In Peru, a Pint-Size Ticket to Learning Officials Hope 270,000 Laptops for Poor Youngsters Improve Education System By Frank Bajak
Associated Press
Sunday, December 30, 2007; A18
ARAHUAY, Peru -- Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can benefit from quirky little computers evaporate as quickly as the morning dew in this hilltop Andean village, where 50 primary school children got machines from the One Laptop Per Child project six months ago.
These offspring of peasant families whose monthly earnings rarely exceed the cost of one of the $188 laptops -- people who can ill afford pencil and paper much less books -- can't get enough of their XO devices.
At breakfast, they're already powering up the combination library/videocamera/audio recorder/musicmaker/drawing kits. At night, they're dozing off in front of them -- if they've managed to keep older siblings from waylaying the coveted machines.
"It's really the kind of conditions that we designed for," Walter Bender, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff, said of this agrarian backwater up a precarious dirt road.
Founded in 2005 by former MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte, the One Laptop program has retreated from early boasts that developing-world governments would snap up millions of the pint-size machines at $100 each.
In a backhanded tribute, One Laptop now faces homegrown competitors everywhere from Brazil to India -- and a full-court press from Intel's more power-hungry Classmate.
But no competitor approaches the XO in innovation. It is hard drive-free, runs on the Linux operating system and stretches wireless networks with "mesh" technology that lets each computer in a village relay data to the others.
Mass production began last month and Negroponte, brother of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte, said he expects at least 1.5 million machines to be sold by next November. Even that would be far less than Negroponte originally envisioned. The price, higher than initially advertised, and the non-Windows operating system that is still being tested for the XO have dissuaded many potential government buyers.
Peru placed the single biggest order to date -- more than 272,000 machines -- in its quest to turn around a primary education system that the World Economic Forum recently ranked last among 131 countries surveyed. Uruguay was the No. 2 buyers of the laptops, inking a contract for 100,000.
Negroponte said 150,000 more laptops will be shipped to such countries as Rwanda, Mongolia, Haiti and Afghanistan in early 2008 through "Give One, Get One," a U.S.-based promotion ending Dec. 31 in which participants buy a pair of laptops for $399 and donate one or both.
The children of Arahuay prove One Laptop's transformative conceit: that you can revolutionize education and democratize the Internet by giving a simple, durable, power-stingy but feature-packed laptop to the world's poorest kids.
"Some tell me that they don't want to be like their parents, working in the fields," first-grade teacher Erica Velasco said of her pupils. She had just sent them to the Internet to seek out photos of invertebrates -- animals without backbones.
Antony, 12, wants to become an accountant.
Alex, 7, aspires to be a lawyer.
Kevin, 11, wants to play trumpet.
Saida, 10, is already a promising videographer, judging from her artful recording of the town's recent Fiesta de la Virgen.
"What they work with most is the [built-in] camera. They love to record," said Maria Antonieta Mendoza, an Education Ministry psychologist studying the Arahuay pilot project to devise strategies for the big rollout when the new school year begins in March.
Before the laptops, the only cameras the kids at Santiago Apostol school saw in this hamlet of 800 people arrived with tourists who visit for festivals or to see local Inca ruins.
Arahuay's lone industry is agriculture. Surrounding fields yield avocados, mangoes, potatoes, corn, alfalfa and cherimoya.
Many adults share only weekends with their children, spending the workweek in fields many hours' walk from town and relying on charities to help keep their families nourished.
When they finish school, young people tend to abandon the village.
Peru's head of educational technology, Oscar Becerra, is betting the One Laptop program can reverse this rural exodus to the squalor of Lima's shantytowns four hours away.
It's the best answer yet to "a global crisis of education" in which curriculums have no relevance, he said. "If we make education pertinent, something the student enjoys, then it won't matter if the classroom's walls are straw or the students are sitting on fruit boxes."
Indeed, Arahuay's elementary school population rose by 10 when families learned the laptop pilot was coming, said Guillermo Lazo, the school's director.
The XOs that Peru is buying will be distributed to pupils in 9,000 elementary schools from the Pacific to the Amazon basin where a single teacher serves all grades, Becerra said.
Although Peru boasts thousands of rural satellite downlinks that provide Internet access, only about 4,000 of the schools getting XOs will be connected, Becerra said.
Negroponte says One Laptop is committed to helping Peru overcome that hurdle. Without Internet access, he said, the program is incomplete.
