

OLPC problems in Peru - aurelianito
http://www.economist.com/node/21552202

======
PelCasandra
Bringing every child a free laptop should be considered an essential starting
point to reduce social inequality and poverty. Giving the opportunity to the
poor child that has born in the countryside to be connected and teach him
about technology since is a 5 years old bring an amazing democratizing tool of
opportunities to them. And perhaps the only one.

I'm from Uruguay and starting in 2006, this is exactly what the government has
been done. This has become a national cause. And as far as I know, this has
been the most successful implementation to date of this.

Uruguay is a relatively small country (similar to Greece but with a lot rural
areas) and with a modest population of 3M people.

In less than two years (by 2009) the government implemented free wifi
connectivity for OLPC kids across the country. The country is very close to
100% wifi connectivity for OLPC kids (run on a separate network) and we're
near to 100% 3G costless as-well across the country which works at least at
5Mb / second.

In addition to that, the government declared internet as a right that anyone
should get, for free. Any uruguayan can claim at least 256k in their houses
for free on any part of the country. There's no barrier anymore to be
connected. And truth is, people is getting interested in the opportunities of
it. The little kid who goes to school in a horse because is 20km far from his
house in rural areas now he's aware of a new previously unseen potential and
see the opportunities of becoming a designer or a programmer. And this is
really happening.

However, is naive to think computers alone will do the trick. Bringing
computers is just the starting point of something bigger which is not only the
connectivity, but mostly the educational foundations that should be
instrumented afterwards and carefully followed up based on all the feedback.
Real iterations based on data and adjusted as the project goes. It may
resonate like the same principle of a startup.

Here's a summary I found of a pilot OLPC experience in Uruguay.
<http://www.divms.uiowa.edu/~hourcade/ceibal-workshop.pdf>

I heard the people who contribute to this in UY is now beginning to help the
Peruvian and other countries with the experience and all we have learned of
this to re-create the same kind of educational environments.

~~~
el_presidente
I'd like to know how the project has worked out in larger countries. I imagine
for most kids it looks like this: <http://www.kafka-online.info/an-imperial-
message.html>

IMHO it would increase inequality, but I'm generally pessimistic about any
issue.

------
radarsat1
> But Peruvians’ test scores remain dismal.

and..

> Part of the problem is that students learn faster than many of their
> teachers

Interesting. Seems that it's not that the laptops aren't teaching the children
anything, but that they aren't being tested on the things they are learning.

Well, it's no surprise that the laptops didn't turn out to be silver bullets
for education, of course they are just another educational material that
requires support in how the teachers use them. The government needs to invest
in teacher training, clearly, which I guess is what the article is getting at.

------
droithomme
Meanwhile in India, the Hole-in-the-Wall project, providing internet access
with no direction, assistance or teachers to illiterate street urchins,
continues to produce amazing results as completely uneducated children teach
themselves to read, communicate in English, do math, and many other skills.

<http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/>

~~~
pizza
Here's a TED talk by its creator:
[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_ki...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html)

~~~
LinaLauneBaer
Here is another version of the talk:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sugata_mitra_the_child_driv...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html)

------
brianbreslin
As someone who bought an olpc to have one donated back in 2008 or 2009, I was
underwhelmed to say the least by the product. I expected a more intuitive ui
for non-pc savvy users, but it was cludgy and hard to use. If my friends 2
year olds can operate an iphone, then maybe that is a more suitable ui for new
computer users to dive into.

I half hoped that the olpc would come with build in curriculum and learning
games and videos that the kids could do on their own. i.e. faster than the
teacher could teach them. I do believe there is still plenty of potential for
these types of programs to work, just need to understand how the end users
will use them better, and have properly designed curriculum.

~~~
klenwell
I participated in the program, too, and have struggled to find use for my
machine. But I have no regrets. To say because "my friend's 2 year olds can
operate an iphone, then maybe that is a more suitable ui for new computer
users to dive into" misses the point of the OLPC initiative:

\- OLPC was at the vanguard of the Netbook revolution. In fact, I remember it
being given credit for having helped spur it.

\- iPhone is significantly more expensive and less resilient and the goal of
the OLPC was not to create a polished consumer device.

