OLE Bolivia/Deployment guide/Management Notes

notes for intended XO deployment of 700-1.000 units in early 2009.

For management and decision-makers in the project.
 
Actual deployment notes for in-field use will be developed separately, inspired on this document, OLE Nepal's, and other reliable sources.

Elements

Hardware

Currently Functional:

prima facie the strength of an XO deployment is the hardware component of the XO itself. Sturdy, low-energy needs, excellent screen, wi-fi. Besides good basic specs also good "extras", such as a camera, microphone USB and SD card ports. Easy to repair, to expand storage memory. Great all-around educational machine, usable even for real-life professional needs if you are tolerant of a few quirks.

Challenges:

A server is necessary for almost anything beyond green-bricks-under-a-tree scenarios. The highly-touted "mesh" is unstable, hardly operational. XOs need access points and a server to become useful for collaboration and easy updating, and any intended use of the Internet. Anti-theft security has to be enabled in deployments with school children.

Internationally some difficulties have come up with charging the machines. Charging racks are HIGHLY recommended, but gang-chargers are inpractical, and human-powered charging devices a folly. Solar possible at $60-$100 per unit, maybe less at institutional level.

Policies to assure maintenance and discouraging semi-intentional damage needed - there is great success in places where community involvement is fostered, as in Nepal, but dismal situation in places where the approach is top-down, such as in Uruguay (30%+ broken machines reported in some schools during first year).

Adding an external keyboard enables use by adults (should be standard issue for teachers). External mouse makes less painful the use of some programs, as touchpad issues tend to be the #1 hardware issue reported in-field. A set of speakers per every 30/50 units would enable Tam-Tam music making to become a school band. A printer attached to the server would allow teachers to print some, though I discourage it being enabled for student use because of cost/maintenance considerations.

An SD card per machine highly recommended, as well as a couple USB flash sticks per teacher, both to enable asynchronic network-less updating of educational content and uploading of student production - XO-to-XO and XO-to-server networking seems to be currently not a fully solved issue, though having improved lately through software.

Logistics:

Hardware-wise, deployment can have several stages:

  1. server-less, network-less sola machina implementations.  The biggest challenge here is updating content and software, and collaboration is limited to mesh-only or sneaker-net, via SD or USB flash memory.  Anti-theft security schemes are hard to enforce at this stage, but possible in institutional settings (manual weekly reflash of permit data).
  2. Adding wi-fi router/access points would enable a local LAN to operate, probably improving Sugar collaboration capabilities.  If these access points were connected to the Internet, some web browsing can be available.  MAC address filtering probably can be used to prioritize teacher access and to avoid overwhelming such limited Internet access.
  3. The addition of a server completes a basic school or WAN setup.  The server can store data outright and through proxy caching, serve local web pages within the WAN, allow much wider possibilities of interaction, and facilitate content delivery and software updates.  It can host reliable and adaptable Internet filters, as well as email and backup services.

   * The role of the Internet:
     my vision is that it is great to have it, if the cost is affordable.  Implementations where all children are expected to access a given live web page at the same time find out quickly that this doesn't work; the pipelines get clogged, huge delays ensue and the experience is frustrating at best.  Systems with proxy setups on a local server are better. 
     VSAT costs are very hard to justify.  Any alternative costing more than 5 cents USD per day per child is probably not the best allocation of resources - that money would be better used elsewhere, such as in content creation.
   * Set up expenses associated to hardware, sorted by cost:
         o XOs
         o Server + power surge prevention (essential!!!)
         o access points
         o UPS for server
         o theft-deterrent security for server / access points (cage bolted to walls, etc)
         o wiring improvements for server, access points, XO charge points
         o USB keyboards for teachers
         o USB flash sticks for teachers
         o Screwdrivers for XO repair (2 per school)
         o Bags? for the kids? backpacks?      Q: Where will you charge the XO's? in a gang charger?
         o optional nice-to-haves
         o USB mouse (2-5 per classroom)
         o SD cards, one per XO
         o speakers (10 per "school band") 
         o printer connected to server
   * Recurring expenses
               + XO maintenance and repair (2% - 5% total of XOs yearly)
               + Server setup, update, service
               + Maintenance of other hardware as needed
               + electricity
               + connectivity
               + printer supplies (easy to get out of hand!)