Teachers will get 2 1/2 days of training on the laptops, Becerra said. Each machine will initially be loaded with about 100 copyright-free books. Where applicable, texts in native languages will be included, he added. The machines will also have a chat function that will let youngsters make faraway friends over the Internet.
Critics of the rollout have two key concerns.
The first is the ability of teachers -- poorly trained and equipped to begin with -- to cope with profoundly disruptive technology.
Eduardo Villanueva, a communications professor at Lima's Catholic University, fears "a general disruption of the educational system that will manifest itself in the students overwhelming the teachers."
To counter that fear, Becerra said, the government is offering $150 grants to qualifying teachers toward the purchase of conventional laptops, for which it is also arranging low-interest loans.
The second big concern is maintenance.
For every 100 units it will distribute to students, Peru is buying one extra for parts. But there is no technical support program. Students and teachers will have to do it.
"What you want is for the kids to do the repairs," said Negroponte, who believes such tinkering is itself a valuable lesson. "I think the kids can repair 95 percent of the laptops."
Tech support is nevertheless a serious issue in many countries, Negroponte acknowledged in a telephone interview.
One Laptop is bidding on a contract with Brazil's government that Negroponte says demanded unrealistically onerous support requirements.
The XO machines are water-resistant, rugged and designed to last five years. They have no fan, so they won't suck up dust; are built to withstand drops from five feet; and can absorb power spikes typical of places with irregular electricity.
Mendoza, the psychologist, is overjoyed that the program stipulates that youngsters get ownership of the laptops.
Take Kevin, the aspiring trumpet player.
Sitting in his dirt-floor kitchen as his mother cooks lunch, he draws a soccer field on his XO, then erases it. Kevin plays a song by Caliente, his favorite band, that he recorded off Arahuay's single television channel. He shows off photos he took of himself with his 3-year-old brother.
A bare light bulb hangs by a wire from the ceiling. A hen bobs around the floor. There are no books in this two-room house. Kevin's parents didn't get past sixth grade.
Indeed, the laptop project also has adults in its sights.
Parents in Arahuay are asking Mendoza, the visiting psychologist, what the Internet can do for them.
Among them is Charito Arrendondo, 39, who sheds brief tears of joy when a reporter asks what the laptop belonging to ruddy-cheeked Miluska -- the youngest of her six children -- has meant to her. Miluska's father, it turns out, abandoned the family when she was 1.
"We never imagined having a computer," said Arrendondo, a cook.
Is she afraid to use the laptop, as is typical of many Arahuay parents, about half of whom are illiterate?
"No, I like it. Sometimes when I'm alone and the kids are not around, I turn it on and poke around."
Arrendondo likes to play checkers on the laptop.
"It's also got chess, which I sort of know," she said, pausing briefly.
"I'm going to learn."
Comments
I've been seriously groping with this issue on my campus lately David. As the tech. specialist for my school I've really taken the tact of keying in on 2 to 3 individual teachers and working with them solely to build their knowledge and comfortability with working with these tools.
From my experience is this, it's not so much the teachers who have been unwilling to change their teaching practices, it's the administrations unwillingness to change from antiquated learning practices. Which to continue with your permeability references, the learning is quite non-opaque
Posted by: Tom Turner | December 27, 2007 2:11 PM
Permeability (even semi-permeability) is more easily said than done. Most teachers (heck, myself too) find it much easier to stay in the rut, in the comfort area, in the "I am in control" area and have to fight daily (even by the minute) with getting past all those barriers that truly allow one (and one's class)to able to be permeable.
It is very hard to take risks -- and most schools are not as fortunate as the school that you work at, that Tom works at, and that I work at that have the capable teacher support that assists, guides, and equips them to feel safe with being permeable. Hopefully, that will continue to change as more educators demand "tech support"!
It is always the baby steps and not the giant leaps forward that get most of us to where we are going. I see evidence DAILY of teachers being willing to open their minds to new ideas, to trying things they have never done before, to becoming "permeable" (if you will).....but it is very hard thing to do. I am just glad that I am there to assist them as they learn to not only be permeable but to also be pliable.
Good post. Lots to think about!
Posted by: Jennifer Wagner | December 27, 2007 3:28 PM
I have been giving this a lot of thought lately. In fact enough thought that I am looking seriously at moving back into the classroom. I think what I need is to prove to myself that I can make it work. Then as a school we can move forward. Then as a district and so forth.
