One Laptop Per Child Featured at CGD Global Development MeetUp

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project sounds like a great idea: send cheap ($200), hardy laptops to kids in developing countries around the world, then sit back and wait for the educational dividends to come rolling in for years to come. But as we saw at last night's MeetUp event, the XO laptop has not been universally lauded and embraced by technologists or education ministries, despite the obvious geek appeal and the potential economic benefits of having a computer-literate population.The panelists were all OLPC advocates, including software developer Jonathan Blocksom, OLPC Learning Club DC-organizer Mike Lee, web strategist Justin Thorp and OLPCNews.com publisher Wayan Vota. But despite their evident interest in the project they weren't reluctant to point out its shortcomings. Aside from the technical discussion and Intel's abrupt withdrawal from the project, panelists and audience-members alike focused on two major public policy issues: how to finance investment in the laptops, and whether this investment would even really be a good idea.The original business model for OLPC called for education ministries to purchase the laptops in blocks of 1 million to make the most of economies of scale and limit sales overhead. But as Wayan Vota pointed out, full implementation -- one laptop per child -- would mean devoting countries' entire education budgets, if not most of government revenue, to such purchases. To its credit, OLPC has lowered the minimum purchase rapidly as governments have balked at the cost, and now anyone can purchase the XO laptop for a child in a developing country. Nonetheless, major government purchases are still the only hope for laptop saturation, one of the guiding principals of OLPC.Beyond the up-front costs, members of the audience asked whether investment in laptops should be a priority, or if they would even really be useful educational tools, in countries where basic educational infrastructure is lacking. Without additional funding, such as from multilateral funders or aid agencies, laptop purchases would necessarily displace other spending, such as spending on school construction or teacher training. This places a very heavy burden on the implicit assumption that kids + laptops = learning and the intuition that "children learn by doing and making," the fundamental argument of the constructionist educational philosophy that informs the project. On the other hand, Justin Thorpe argued that the laptops would give students greater access to educational materials like the Library of Congress' digital collection, especially as foreign-language materials are added.Still, notwithstanding that laptops will never substitute for teachers, that the financing is complicated and and that some technological issues have yet to be solved, the project continues to move forward. For me, it's hard not feel inspired by the idea that putting laptops in the hands of poor kids around the world could make serendipitous learning and unintended innovation possible in the most unexpected places. Certainly last night's audience loved playing with the little green laptops.Sign up for our future CGD Global Development MeetUp events at MeetUp.com.