Software

Currently Functional:

Sugar is a notable tour-de-force that get getting better, and since its development was taken over by Sugarlabs it has enabled conceptual expansion of the paradigm to USB-stick and CD based Sugar options for use in standard PCs besides XOs.

Sugar is designed to be easy to create Activities for, has good modularity in making localization an attainable goal, and is the best as an OEM option for XO computers.

Localizing Sugar gives the best possibilities for invigorating Native languages and cultures, as actual current technology and education tools become available and learning can happen in a child's own language, thus adding quality of education beyond basic already available literacy programs in Idiomas Originarios.

Challenges:

Implementation in many places suffered early setbacks due to a "one-stop" mentality regarding Sugar. Separate content elements are not only needed, but re-assessing Sugar specifically as a user-interface rather than a complete suite of elements will make it more useful in the long haul.

While localization in Sugar is easier than with other UIs, both proprietary and open, it still can be a daunting project and expensive in cost and especially human-hours, even though most of it by necessity has to be done with volunteers.

Usability of Journal and its interfacing with Activities, networking and sharing is still insufficient and inconvenient.

Logistics:

There are also several stages in implementing software options. Sugar, which comes bundled OEM with XOs, is especially designed to use the capabilities of XOs to the best advantage. Many deployments have found it convenient to create some Activity packages of their own also.

Steps

  1. Use the XOs as they are. 
     Often by the time you get your XOs, they already are due for an update, so it is good to be prepared for that.
     Updating Sugar on-the-fly wirelessly is supposed to be possible and extremely easy.  However, most often administrators have preferred to reflash the system using a USB memory stick.  This erases everything in memory.  After initial deployment, if children are actually using the computers for something useful, some way to back up their data is necessary.  This seldom becomes a problem in most other deployments, where the use of XOs is trivial, and little of value is lost if everything is reset.  SD cards can deal with whatever minor need exists until reliable Server-side options are available.
  2. Add certain Activities.  Especially those linked to useful educational content
  3. Create deployment-specific Activities
  4. Hack into the Sugar system itself.  HIGHLY not recommended.  Done by Uruguay, thus making Uruguay the hardest place to update software for.

Localization:

Localization can be a major challenge, while also the source of much to gain

  1. Most of Sugar is already available for Castillian, but local idiomatic preferences are not, and  what is available has missing spots here and there. This can be handled initially by administrators and a few volunteers.
  2. Bolivia is among the richest countries in the continent in cultural and ethnolinguistic heritage.  Solid, definite and adequately funded and administered initiatives need to address localizing Sugar to Native and New Bolivian languages for use of XOs among those population groups in their own language.

Content

Currently Functional:

Besides the Activities that come with Sugar, there is practically no useful content from a point of view of school needs. Those available Activities might have some limited value from a Constructivist pedagogy point of view, but even then they are very, very limited in their actual usability and possibilities to link with actual school work. Nepal began by consulting with parents and teachers as primary stakeholders and interpreters of the project, and has come up with quite a few tools and sets of content that are in active use and are already showing some success in scholastic attainment by the children - main problem in re-using them in other locales is the need to translate them up from Nepali...

Challenges:

Content is one of the biggest visible needs of the XO implementation concept. Again, Nepal has pioneered in effectively addressing this challenge, while the top-down countries and the OLPC Foundation, after spending enormous amounts of resources are still without even the most basic responses to this problem of lack of usable content.

Conceptually this situation is made worse, and is due to have little success ever, as long as a top-down mentality guides the elaboration of content which fails to breath life into the learning process. Historically and for good as well as bad reasons curricula has been a top-down process, where it seeks to emulate the "expert" by reading his writings - this, of course, disregarding the fact that any study in the act of learning points to an internal process guided by mentoring, somewhat assisted by the availability of static data, but clearly empowered and enlivened by, through, and with human relationships as a catalyst as well as an end result.

