech in favor of a social contract heavy on a foundation of state sponsored torture.

Princess Nell

Posted Apr 13, 2012 16:24 UTC (Fri) by cdmiller (guest, #2813) [Link]

Interestingly Friday, by Heinlein, begins with the protaganista rape, although she's past or at the end of her bildungsroman stage.

A report from the Peru OLPC deployment

Posted Apr 20, 2012 13:21 UTC (Fri) by TRauMa (guest, #16483) [Link]

Oy. Spoiler :(.

A report from the Peru OLPC deployment

Posted Apr 8, 2012 0:06 UTC (Sun) by daglwn (guest, #65432) [Link] (4 responses)

Not surprising in the least. Those who advocate technology as not just necessary in the classroom but as an educational multiplier are delusional. We don't need every kid to have a computer to learn any more than we need every kid to have Google Goggles or HP calculators or any of the current fads.

Access to a computer is important to learn computer skills but I just don't see how they provide a better way to learn long division or how to read.

A report from the Peru OLPC deployment

Posted Apr 8, 2012 2:31 UTC (Sun) by filteredperception (guest, #5692) [Link]

What I see the OLPC as providing for education, is what the Atari-400 did for me when I was 5-10 years old back in 80-85. I was one of a very I suspect rare subset of kids that had access to that, as well as an 11 year older brother deep into that small niche at the time. But having access to logo(turtle graphics programming language), basic, and entertaining games, absolutely led me down the path of enjoying computer engineering. While I don't think that path is for everyone, by deploying these devices to all kids, the ones who like it and have a talent for it, will have genuine opportunity to hack as deep as they want, at whatever speed and rate of advancement they naturally achieve. And they _also_ happen to be useful for basic educational software, which, while not as ideal as focused adult teaching, might be better than what many parents do- park their kids in front of television and movies. And hey, they work for that too. The key I see, is providing enough of that actual focused adult interaction, such that the lesson is taught and sinks in, that one should for significant fractions of their time, also turn off the network, and computer, and learn and experience more traditional aspects of life as well. It's all balance in the end, but I do see tremendous value in every kid walking around with a 10G cache of wikipedia and some other things, for their instant perusal, as if they had parents that could afford to dedicate large rooms of their house to good libraries. BUT... if we do this in a way that micromanages and spies on kids behaviours, I think that would not be good, though perhaps inevitable. I.e. the kids finding out that at age 12, they were not told that second by second recordings of their activities were being logged in 'the journal' to be dissected by their parents, and perhaps commercial educational organizations. Sigh... I'm sure parenting must not be easy these days...

A report from the Peru OLPC deployment

Posted Apr 8, 2012 22:03 UTC (Sun) by jackb (guest, #41909) [Link]

A more basic error is not recognizing the difference between schooling and education.

A report from the Peru OLPC deployment

Posted Apr 9, 2012 12:43 UTC (Mon) by SEJeff (guest, #51588) [Link]

Kind of OT, but I take it you or your children have never seen the Khan Academy[1]. Those who think tools *like* the Khan Academy, which exist thanks to technology, doesn't help with long division or cognitive skills are delusional.

[1] http://www.khanacademy.org

A report from the Peru OLPC deployment

Posted Apr 9, 2012 17:02 UTC (Mon) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

Access to a computer is a huge help in reading if you don't have access to a wide selection of books. There's only so good you can get at reading without more to read than fits in a book the size or weight of a laptop, and $200 of books may not go very far, depending on how hard the local environment is on paper. On the other hand, once you have access to a school library, it's not going to be that useful. (The exception, of course, is if students can use the computer to communicate with each other using text; the biggest attraction to learning a form of communication is to have your friends socializing in it.)

It's not a help at all in learning long division. On the other hand, long division is not a great algorithm, once you've got computers. If you want to teach division as part of arithmetic at all, teach using a slide rule, which is much more useful as an illustration of underlying concepts and for getting an intuitive feel for what the answer should be like.

A report from the Peru OLPC deployment

Posted Apr 8, 2012 11:17 UTC (Sun) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]

For a different way of using computers with small groups of children, who organise their own learning to answer hard questions, see this TED talk by Sugata Mitra: http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_ed...

I saw him talk about this and it seems most impressive, based on an unorthodox "teacher light" model whereby children mostly learn with little adult supervision.

A report from the Peru OLPC deployment

Posted Apr 8, 2012 14:13 UTC (Sun) by codewiz (subscriber, #63050) [Link] (2 responses)

Peru always has been a particularly problematic deployment.

So don't generalize these results to all olpc deployments or all 1-to-1 computing programs. Instead, take a look at Paraguayan and Uruguay, which applied all Five Principles right from the start and are now doing pretty well.

Long article mightn't be worth reading

Posted Apr 9, 2012 10:51 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (1 responses)

The linked article about the problems in Peru is long and the intro uses baseless arguments like "Peru is very different to Uruguay because Peru has two official languages instead of one".

This seems unlikely to be a cause of OLPC problems, and a quick search of the article indicates that there is no further information about why this difference could be important.

Long article mightn't be worth reading

Posted Apr 11, 2012 9:10 UTC (Wed) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link]

> The linked article about the problems in Peru is long and the intro uses baseless arguments like "Peru is very different to Uruguay because Peru has two official languages instead of one".

Baseless arguments?

Your post indicates that reading comprehension problems are not a privilege of Peruvian school children :-/

> This seems unlikely to be a cause of OLPC problems, and a quick search of the article indicates that there is no further information about why this difference could be important.

The linked article seems to be spot on on the realities of both countries. How about trying to _read_ the *f*unny introduction of it with a bare minimum of attention instead of "searching" it?

quote: "Uruguay’s 400,000 XOs result in full saturation of the country’s public primary school system whereas Peru’s 300,000 only cover a small double-digit percentage of its primary school pupils.""

Take home message, Uruguay is rich enough to buy a laptop to every single student in the country. Peru barely so.

quote: "Last but not least Peru’s geography – being roughly seven times larger than Uruguay and consisting of the desert coast, high Andes mountain ranges, and inaccessible jungle – and the associated difficulties of building and maintaining infrastructure such as roads, an electricity grid or Internet connectivity also present additional challenges to a project such as Una laptop por niño.
""

Take home message, Peru is a country with massive regional differences. Uruguay is (relative to Peru) flat and fully homogeneous. If you read the whole thing, the author does a good job at describing how the local Peruvian reality caused all sorts of problems.

[...]

FYI,

Peru has a desert-like coastal area, a mountaineering area and a rain forest region. General integration (transportation, services, telecommunications etc) is a lot worse in the mountain and rain forest areas (You surprised?). (Which is where most Quechua speakers live, hence the language cue.) So this is a country with great regional differences in terms of development.

Uruguay is (relative to Peru) flat flat flat, and much more homogeneous in terms of access to education, transport, telecommunications, services etc. Also, relative to Peru, Uruguay is economically stable and a fairly wealthy country.

From all the linked texts, I gather that the laptops were given to specially (i) poor (ii) isolated communities in Peru. This is a very different sample of children than the average school kid in Uruguay.