\- Someone with no previous computer usage will adapt to become savvy with the
UI. Most (all?) spoken languages are pretty kludgey and hard to use at first,
but kids become quite savvy with them.

I realize these are all common defenses/apologies for the OLPC, but I think
they hold up. It's enheartening to read @PelCasandras report
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3811282>) on the success of the program
in Uruguay.

As for my machine, it hasn't been entirely demoted to paperweight. It has
become my leisure travel laptop because of its durability and great wifi
reach. I just don't tend to travel that much.

~~~
reinhardt
Calling netbooks a "revolution" is too much of a stretch for a trend that
basically lasted 2-3 years, if that.

~~~
rbanffy
It's actually sad PC makers decided to rebrand them "ultrabooks" in order to
be able to collectively raise prices...

~~~
brianbreslin
I'd argue the class of power in an ultra book is diff from net book. Ultra
books are a response to MacBook air giving real usable performance in slim
package. Net books were sub 9" under powered devices who were just eaten up by
tablets

------
calibwam
The problem is not with the OLPC, as said in the article it's problems with
Peruvian education. And maybe it would have been wiser $225m on better
teachers than giving the children a laptop. I really like the OLPC program,
but there are skills that are more important to learn than computers.

~~~
greendrink
Is there research on whether paying teachers in a given country more makes
them more effective?

~~~
calibwam
I don't mean paying more, as I have no reason to say that it will make them
more effective. But using money on teachers can be anything from education to
the environment the teachers have to teach in.

------
cfn
This program started in 2007 with children between the ages of 6 and 10
(primary school age). It is a bit too early to dismiss the project as a
failure especially on the grounds that motivation and test scores did not go
up. These indicators are influenced by many other factors such as teaching
quality and poverty levels. I am still hopeful for the long term effects of
these projects and I expect that a fair number of these children will be able
to raise themselves out of poverty and even become wealthy on the back of
being exposed to a computer early in life. I don't expect this to be fulfilled
before they reach adulthood.

~~~
gwern
This sounds like special pleading - so now we have to wait another decade or
two before we're allowed to pass judgment? What sort of effects are you
expecting to pop up then, that we can't observe now over a sample of <
_850,000_ laptops?

~~~
bergie
I think giving computers to children is a long game. It is unreasonable to
expect short-term miracles, but for example I probably wouldn't be programming
if we hadn't had computers available for playing and exploration when I was a
kid. But from that time it was nearly ten years before I did anything
productive with them...

------
superdude
OLPC made big claims that never materialized. They originally promised battery
life that "measured in days." I never got more than a few hours life out of
mine. But really the biggest problem with OLPC was that they were too proud to
admit that their custom distro "Sugar" was a POS. If they had gone with an
established Linux distro that was useable they might have had a chance. Any
criticism towards the machine's usability was dismissed as "this was designed
for children, not adults, of course you don't understand it!"

------
clueless123
To make things worse, last month a fire on the ministry of education destroyed
tens of thousands of laptops, solar panels and other educational material. It
is very,very sad to know that all these materials where sitting there for more
than a year waiting to be distributed to the poorest areas of the country,
only to be consumed by fire.

~~~
mkup
Maybe fire was just a cover-up for government corruption/plunder of these
laptops?

~~~
clueless123
There have been many conspiracy theories floating around.. Since the beginning
msft lobbied hard against buying those laptops, book publishers recently got
caught doing major payola to school officials, Textbooks with controversial
material etc etc . (take your pick) Personally, I never attribute to malice
what can easily be explained by incompetence.

------
clueless123
Peru's education problems have more to do with teacher selection & training,
filling children basic needs to enable learning (having a decent breakfast for
example) rigid education policies & enormous bureaucracy. There is not much
that a OLPC computer can do to help on these.

------
mentalbrew
I can't say I'm terribly surprised by this report. Too many things that fall
under the "technology" banner get pushed as somehow improving our quality of
life by default. Like the existence of some gadget automatically improves
things for the owner. Pushing a computer on children who are in many parts of
the world learning in a building that is falling apart or has no real
educational infrastructure is a waste.

~~~
moonchrome
>Pushing a computer on children who are in many parts of the world learning in
a building that is falling apart or has no real educational infrastructure is
a waste.

