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Peruvian educators hope to inspire children to be more than farmers with the XO Notebook

A lot has been said here at DailyTech about the XO Laptop and the lofty goals of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation (OLPC). The original goal was for the OLPC’s XO notebook to sell for $100 per unit, which never materialized with finished machined costing nearly double that amount.

Despite the cost issues the XO notebook has had some sales with Peru ordering 260,000 of the notebooks for use in its schools across the country. Peru faces some significant obstacles in the roll out and use of the XO notebook including teachers who lack what would be considered a quality education in most countries to towns and schools without electricity.

According to Technology Review, Peru is committed to the program and may even order more XO Notebooks if the program works well. What we consider poor here in America is often far from what other countries consider poor and this is very much the case in rural Peru where homes have no electricity and often no running water.

Part of the program of providing the XO notebooks to towns and villages in Peru involves providing solar power or generators to charge the notebooks. Most of the places the XO will see duty in Peru don’t have Internet access. One of the main components of the XO for its use in education is digital copies of books. Many students in the very poor Peruvian communities have never owned a book.

To keep digital content up to date on the XO notebooks teachers download updates for the Education Ministry office one per month when the pick up their paycheck according to Technology Review. The initial Peruvian test project was conducted in a small town with a previous Internet connection via satellite called Arahuay, described by Education ministry officials as “not poor enough” to actually receive XO Notebooks in the full program rollout.

Children in the town say they use their XO notebooks to send email, play games, take pictures, draw and perform calculations. The town internet connection is slow with web queries described as taking several minutes to execute.

A father of one of the children in the town said about is son using the XO Notebook, “He knows how to use the computer--he knows how to use every part of it [the XO notebook]. Above all, it is more knowledge for him."

Peruvian educators say what they hope to give children in Peru from the XO Notebook is hope and the opportunity to do something else with their lives other than to become farmers if they desire.

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Internet > Food.
By Reclaimer77 on 4/25/2008 2:27:06 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
Children in the town say they use their XO notebooks to send email, play games, take pictures, draw and perform calculations. The town internet connection is slow with web queries described as taking several minutes to execute.


With everyone trying to use it at once, its going to go real slow like. I knows because I seen it. Two kids tried to load a web page. Took em' over three days ! They sat there waiting, and by the time the loading bar was only half full, they was DEAD ! Starved on the internet. With their bellies all stuck out like a pigs bladder...




RE: Internet > Food.
By nosfe on 4/25/08, Rating: 0
RE: Internet > Food.
By Reclaimer77 on 4/25/2008 3:00:02 PM , Rating: 3
lol trolled !

I used a South Park quote from last weeks show. I thought it was semi-fitting. But I just couldn't help myself.


RE: Internet > Food.
By napalmjack on 4/25/2008 3:01:06 PM , Rating: 2
**woosh**

Yes, it's an obscure, but recent, South Park reference. Good work. I love it when they're not so blatantly obvious.


Costs!!!
By HighWing on 4/25/2008 3:06:12 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
The original goal was for the OLPC’s XO notebook to sell for $100 per unit, which never materialized with finished machined costing nearly double that amount.


I read this and I couldn't help but think, wasn't Eeepc supposed to be one of these laptops? And I've only seen the costs of those things go up and not down... Something doesn't seem to be right here?




RE: Costs!!!
By tanishalfelven on 4/25/2008 3:17:01 PM , Rating: 2
considering how much more capable even the 2G eeepc is than the XO, the fact that it cost only 300 (including profits, packing, overhead, and warranty) is really amazing.

either ASUS is really good at optimizing to reduce cost (and no don't say they cut corners on customer service, like the XO did cuz i got my dead eeepc back in less than a week replaced by a new one), or the OLPC team are stupid bad.

ofcourse the falling dollar and the fact that its impossible to go below a certain base price in some products is always there too.


limited, but not useless
By MrHealer on 4/25/2008 4:38:31 PM , Rating: 4
my title is really my point. it is important to point out the limitations of this project and they are numerous. the majority of these children will continue to grow up as farmers, if they get tech jobs they may have to leave their local communities, and simply knowing is not the same as applying.

that having been said, most of us take for granted the fact that if we want to know how to fix something, we can google it and get a detailed, step-by-step instruction manual on how to do it. if we want to know how to improve our crops from a scientific, unbiased, non-local tradition based source, we can google it. even if it takes many minutes, the right web query could save a life, if we imagine a rural village without adequate medical facilities and the possiblity that a little bit of factual knowledge about how to treat a wound or condition.

and so some villages don't have internet. that doesn't render the device useless; i've been places in the world where a dog-eared manual was a treasure posession, even if it was missing pages. if your teacher gets a disc once a month with updates, with the right updates (ones chosen by educators and policy makers in an intelligent way), that the medical and farming and development examples still apply. and moreover, chicken and the egg: no village on earth is going to get internet with no computers, just as having lightbulbs is no good without electricity. computers create the basic need for other services that drive progress.




