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One Laptop Per Child: Vision Vs. Reality

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One Laptop Per Child: Vision Vs. Reality contributed articles DOI:10.1145/1516046.1516063 Although some developing coun- The vision is being overwhelmed by the reality tries are indeed deploying OLPC lap- tops, others have cancelled planned of business, politics, logistics, and competing deployments or are waiting on the interests worldwide. results of pilot projects before decid- ing whether to acquire them in num- BY KENNETH L. KRAEMER, JASON DEDRICK, AND PRAKUL SHARMA bers. Meanwhile, the OLPC organiza- tion (www.olpc.com/) struggles with key staff defections, budget cuts, and ideological disillusionment, as it ap- pears to some that the educational One Laptop mission has given way to just getting laptops out the door. In addition, low- cost commercial netbooks from Acer, Asus, Hewlett-Packard, and other PC Per Child: vendors have been launched with great early success. So rather than distributing millions of laptops to poor children itself, OLPC Vision vs. has motivated the PC industry to devel- op lower-cost, education-oriented PCs, providing developing countries with low-cost computing options directly in Reality competition with OLPC’s own innova- tion. In that sense, OLPC’s apparent failure may be a step toward broader ANIEL ARCE, 12. OLPC, 13. CARLA DRAKE, 11. RODOLFO GOMEZ OLPC, 15. NIELS 14. MONROY, OLSON success in providing a new tool for children in developing countries. How- ever, it is also clear that the PC industry cannot profitably reach millions of the poorest children, so the OLPC objec- tives might never be achieved through AT THE WORLD Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the commercial market alone. Here, we review and analyze the January 2005, Nicholas Negroponte unveiled the idea OLPC experience, focusing on the two of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), a $100 PC that would most important issues: the successes transform education for the world’s disadvantaged and failures of OLPC in understand- ing and adapting to the developing- schoolchildren by giving them the means to teach country environment and the unex- themselves and each other. He estimated that up pectedly aggressive reaction by the PC to 150 million of these laptops could be shipped industry, including superpowers Intel and Microsoft, to defeat or co-opt the 4 annually by the end of 2007. With $20 million in OLPC effort. startup investment, sponsorships and partnerships OLPC created a novel technology, the XO laptop, developed with close at- with major IT industry players, and interest from tention to the needs of students in poor developing countries, the nonprofit OLPC project rural areas. Yet it failed to anticipate generated excitement among international leaders the social and institutional problems that could arise in trying to diffuse that and the world media. Yet as of June 2009 only a few innovation in the developing-country hundred thousand laptops have been distributed context. In addition, OLPC has been stymied by underestimating the ag- (they were first available in 2007), and OLPC has been gressive reaction of the PC industry to forced to dramatically scale back its ambitions. the perceived threat of a $100 laptop FROM THE TOP 1. CARLA BY: LEFT PHOTOGRAPH GOMEZ DRAKE, 3–5 ONE LAPTOP 2. DANIEL MONROY, DRAKE, 7–9 OLPC, 10. D 6. DANIEL PER CHILD, 66 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM | JUNE 2009 | VOL. 52 | NO. 6 JUNE 2009 | VOL. 52 | NO. 6 | COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM 67 contributed articles Worldwide distribution of XO laptops. being widely distributed in places the industry sees as emerging markets for its own products. The case of OLPC can be seen as a study in the general diffusion of in- novation in developing countries. Our X analysis draws on diffusion-of-innova- tion theory, exemplified by Rogers,18 and illustrates the difficulty in getting X X widespread adoption of even proven X innovation due to misunderstanding X X X X X the social and cultural environment X in which the innovation is to be intro- X X X duced. We also bring to bear specific X insights from the literature on adop- X tion of IT in developing countries,2,25 using them to analyze the OLPC experi- ence and draw implications for devel- opers and policymakers. Actual Date of Actual Deployment The original OLPC vision was to Country OLPC Web sitea Deployments Information/Detail change education through the develop- Uruguay 202,000 150,000 November 2008b ment and distribution of low-cost lap- Peru 145,000 40,000 100,000 in distributionc tops embodying a new learning model to every child in the developing coun- Mexico 50,000 50,000 Starting to be shippedd tries. Despite shifting over time, it can e Haiti 13,000 Dozens Pilot began in summer 2008 be characterized by the following text Afghanistan 11,000 450 Expected to rise to 2010f from the OLPC charter: “OLPC is not, Mongolia 10,100 3,000 G1G1 laptops beneficiaryg at heart, a technology program, nor is Rwanda 16,000 10,000 Arrived, not