HiTechHall’s Tech Waves

One Laptop Per Child’s XO is one of a few simple, rugged laptops soon to appear on the market. I hope they’ll appear, that is. So far, only prototypes have been built. The AMD-chipped XO might get killed off by Intel who also has a small, tough school-ready laptop, the Classmate PC. In a previous post, I argued against laptops in schools because currently-available laptops are just too delicate and complicated, with mercurial wi-fi capabilities and a very high price-tag. And for the majority of school uses, they are like using an elephant gun to hunt mice; they’re overkill. Desktops should be used for heavy-duty computing such as video editing, etc., and supervised labs are still the best place to get that stuff done. But either the XO or the Classmate PC seem to me to offer the promise of a cheap and simple laptop built to withstand the rigors of the schoolhouse.

There is great debate currently about the success that OLPC and Intel will have in implementing their laptops by the millions in schools in the developing world. Many argue that most of these countries should spend their limited funds on rural health programs, AIDS and malaria prevention, etc., rather than on “laptops” for school children. The idea sounds nearly-preposterous to me too, when I think too hard about it. I mean, shouldn’t laptops be provided to the developing worlds’ doctors, engineers and teachers first? Hmmm… But still, I can’t help but admire the vision of OLPC. Founder Nicholas Negroponte does argue that in many of these countries, a large percentage of kids never get the opportunity to go to school, so providing them with a laptop is in a sense giving them a school in a box, which is far better than nothing. That does make sense to me.

But the OLPC program, if it’s competitor Intel doesn’t do it in first, will likely only have a chance of success in semi-poor countries like Brazil and Thailand, with some basic infrastructure, and not so much in Niger or Nicaragua, with little. You’d think booming, technology-loving India would embrace something like OLPC, but last year they decided to spend their education money on other things, like books, paper and pencils — so far the only tools proven to actually increase student achievement. But I digress, again.

Only by selling the XO to developing nations in HUGE quantities can the endeavor be sustainable and the price come down to anywhere near affordable, which has been targeted at $100.00 per XO (still a lot for a poor country to spend). If not enough nations decide to buy the machines by the millions, the XO will never be affordable, to anyone: the prototype will never lead to mass production. And that would be a shame, because even though I am supportive although skeptical that the XO will prove a success in achieving it’s original goal in the near future, the XO and Classmate PC seem to be ideal school laptops for the DEVELOP-ED worlds’ schools, today. They are simple and rugged, and would be inexpensive if enough schools in, say, North America and Europe would commit to purchasing them.

Now I’m sure someone could politically correct me and say “Steve, you should be ashamed of yourself for suggesting essentially that the Developed world should “steal” these laptops from the Developing world,” but I’m not saying that. Though I hope OLPC is a success, I’m skeptical that the price per XO can come down enough to make it’s original objective possible. So instead of letting what I think is probably a great technology fade away, perhaps schools in the DEVELOP-ED world, who are also in need of this type of laptop, can provide OLPC with enough business so that somewhere down the road, it may have a better chance of reaching it’s original goal of large-scale implementation in the DEVELOP-ING world.

For more on OLPC, the XO and Intel’s Classmate, check out this segment from CBS’s 60 Minutes, which aired on May 20, 2007. It makes me want to cheer Negroponte and his dream of OLPC, and hiss at Intel and that greedy-seeming b$*&@!d, but who knows the real truth behind it all.

Ouch. Did I just say that? Aren’t I supposed be a technology “evangelist,” a super-geek promoter of all things computer-centric, bleeding-edge and complicated? Aren’t I “HiTechHall,” after all?

Well yes. And no. I AM an evangelist for using “appropriate” technology in order to make life and learning simpler and more enriching. Let’s face it, even a Luddite would agree that technology is rapidly changing our lives and “flattening the world,” to use Friedman’s too-often quoted term. Schools need someone on staff to help interpret, translate and integrate all of these new tools and techniques into meaningful learning modules. But I am far from a connoisseur of technology for it’s own sake. In fact, my style is to hang back from the bleeding-edge while closely monitoring other schools that are brave, moneyed or foolish enough to risk being technology early-adopters. They say that wisdom comes from learning from mistakes, right?

One technology development I’ve been watching for awhile now has been the establishment of laptops in schools, in a move toward so called “one-to-one” computing. The idea sounds good to me, which is to use laptops to provide a new platform for learning that offers much more than textbooks can, while incorporating all sorts of useful communication, collaboration and research capabilities. But maybe educators are starting to realize that laptops in schools are not such a great idea after all, as evidenced by these two recent articles:

• “Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops” New York Times

• “Laptops in Class Not Necessarily Helping Study” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix

And I could have told them so. Though I will only focus on one part of the problem − maintenance — after several years of struggling with laptops as a technology coordinator at a large magnet school in the US, I gave up on the idea of moving toward a one-to-one program. The bottom line is that k-12 students are just too punishing on these delicate devices. The maintenance costs for broken screens and keyboards, neither of which are normally covered under warranties, are astronomical − and these are by far the most common forms of laptop damage in schools.

My school had several sets of wireless COWS (Computers on Wheels) carts, Mac and PC, and at any one time 25-75% of the machines where inoperable, despite huge outlays of money and time constantly troubleshooting and repairing them. Other machines mysteriously disappeared, batteries were defective (especially in the Macs) and the wireless routers almost never worked, so students had to go hunting for Cat-5 cables and Ethernet ports wherever they could find them. They also had to make sure an electrical outlet was close by to compensate for the poor battery performance. Cables and wires were strewn everywhere, creating hazards and mayhem throughout the school. And this was and is still a common problem according to many other technology educators I talk to.

Things got so bad that our technology committee decided to salvage what we could of the laptops and then use a cable lock to fasten the surviving laptops to desks, in effect creating a “desktop” out of a more expensive laptop. Not an ideal solution, but I bet that those machines, chained up as they are, are still being used for learning by students today.

Look, there is no doubt that the convenience and portability of laptops is hands down a great improvement on stationary, immobile desktop computers, in theory. I certainly recommend laptops for administrator and teacher use, and I use laptops myself. And at home, I know most students do as well. But in reality, when the school is footing the bill, the solid, immobile desktop is still the most practical solution and investment for student use.

I look forward to the day when the price of “bullet-proof” laptops, such as the Panasonic ToughBook, used in law enforcement and the military, drops to something more affordable. As I’m sure that anyone who is reading this (is anyone reading this?) who has experience teaching middle schoolers will agree that that environment can often resemble a near war zone. When schools can afford Toughbooks, I will be the first to jump on the one-to-one bandwagon. For now, I’ll sit back and watch the laptop mayhem continue at the early-adopter schools, sitting safely behind my clunky Dell GX620.