http://ia.rediff.com/money/2006/apr/
07laptop.htm?q=bp&file=.htm: This news link has an interview with an MIT professor designing a $100 laptop for school kids across the world – especially, in poor countries like India. Earlier he had to close down one of his projects in India when it failed to produce satisfactory results. Here are some suggestions for Assam’s education in the context of this story:
Where is the money? The MIT professor is committed to helping connect school kids in remote, poor areas to the modern world -by using his skills in media technology. So far so good. If he can find some Bill Gates or Warren Buffet to fund his dreams and provide about only $100 billion (for about 1 billion school kids) to hand out a laptop to each school kid, all would be fine.
But he wants the cash strapped governments of these poor countries to fund his dreams - to take out money from programs engaged in fighting hunger, AIDS, teacher training and textbook supplies — to buy into his dream of providing a $100 laptop to each kid.
At a global level, the United Nations and its member nations have decided to provide Universal Primary Education by 2015 - and many countries including India are unlikely to meet that goal - due to shortage of funds. Rich countries are still falling short on their commitments, including the US -so how does the professor aim to get extra funds. Maybe, he wants countries to close down the schools in remote areas and buy these glittering machines for the media-friendly and mediaaccessible schools in big cities. He, being in media business, knows its market value -for getting more funding for his research projects (currently totaling $28 million as per the above article - a huge amount even by MIT standards).
Now I mentioned my reservations about his project in an earlier post on Assamnet: http://assamnet.org/pipermail/assam_assamnet.org/2005-October/001271.html
Video Games/PSPs versus Laptop - in US schools’ poor kids
After writing that post, I have had the opportunity of teaching primary school kids in the Washington DC area - those who need extra help and hail from mainly (illegal ?) immigrant Latino families . Most have video games and hand-held Playstation PSPs, which they play sometimes even in class (I have to keep checking on them and asking them not to). They cost about $20-40 each.
So, if these $100 laptops were made available to the poor students from rich countries like US - they would certainly find them beneficial and affordable.
Of course, even these kids would need some training about how to go about gathering relevant information over the Internet (while avoiding the garbage floating around on it) and in optimal utilization of the machine. Students do not have enough access to computers even in the US, it seems . At least the elementary school students (aged 8-9 years) I teach have limited access to PCs in their school (it is one of the better endowed schools in the capital or a supposedly natural paradise in a rich county ), although from their remarks I make out that many of them have had access to improper material over the net of adult nature.
Nutritious Mid-day meal versus Laptop versus Teacher supervision/training However, the MIT professor wants the poor in poor countries to buy them - or their governments to do that for them. When the governments do not have money even to afford decent mid-day meals for school kids which can also help improve enrollments and remove malnutrition (it is just porridge for Indian ones - while the US ones have a rich menu which has at least four dishes daily along with milk -and changes everyday and across seasons)!
Thus, those in rich countries can perhaps benefit from this $100 laptop, but poor kids in Indian rural areas cannot -without sacrificing their immediate needs of mid-day meals, uniforms and textbooks - and most importantly - effective teaching and teacher supervision. Teacher supervision is lacking in most of India - in remote rural areas up to 80% teachers are absent -as a result. Supervisors lack resources (travel and communication costs) to monitor staff.
Lack of test marketing
Although the professor does say that they got busy with this mission after using computers in Africa in the 1980s, he does not aim to conduct any test marketing or trials. He expects to sell one million laptops in the very first year!! - to poor countries.
What if they turn out to be less useful than mid-day meals, teacher training and supervision, free textbook distribution or scholarships for poor children?
Suggestions:
1.The professor and his research team and collaborators should conduct trials - just like you do drug testing trials before releasing a new drug (medicine) for humans or animals on the market. Of course, the trial should be free from bias or experimental error. The school kids who participate should not be subjected to increased media attention or giving anything else extra - than which is available to children in schools of comparable nature with comparable demographics.
2. They should also engage the services of traditional educators to use equal amounts of money (to that they spent upon computers for the above schools)- to fund other experimental projects using them for improving menu of mid-day meals, or teacher supervision and training, provide free textbooks etc.
3. Then, only they should decide which of these strategies was the most effective.
4. Assam should at least do this trial for its own schools -since education is a state subject in India - and not fritter away limited resources on untested fads.
Any comments?
By Umesh Sharmah , College Park, MD
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