deployed; the XO a product in any conventional infrastructure issuesh sense of the word. OLPC is a nonprofit Nepal 6,000 6,000 Delivered April 2007i organization providing a means to Ethiopia 5,000 5,000 Three schoolsj an end—an end that sees children in even the most remote regions of the Paraguay 4,000 150 4,000 planned next quarterk globe being given the opportunity to l Cambodia 3,200 1,040 January 29, 2009 tap into their own potential, to be ex- Guatemala 3,000 — Planned before posed to a whole world of ideas, and third quarter 2009m to contribute to a more productive Colombia 2,600 1,580 January 25, 2009n; and saner world community” (www. agreement to buy 65,000 XOso olpcnews.com/people/negroponte/ p Brazil 2,600 630 February 6, 2009 new_olpc_mission_statement.html). India 505 31 January 20, 2009q Conceived and led by Nicholas Ne- a OLPC numbers include “XO’s delivered, shipped, or ordered” but do not groponte, a former director of MIT’s distinguish between these categories; wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployments Media Lab, OLPC aimed to achieve its b Tabare, V. Uruguay: When education meets technology. Miami Herald (Nov. 22, 2008), A21. vision through extraordinary innova- c Peru on the up and up, lessons to be learned. Business News Americas (Dec. 18, 2008). d www.bnamericas.com/story.xsql?id_sector=1&id_noticia=431002&Tx_idioma=I&source= tion in hardware and software that e www.olpceu.org/content/xo_stories/haiti/Haiti.html fosters self-learning and fits with the f www.olpcnews.com/countries/afghanistan/olpc_afghanistan_first_school_day.html often-harsh environment in develop- g www.olpceu.org/content/xo_stories/mongolia/Mongolia.html ing countries. The hardware was to h www.olpceu.org/content/xo_stories/rwanda/Rwanda.html be a $100 laptop that would make af- i www.olpceu.org/content/xo_stories/nepal/Nepal.html fordable the large-scale deployment of j http://www.olpceu.org/content/xo_stories/ethiopia/Ethiopia.html computer networks in their schools. k Bucaramanga computers, OLPC,Gemalto. Business News Americas (Feb. 9, 2009). l wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Cambodia The XO laptop developed by OLPC m wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Guatemala reflects hardware innovation in the n wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Colombia power supply, display, networking, o PIlar Saenz, OLPC Volunteer in Colombia (email) keyboard, and touchpad to provide a p download.laptop.org/content/conf/20080520-country-wkshp/Presentations/OLPC%20Country%20 durable and interactive laptop (see the Meeting%20-%20Day%204%20-%20May%2023rd,%202008/Brazil%20-%20Jose%20Aquino%20 -%20Govt%20of%20Brazil.ppt#266,8,Slide 8 figure here). The shell of the machine is q www.olpceu.org/content/xo_stories/india/India.html resistant to dirt and moisture, with all key parts designed to fit behind the dis- play. It contains a pivoting, reversible, 68 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM | JUNE 2009 | VOL. 52 | NO. 6 contributed articles dual-mode (monochrome for outside, ers in the villages and support from the color for indoors) display, movable rub- national education ministry and re- ber WiFi antennas with wireless mesh gional governors who have requested networking, and a sealed rubber-mem- 500,000 more laptops.9 However, re- brane keyboard that can be customized ports from the classroom suggest that for different languages. For low power Expecting a laptop teacher training is limited, and willing- consumption and ruggedness, the XO to cause such ness to adopt a new approach to teach- design intentionally omits all motor- ing is questionable. Children are excit- driven moving parts. It was developed revolutionary ed but somewhat confused about the jointly by the MIT Media Lab, OLPC, change showed use of the machines, and educational and Quanta, a Taiwan-based original software is lacking or difficult to use. design manufacturer, and is manufac- a degree of Also, if a machine fails, it is up to the tured by Quanta in Songjiang, China. naiveté, even for family to replace it or the child must do The software for the XO consists of without.20 a pared-down version of the Fedora Li- an organization nux operating system and specially de- Targeted Cost signed graphical user interface called with the best Despite its considerable innovation, or Sugar. It was developed by the project to intentions and perhaps because of it, the OLPC proj- explore naturalistic concepts related to ect has been unable to achieve its $100 learning, openness, and collaboration.a smartest people. targeted cost. The current cost of each unit is listed on the OLPC Website as Pilot Implementation $199 (www.laptop.org/en/participate/ High-level officials, including even ways-to-give.shtml). However, this does prime ministers and education minis- not include upfront deployment costs, ters, in some developing countries are which are said to add an additional enthusiastic about OLPC, committed 5%–10% to the cost of each machine to purchases and/or trial-distribution (wiki.laptop.org/go/Larger_OLPC), projects.
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