This is one instance of a particular project that didn't pan out well - now we
can generalize to all technology ?

Anecdotal evidence - my 16 years younger brother learned to read/type and
speak/write broken English (it's not our first language) by the age of 4,
simply by playing along with his 14 year old brother - playing GameCube and
using the computer with him or on his own. He even learned how to use
powerpoint to create "games" ie. slideshow where you click on various things
and then it transitions to a different slide to make it appear like it moved.
At one point I had to forbid him to use the internet because he figured out
how to register and write on forums for some Mario clone development site
where he was downloading sprites for his powerpoint games, he was writing them
tutorials on how he used their editor - which was both funny, amazing and
scary - but it also shows you the his skill level, he was 6 when he did
this/not in school. Again - nobody was actively teaching him anything, so
unless you're suggesting that my brother is some sort of genius (which he
isn't, he is smart but not a miracle child) or that my other brother is some
sort of prodigy teacher I would say that acquiring those skills before school
age is pretty impressive and largely due to technology.

~~~
mentalbrew
I didn't generalize to all technology and I didn't mean it to come across as
so. I also learned a great deal having a computer when I was younger. It
pushed me into areas I wouldn't have been interested in otherwise. The point I
was trying to make is that technology gadgets like this often are assumed from
the get-go to fix what I see as a non-technology problem. There doesn't seem
to be much of a discussion on whether something is actually a solution
sometimes and it's rather just assumed because it's a computer or gadget or
whatever that this thing is going to fix that by the nature of what it is (new
technology).

My old high school has more computers and technology equipment than it did
when I was there yet overall the educational statistics are the same or worse.
Technology is amoral, it's neither good nor bad, it's how it's implemented
that makes the difference. Some view technology as a moral plus in that it is
innately better than no technology at all. I disagree with this.

------
corbet
FWIW, it's really worth reading the report itself; the Economist article
focused on the lack of miracles and not much else.

~~~
gwern
Why is it worth reading the report?

~~~
cjbprime
Because the Economist article quotes negative aspects of the report while
ignoring the positive ones. The report says:

 _"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."_

and found a quantitative improvement:

 _"students in the treatment group surpass those in the control group by
between 0.09 and 0.13 standard deviations though the difference is only
statistically significant at the 10 percent level for the Raven’s Progressive
Matrices test (p-value 0.055). Still, the effects are quantitatively large. A
back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the estimated impact on the
verbal fluency measure represents the progression expected in six months for a
child"_

I would have summarized the study's results as something closer to
"significant improvements in cognition were seen, but improvements against the
Peruvian curriculum were not seen".

(Disclaimer: I work at OLPC, as an engineer.)

~~~
gwern
Yes, I read the report after that. RPM is cool and everything, but runs
straight into the issue that it's easy to train RPM improvements of just 0.13
stddev - just do visual exercises and manipulations. (This is a big issue with
interpreting dual n-back results.) And what is a laptop...?

Fundamentally, IQ tests are validated by their correlations with real world
results (like the strong correlation with academic performance), and so any
gains on IQ tests also require real world results if there's even a small
chance of them being "hollow". (My standard example: you can improve your
score on subtests by memorizing vocabulary, and this would improve your
overall score. But has your underlying fluid intelligence increased? Probably
not...)

And that's exactly what the small/null result for the academic scores shows.

And further, what we see especially (I'd say infamously) often with kid
interventions is that the gains fade out within months or years. When tests
are run in a few years, will we see even a 6-month gain on the RPM?

------
officialchicken
I worked for IDB (MIF/FOMIN) at one point.

I wouldn't believe anything they say - it's unfortunate that the writer didn't
try to find data from any other source.

------
superuser2
Of course it didn't improve test scores. Why would anyone think a computer
would make you better at answering inane, subjective questions about poorly
written passages or more accurate/efficient at applying the handful of
algorithms about triangles that the government believes everyone should know?

OLPC was never going to improve test scores. That's not to say it can't
produce better, more educated human beings.

------
lukego
I love OLPC. It's such a noble project and there is some really excellent
engineering in there to boot. Go OLPC-gang :)

