‘One Laptop Per Child’: the debate continues…

The XO-1, previously known as the $100 Laptop or One laptop Per Child (OLPC), is an inexpensive laptop intended to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world. It promises to provide them with access to knowledge and opportunities to 'explore, experiment and express themselves'. The laptop was developed by the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) social welfare organisation set up by Nicolas Negroponte with a core of Media Lab veterans and manufactured by the Taiwanese computer company called Quanta.

Heated debate

The XO-1 has been the subject of intense debate during the past two years. Launched at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in November 2005 in Tunisia, the 100-dollar laptop was initially welcomed with great enthusiasm. According to its developers, the 100-dollar laptop would overcome all the problems that developing countries encountered before they could get access to computers and knowledge. It was cheap, small, durable and efficient. It also required very little energy to run, could withstand the dirt and heat, provided all the basic functionalities of a ‘real’ personal computer and was equipped with open source and open source software. A real panacea, you might think. However, the honeymoon period was short-lived and very soon a wave of harsh criticism came from several key organisations in the development sector. Most of the criticism seemed to focus on the point that – yet again - a top-down approach had been chosen to develop a solution for the developing world; a solution that did not take into account either the disparate needs or cultural differences between the countries that would be using the laptop. Another point of criticism was that the developers had not developed a solution for the lack of capacity on the ground in developing countries to support, maintain, rebuild and replace parts of the OLPC when it broke down.

Online discussion about the benefits of ‘One Laptop Per Child’

Burkina NTIC, the national ICT4D knowledge sharing platform in Burkina Faso that was initiated and supported by IICD, decided to organise a workshop on the OLPC to see with their own eyes what this much debated laptop was all about and to determine whether the OLPC would meet the needs of the educational sector in Burkina Faso. Prior to the workshop, an online debate was held via the Dgroups discussion platform (www.dgroups.org).  It focussed on questions like whether the laptop met the needs of schools and people in Burkina Faso, what was good about it, how it could be improved and, when introducing it in Burkina Faso what points would have to be taken into account. The findings of this online debate are given below:

Conclusions of the Dgroups discussion

Why should people in Burkina Faso start using an OLPC?

• It gives people living in urban and rural areas equal access to knowledge
• It enables people to take part in the information society
• Children learn at a young age to use a computer
• It is more resistant to dirt, heath and shocks than an ordinary computer (damage control)

But:

• The OLPC needs to be adapted to our local needs

The OLPC is not useful/should not be introduced in Burkina Faso because:

• There are other problems within sector education which need to be overcome first, like lack of school rooms and bad working conditions for teachers;
• The OLPC is basically a battle among private sector companies on who is first to conquer the African market at the costs of real sustainable development activities / attempts.
• The BF educational system uses teaching methods that clashes with how in and what kind of learning environment (creating) the OLPC is best to be used.
• The infrastructure in BF can not support the use of OLPC (bad connectivity, lack of energy, etc)
• There is no capacity or resources for technical maintenance of the laptop.

Improvements:

• The costs are still quite high. For between 300 to 500 dollars it is also possible to buy a ‘normal’ computer.
• Additional software and hardware should take the specific needs of children per country into account.

Conditions for the successful introduction of the OLPC:

• Both teachers and pupils need to be trained to work with the OLPC.
• The OLPCs should be first handed out or sold to community centres, libraries and similar facilities for communities
• Content needs to be adapted to the existing educational curricula
• The maintenance and life-expectancy of the computer parts should be further improved
• The general public must be made aware of the usefulness of the OLPC

What were the immediate benefits of the OLPC?

• It increased the awareness of people all over the world that people in developing countries also need to have access to ICT/information, communication and knowledge.
• The introduction of the OLPC already caused a downfall in prices of ordinary laptops/computers
• It is first time in history that the technology sector itself has come up with a tool that is actually adapted to the needs of (young) people in developing countries.

These conclusions where shared during the workshop at the end of February. This was followed by a demonstration of the laptop itself by Gilbert Cujean, former Director of DeltaLink, who managed to get hold of one. He himself is quite enthusiast about the OLPC:

“For once they have tried to imagine what children in developing countries actually need and came up with something completely new”, added Mr. Cujean.

And indeed, when presenting the OLPC, even the die-hard sceptics had to admit that this laptop was something completely different; very original. Every participant, whether he/she was ‘for’ or ‘against’ the idea of the OLPC, took time to discover the ins and outs of the laptop.

What is interesting is that the OLPC discussion also triggered people to think again about how ICTs could be used within the education sector. In fact, the discussions during the workshop ended up concentrating more on the Burkinabe educational system and teaching methods and less on the use of the OLPC itself.

Mr Sylvestre Ouédraogo, Coordinator of the Burkina NTIC network, summarised it nicely by saying that “The computer for children is something that has made us all very enthusiastic, but now it is there, it raises many questions”.

Inspirational ideas

Still, there was quite an interest in the OLPC itself too. Some of the participants came up with a very ambitious idea to create a ‘laboratory’ of several laptops in the Yam Pukri (ICT4D network coordinator) offices. The idea behind it is to test the functionalities of the OLPCs and see how they function when they are linked to other computers. Some of the participants went so far as to even set a date for another meeting to put their ideas on paper and see of they could gather financial resources for this idea.

Although the debate is far from over, at the end of the workshop it was concluded that the OLPC is undoubtedly a very challenging project and developing countries should not turn away from it, as even the people in the ‘developed countries’ cannot afford to buy a computer for every single child.

There is still hope for the OLPC

Introducing the OLPC is not without obstacles and risks, but

Mr Ouédraogo reminded everyone that “…it was only a few years ago that people could not imagine a mobile network ever being developed in a country like Burkina Faso, yet nowadays most people own or have access to a mobile phone and understand how to use it”.

In short, there is still hope for the OLPC!