The Failure of One Laptop Per Child | Hacker News Reader

The Failure of One Laptop Per Child

hackeducation.com

14 pointsmikeleeorg16 comments

The abstract of the actual research:

"Although many countries are aggressively implementing the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, there is a lack of empirical evidence on its effects. This paper presents the impact of the first large-scale randomized evaluation of the OLPC program, using data collected after 15 months of implementation in 319 primary schools in rural Peru. The results indicate that the program increased the ratio of computers per student from 0.12 to 1.18 in treatment schools. This expansion in access translated into substantial increases in use both at school and at home. No evidence is found of effects on enrollment and test scores in Math and Language. Some positive effects are found, however, in general cognitive skills as measured by Raven’s Progressive Matrices, a verbal fluency test and a Coding test." - http://www.iadb.org/en/research-and-data/publication-details...

So, rather than it being a failure, all we're told is that, after 15 months, maths and reading don't show improvements, but other areas do. So overall, it's positive.

But hey, what's an attentive reading of scientific studies worth against a link-baiting article that can be knocked up in ten minutes?

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Aye, I'd agree that the things shouldn't be too net-dependent. It should be a simple matter to pre-load the things with a full curriculum of textbooks, in electronic form.

I don't see anyone arguing that OLPC is the complete solution to education impoverished children. It might even be a bit cyber-utopian for my tastes, I don't think computers are the answer to every question. But then I do think that gettign books to kids helps their education, and nobody argues that. So if you can load one of these machines with 100 books, that's better again.

Is it the best way to spend $200 for a kids education? Not if it's the only money you're spending, but it could well be part of a broader imporvement.

I think your instincts are spot on. There can be no definitive word on OLPC at this early stage. Certainly you like to check in as early and as often as possible, but anyone with any in-school experience at all, even experience solely as a student, knows that teachers as a group cannot change their methods in a years time.

Any thinking that the writer here did was with a sociologist hat on rather than that of a domestic education policy wonk.

Reading the comments on this thread, makes me think of a concept hard to grasp for people on developed countries: Before you can learn, you must first fulfill your basic living necessities. Most low income children in Peru (where I write from) don't have the luxury of free time to "learn by having fun" like lot's of us did when kids. The reality here is that a small child spends most of his time "producing" something for their household, be it helping on farming, selling on the street, taking care of siblings or the like. The reason why cellphone penetration is so high over here is precisely because the device helps them with this activities.

yawn its not bout test scores but about hacking. getting the kids a chance to learn how computers work how to code and how to use a computer - that is the point of the olpc. i dislike this "standardized-tests-for-the-whole-world-globalist-mumbojumbo". let those kids enjoy and discover their new boxes, shut-up, wait ... and stop demanding results.

> its not bout test scores

It's not about test scores, it's about verifiable and quantifiable results. Does dropping a computer in every kid's lap increase the number of hackers? Are we observing more opensource contributions from Peru which can be attributed to OLPC?

Is there an empirical reason to believe that this kind of subsidy is beneficial? This question deserves more than a yawn.

BBC micros in UK schools would be a good example of this kind of subsidy being beneficial.

It didn't matter that the chances of running into similar systems in industry were minute unless you ended up coding 6502 for factory automation. It gave a platform for children to experiment on and get used to the idea of coding.

Also, the percentage of children who this inspires doesn't even have to be particularly high for it to have definite beneficial economic effects further down the line and I would be amazed if this kind of effect would be measurable after less than 2 years.

i would even be happy with 10 years.

some learn to hack and to code, others verify and quantify. sounds pretty natural, doesn't it?

Indeed. My "OLPC" was a C64. I was terrible in school, but now I have a great career.

I wouldn't call my parent buying me a C64 a bad investment.

I have to agree with this. I'd consider myself to be in the same boat. I was poor in school because I was bored. However I invested hours upon hours learning to code in a bunch of different languages, was making html / javascript websites in notepad in 4th grade ('95) and by my senior year I had an expert level knowledge of Photoshop. My school never taught me any of this. My parents gave me our old family computer and we had an internet connection.

yes, that's the spirit and i love the idea that those kids won't have to pay 1,200 bucks for their first rig.

agree. the only class where my first computer (TI 99/4A, 1983) had a positive influence was English not Mathematics.

I'm from Germany and at the time they didn't translate the manuals, so my reading skills and vocabulary got far more additional training than the Math part. It didn't need that much math to write simple programs and the hex/binary stuff wasn't much use for school anyway.

I had one class that taught anything about computers in my teenage years (the laughable ECDL course), and I got kicked out on the first day. Nothing I knew about computers manifested in any of my exams in other subjects, but I loved the things.

Now I have a good job working with code, which I enjoy.

I think the OLPC was a great success in creating ~$100 laptops as I view it as part of the impetus that resulted in cheap netbooks being widely available in the market.

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