Content must be created and be in constant flux by involving the users at every single stage. Expert guides and enablers are certainly part of the equation, yet it is in the act of creation that discernment gets a very early chance to become a modulo for learning, and thus a primary pathway to knowledge and hopefully wisdom.

Said in one line: Content with scholastic value is sorely missing in the OLPC universe. It is needed, and it will be as useful, ultimately, as the community becomes integrated in generating it.

Wetware

"Wetware" refers to the human element in a deployment, as in hardware, software and wetware. In our case this means mostly teachers, but also administrators, volunteers and end-users. Main concerns are training and interfacing with the other elements, and most especially among each other, as in community-building.

Currently Functional:

Basically, if anyone is doing training right, we do not know about it. Nepal has the right attitude in building up training as a response to teacher requests, yet its methodology still is outdated, while still better to many. Community building is barely starting to be addressed as a specific need worthy of attention.

Challenges:

Much has been done as to teacher training, using outdated and legacy methodologies that depend on an expert standing up in front of a classroom instead of being computer-based.

Some has been reported from a few deployments, and what can be surmised from peripheral vision of goings-on at all levels is that among trainees early adopters can be great assets, a few less enthusiastic teachers can be turned around, and the rest... We all love the rest. Nepal again has followed up this issue from the get-go and reported on best practices. Top-down countries proudly tell of anecdotal success and proclaim big leaps, with no objective evidence to support their claims. OLPC Executives follow and support an artisanal expert-based approach that is both expensive, cannot be scaled up or down, and basically misses the point totally, without counting that it is not consistent at all with the proclaimed purposes of the Project. The rest are mostly a big question mark, with very sobering and outstanding data from observations in Ethiopia which explains what can go wrong, displaying an otherwise unusual show of honest scientific mentality in reporting.

Originally as presented by principals of the OLPC Project there seemed to be little concern for teacher training, because "the XO + Internet is enough". This mentality is still in force, for a one-week conference scheduled for January 2009 by the OLPC Foundation intends to devote some (little) time to this problem, but that will be done by USA-based experts whose experience is mostly a couple short term visits under an established corporate tradition of not sharing information, and going off record if it is less than positive.