XO computer
By Macrobot118 on 4/26/2008 3:31:11 PM , Rating: 3
We shouldn't look at the XO computer in isolation. XO computers along with some simple wind turbines, a water pump and purification system and some simple greenhouses could elevate the whole village beyond subsistence farming. I would imagine the cost of the other equipment would more or less equal the costs of computers for all the kids. When the US created the agricultural extension service, commonly called county agents, they tied farmers directly to universities and farm production increased five-fold in less than 5 years.
Educate the kids for tomorrow and their parents for today.




Severe mismatch on the line
By phxfreddy on 4/25/2008 10:01:07 PM , Rating: 2
As a former RF designer this is something you could call a severe mismatch. You know when you throw a wave at something and most of the energy is destined to reflect.

If each of the cities in Peru had internet available I could understand the move. However I am guessing since they do not have electricity they PROBABLY do not have internet also. However these types of stories are always overstated so without researching I do not know.

I had a girlfriend in Lima Peru for a while and it was modern enough there it might help. However given conditions there one wonders how long such an expensive goody will stay in the intended hands also.




Lofty Goals
By IHK on 4/27/2008 4:32:30 AM , Rating: 2
XO is good efforts. But the need for trained personnel is vital for proper utilization




Infrastructure
By ocyl on 4/27/2008 1:42:46 PM , Rating: 2
It's great that OLPC is finding use where the program targets. Hopefully the recipients' infrastructure will catch up in the foreseeable future.




Hand crank
By Azsen on 4/27/2008 7:00:07 PM , Rating: 2
Why did they get rid of the hand crank idea? That was awesome. Would save them having to then get power to all these schools and you can charge it up anytime.




Internet access?
By PrinceGaz on 4/28/2008 1:10:29 AM , Rating: 2
Why do they need internet access?

Surely if the laptops were pre-loaded with a copy of Wikipedia (minus unnecessary pictures so it would fit on its SSD), then the students would have access to all the reference material they would ever need. Stick a few PDFs of course books on and there should be no need to update the software for years. Printed books do a perfectly good job in schools for several years, so the PDFs of school books plus Wikipedia should do also.




Are these help or hinderance?
By NickF001 on 4/26/2008 3:58:45 PM , Rating: 1
Have any studies actually concluded that notebooks will help these people? In my CS classes with PC's and internet a large number of the students used class time to play web games or watch youtube instead of focusing on bettering themselves.




Sell the free notebooks for $$$
By Baked on 4/27/2008 1:11:08 AM , Rating: 1
I would just make an ebay acct. and sell the free notebooks. Profit! Then I would use that money to buy farm hands to do the hard labor. More profit!




Lofty Goals
By Kenenniah on 4/25/08, Rating: -1
RE: Lofty Goals
By jtemplin on 4/25/2008 2:03:01 PM , Rating: 4
Knowledge is power.


RE: Lofty Goals
By murphyslabrat on 4/25/08, Rating: 0
RE: Lofty Goals
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 4/25/08, Rating: 0
RE: Lofty Goals
By JAB on 4/25/2008 2:26:43 PM , Rating: 5
So the alternative is no books no education at all. You have to start somewhere and it is easer to start with the very young many times.

You dont even need to teach them how they can read it. It is a lot better than giving people a fish. Life is not over if you dont make 50k a year there other alternative is noting at all.


RE: Lofty Goals
By Kenenniah on 4/25/2008 3:36:31 PM , Rating: 1
Did I not say that it's better than nothing? It is a good thing, but much much more is needed.


RE: Lofty Goals
By Solandri on 4/25/2008 2:34:56 PM , Rating: 2
The goal is to raise the general level of education and technical competence, so that these kids can make better jobs within their own country. Instead of begging for jobs (or food) because the country lacks infrastructure, they'll have the education and technical tools needed to create work projects or companies that can help build that infrastructure.