One has to be amazed at the fact that experts in ICT and in the social
challenges to society and education in developing countries do not
take a critical and demanding stance with regard to this initiative.

By that I do not mean opposing the initiative at the start of their
investigation, but at least doing the investigation. When one asks
the hard questions about ICTs and development, or ICTs and education,
this initiative comes up lacking. There is a large (very large) gap
between what it promises and what it is likely to deliver.

Consider Argentina. Argentina a population of about 40 million,
40% living in poverty, a GDP of around US$200 billion, an annual
government budget of around US$40 billion, and an external debt
equal to 1/2 of GDP.

The OLPC proposal for 1 million laptops for India is estimated (by
OLPC) to cost about $250 million to set up (laptops, servers, etc.)
and that does not include the costs of administering the laptops as
part of any educational initiative or the recurrent costs. It would
cost more in Argentina. Total costs are a multiple of the $250
million. If we conservatively put those costs(for a five year life of
the laptops) at $US 1 billion we are talking about taking about US$
200 million a year out of Argentina's education budget to fund this
initiative.

This leaves us with several questions.

1. Can this amount be freed from Argentina's education budget to
finance the initiative?

2. What implementation scheme is necessary to maximize the benefits of
such a redirection of educational resources, and does Argentina have
that capacity? [Note: The US itself probably does not have that
capacity.]

3. Is there any expectation that the benefits will be greater than the
losses experiences by redirecting the resources from other Argentine
educational expenditures?

None of these questions can be answered from the outside, and none of
them can be answered from the top of the Argentine educational
system.
They have to be answered from within the Argentine educational system
and I don't see any evidence that Argentina's educational system has
had an opportunity to discuss it in any detail.

There are reports on the OLPC on the IADB website:

Just search http://www.iadb.org for OLPC, or hand insert the following
URL into your browser:
http://search.iadb.org/search.asp?Querytext=OLPC&ServerKey=Primary&collection=newcoll&language=English&ResultTemplate=default.hts&ResultStyle=normal

The reports frequently just repeat what has been said by OLPC and
contain "blue sky" (dreaming) comments about an era of one-to-one
computing for children in Latin America.

There is almost nothing about what it would take to make this work,
what human skills would be needed to make it work, and what the
overall costs would be compared to the expected benefits.

Until one sees the evidence from pilot projects, and the lessons
learned, it is foolish, if not criminal, to commit significant
portions of national educational budgets to such an untested idea.

A better hammer is only a better tool in the hands of one who knows
what to do with it.

Sam Lanfranco
York University.
Nearby Tue Dec 19 05:08:05 2006