I also think we need more great examples of this working. We need more who are making it work to let their stories into the wild. More like Brian Crosby and Clarence Fisher and others. Then we need to point these examples out to others.
Posted by: Kelly Dumont | December 27, 2007 4:10 PM
Tom: I think that working with a small group of teachers first is generally a good idea. See what works, what doesn't and build momentum towards the inclusion of more teachers. And I would agree with you on the admin part; how many use these tools and understand their implications for classroom learning? I know of several districts where the administrators do use Web 2.0 tools, and it makes for a completely different set of expectations for teachers. That's a good thing, because the support and the infrastructure to support permeable classrooms is likely to be more available.
Jen: there certainly are many barriers to developing permeable classrooms, and risk -taking is one of them. One of the success stories in my school district has been using a CMS to reduce both the barriers and the risk-taking. We've been successful in helping teachers take those small steps, and over time, this can indeed result in significant change. Unfortunately, while I do agree with you that there are teachers out there who recognize the need for a different type of classroom, and a different type of learning, pressure from high-stakes testing and the enormous pressure of AYP pushes schools is just the opposite direction. I don't think that these are necessarily mutually-exclusive, but in many instances, schools (read administration here)seem to be moving backwards to try and meet these goals.
Kelly: I've given that more than one thought myself. When I left the classroom, none of this was available. Part of me would like to see what I could accomplish with my own students. I do get to work with students on a daily basis, but it's different.
And I agree, the stuff Clarence Fisher and Barbara Barreda, along with Darren Kuropatwa, will help us all understand how to create a different type of classroom.
Thanks for your comments.
Posted by: David Jakes | December 27, 2007 7:04 PM
Tom: I think that working with a small group of teachers first is generally a good idea. See what works, what doesn't and build momentum towards the inclusion of more teachers. And I would agree with you on the admin part; how many use these tools and understand their implications for classroom learning? I know of several districts where the administrators do use Web 2.0 tools, and it makes for a completely different set of expectations for teachers. That's a good thing, because the support and the infrastructure to support permeable classrooms is likely to be more available.
Jen: there certainly are many barriers to developing permeable classrooms, and risk -taking is one of them. One of the success stories in my school district has been using a CMS to reduce both the barriers and the risk-taking. We've been successful in helping teachers take those small steps, and over time, this can indeed result in significant change. Unfortunately, while I do agree with you that there are teachers out there who recognize the need for a different type of classroom, and a different type of learning, pressure from high-stakes testing and the enormous pressure of AYP pushes schools in just the opposite direction. I don't think that these are necessarily mutually-exclusive, but in many instances, schools (read administration here)seem to be moving backwards to try and meet these goals.
Kelly: I've given that more than one thought myself. When I left the classroom, none of this was available. Part of me would like to see what I could accomplish with my own students. I do get to work with students on a daily basis, but it's different.
And I agree, the stuff Clarence Fisher and Barbara Barreda, along with Darren Kuropatwa, will help us all understand how to create a different type of classroom.
Thanks for your comments.
Posted by: David Jakes | December 27, 2007 7:08 PM
A directory of exemplar examples of teachers using emerging technologies at different grade levels and within different content areas would be a great asset for all of us working with teachers. How do we collaborate to create such a directory as a dynamic document? Or does one exist already?
Posted by: Lucie deLaBruere | December 28, 2007 10:18 PM
Lucie: I'm not aware of any such list, although it would certainly be helpful. A wiki would be the easiest way to do that, in my opinion.
I would point you to the following blogs of educators who, in my opinion, offer best practice classroom techniques, from several perspectives:
Clarence Fisher
http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/
Barbara Barreda
http://dare-to-dream--classroom-technology.blogspot.com/
Darren Kuropatwa
http://adifference.blogspot.com/
Konrad Glogowski
http://teachandlearn.ca/blog/
I would also suggest getting a Twitter account if you do not have one, and follow some of the educators there. There are lots of good ideas there, and it is a logical place to connect with others who share the same passions.
Posted by: David Jakes | January 1, 2008 4:47 PM
HARK!
Is this the sound of the ole impremeable "ivory tower" cracking?
Take note the students are well on their way over at Students 2.0 http://www.students2oh.org/
I'm sure they would be glad to lend a hand and minds to this effort.
Come on in the waters fine.
Much continued success here.
Best,
Jim
Posted by: Jim Ross | January 3, 2008 6:36 AM