Good e-reading software is AWOL today from One Laptop per Child‘s XO-1 machine. OLPC by now should be offering a kid-suitable version of FBReader, which can handle ePub and many other formats. FBR also allows much more pleasant book-reading on a small screen than does the XO’s PDF reader or Web browser. With omissions like this, just how suitable is the XO-1 for education as opposed to distraction—regardless of the many K-12-useful items on the Web?
I say very suitable, potentially. Meantime, while pressing OLPC to address the XO-1 software’s real shortcomings, XO boosters would do well to read and counter a Slate article headlined The $100 Distraction Device: Why giving poor kids laptops doesn’t improve their scholastic performance.
The Slate article zeroes in on research suggesting that children from low-income households with computer vouchers end up watching less TV but receiving lower grades. Whether or not TV is available in jungles and deserts, some might extrapolate and worry that the OLPC machines were mere entertainment. Is Ray Fisman, the Columbia University professor who freelanced the Slate piece, on target when he says: "If we really want to help poor kids, whether in Romania, sub-Saharan Africa, or America’s housing projects, we may want to focus on approaches that provide structured, supervised access through after-school programs or subsidies that bring technology into low-income schools. But just giving kids computers? Might as well just ship them PlayStations?"
Simplistic OLPC comparison
Actually, while the OLPC software does have major flaws so far, Fisman’s Slate article is simplistic in general tone—especially the headline.
The real problem in Romania, the location of the children studied, seems not to have been the technology but rather the failure of parents and teachers to monitor the use of the machines adequately. Fisman acknowledges as much and correctly writes toward the end that "the lesson from Romania’s voucher experiment is not that computers aren’t useful learning tools, but that their usefulness relies on parents being around to assure they don’t simply become a very tempting distraction from the unpleasantness of trigonometry homework." Why, then, the headline, and why is this important point so far down in the article?
OLPC fixes
In the case of the OLPC machines, specific reading assignments can be made, and students can be required both to write book reports and discuss their assignments in class, the old-fashioned way. Improved reading software would help. So could a form factor even more book-friendly than the XO-1’s, and in fact, the forthcoming XO-2 offers just that, as you can see from the photo.
Another strategy could be tutorial software of the kind that LINCT has advocated for after-school computer use at home—complete with provisions for remotely logging the children’s use of the computers. What’s more, Learning Journals are integral parts of the LINCT approach, which, alas, OLPC has not embraced desipte efforts for this to happen.
Fixable
Ideally, then, educators will remember the limits of youthful curiosity, and balance out useful constructivist tenets with efforts to see the laptops used for reading and not simply games playing—the very balance that the LINCT approach could offer, even in households where parents were not academically prepared to monitor their children.
Most of all, let’s hope that the OLPC laptops are truly integrated with curricula, a factor that was missing in the Romanian voucher program, and that the right books, software apps and other items are made available. Instead of bashing OLPC, however deficient it’s been in areas such as e-book software, I would recommend that Fisman read both Dr. Saurav Dev Bhatta‘s OLPC News article and Bhatta’s related research paper.
Simply put, with appropriate planning and action, these are solvable problems, and I hope that policymakers in the States and developing countries will not abandon the OLPC dream just because Fisman-style critics downplay the possibilities.
Hello, Ficbot? As a teacher working with younger children, what are your own thoughts here?
Detail: The research paper on which Fiser based his Slate article is actually much more balanced than the headline and his general tone. in it, Ofer Malamud of the University of Chicago and Christian Pop-Eleches of Columbia University say among other things: "In sum, providing home computers for low-income children in Romania did not appear to improve educational and behavioral outcomes. This may not be surprising given that relatively few parents report having educational software installed on their computer, and few children report using the computer for educational purposes. Interestingly, we find evidence that having a stay-at-home mom and the presence of rules about computer use do mitigate some of the negative effects of winning a computer voucher, and suggests that parental supervision may be an important mediating factor." Isn’t that more sensible than the Slate headline and the general thrust of the Fisman article? I thought that a Slate commenter was rather charitable in saying the man point of the article was "that parental involvement is definitely necessary to help push kids in the right direction when using new technology." Not with the "distraction machine" headline and the overall tone!