  1. The role of the teacher needs to be reassessed. I share the vision that the teacher is the interpreter of the school experience, and thus needs to be involved in everything related to the school.  True, much actual learning does happen outside of the classroom, but as long and while the XO experience is part of school proceedings, an active positive role by the teachers is a basic need, and lack thereof becomes tantamount to failure, as proved over and over by independent reports.  In most places that have reported things, currently the teacher is seen at best as a silent, compliant partner, that will do what is needed to be done because he is told to do so by his supervisor. 
     Since XO work is seen as an additional load on already way overloaded teacher work requirements, it is justifiably seen with resentment and mistrust.  Again Nepal is an exception, for work there began by integrating teachers to the decision-making process from the get go.
        1. Gaining teacher buy-in is vital.  Project sponsors and administrators  need teachers be convinced about the tool (XO + software + content) as a learning tool and as a useful tool for real-life use. 
               * Wrong way to go about it:
                    1. tell teachers what to do
                       Nobody EVER has been successful in making quality education available to others if the method is to tell them what to do.
                       Unless ultra-clever reverse psychology is part of the deal, being told what to do only breeds resentment and actually might have some success to the extent some good can come out of willfully rejecting and doing something contrary to what is being told.  Some of those instructions given can be so idiotic that this reverse-process has already shown some unintended good results in Northern Peru.  That accidental event does not show the method is any good.
                       fix: read some Montessori.  Better if you practice it, too, that's part of the point, you cannot ever really learn something until you do it, and even better, until you teach it.
                    2. offer teachers the opportunity and subsidy for them to buy themselves a "real" laptop.
                       Result: children see the XO is a "child machine", really just a toy to outgrow as soon as possible. 
                       fix: get teachers an external keyboard and a mouse, and for crying out loud, you administrators show by example that the XO is useful as a real computer, not just a toy! (this document has been prepared 100% on an ordinary XO, running Sugar)
                    3. Train in conference rooms or classrooms
                       There we talk about how learning with the XO is the Age of Information way, but when it matters, like for training us teachers here, we do it the traditional way, with an expert, often coming from another country, standing up in front of everybody, using a Powerpoint presentation in a big expensive laptop.
                       Result: teachers keep teaching the way they have always done it, as we just proved in fact and in blood that there is one right way to teach:  the traditional way, expert at the dais, all eyes front.  We reinforce that the XO is a toy or a funny gadget, with great potential no doubt, everybody agrees and says so with great conviction, but really nothing can ever replace the blackboard as the real way to teach things and for a kid to learn, except maybe very expensive hardware and even more expensive software.
                       fix: content for learning and training comes both to students and teachers through the XO, maybe with in-person meetings to discuss things over, but definitely not from the magisterial dais.
               * Right way:
                 guide and encourage teachers to believe in the XO as a real computer, useful for learning and more
                    1. Begin by making the teacher training happen through the XO, proving through a medium is the message approach that the XO is something that can be useful for learning. 
                       Result: an early and deep-down connection with the tool as useful, and a conviction that learning happens indeed using XOs.
                       what can go wrong: for those teachers, administrators, volunteers, parents and other stakeholders that had the misfortune to become dependent unto legacy software from That Big Company, Sugar looks "strange", and transitioning can be hard, especially for those who saw themselves as "experts", or worse, who were "trained" in using ICTs for education.  Good patience and understanding how their mental abilities have been damaged can help.  In many ways it is like rehabilitating someone who has gone through long-term trauma or abuse, and similar techniques can be successful.
                       Understanding and helping them see it was not their fault, as well as taking it a day at a time can work wonders.
                    2. Then make it easier than current alternatives for the teacher to use XOs for classwork
                       Classwork already is quite difficult, especially for the really good teachers.  Teachers that complete all they are required to teach are few, the world over, and that without counting grading homework, tests, keeping paperwork...  Make it easier for them to teach, they will become your most enthusiastic allies.  It has been thought that teachers would jump to the possibility to have kids research in Wikipedia, NASA, etc.  That was very shortsighted, as browsing the internet does not help much in completing all the work that is already required and on which the teacher and students will be assessed anyway.
                       to do: suitable tools for content management and evaluation have to be incorporated in the XO implementation.  They must be simpler to use than current book-and-paper alternatives.  It is not necessary at first they be actually better, just that they be easier to assign, use and evaluate.  Then they can be improved upon, once teachers prefer to use the XO to cover a certain curriculum block. 
                       It is useless to offer the best ever content and curriculum if teachers do not use it because it is too inconvenient.
                       initial steps in making content available:
                           o scan current materials.  The current DRM cabal can be a challenge here.
                                 + reverse-engineer some basic stuff,
                                 + scan teacher notes
                                 + scan an older student's notebook
                                 + do not fall into the temptation to scan copyright-protected materials
                           o adapt from Wikipedia, Gutenberg, whatever source for free content you can put your hands on
                           o reverse-engineer current publications.  This is not only legal, it is the accepted way to do new publications.
                       have all of this done mostly by volunteers, encouraged and empowered by a volunteer manager, and maybe with a quality assurance unit managed by hired people but also closely connected to people who come and suggest and improve and become.
                       what can go wrong:
                           o hire experts to do any of this (example: OLPC Learning Team).
                                 + you killed all desire of simpler folks to contribute
                                 + if any still would want to do it, they expect to be paid
                                 + you gave too much power to people who are merely there to do a task, so if some simpler folk comes up with something of value, it will not be taken seriously and discarded, "not made here".
                           o think this is easy
                             content creation is probably the biggest snag on the way to success of the OLPC/XO concept.  Thus and under denial, it is not a problem at all.  Alas, it is a problem, not a trivial one, and to do it right expect this to cost a pretty penny.
                           o "Save" by pirating available copyrighted books or other content.
                             You cannot build honesty and values by breaking the law, whatever excuse you favor. 
                             The DRM and similar laws are unfair, unreasonable, but really bother us only if we allow us to be dependent on proprietary content.  Homespun content can be as good or better than anything that is subject to the laws of Mamnon
                    3. Build self-respect and a community, in policies for administering the project, then among teachers first, then among students.
                       Citizenship is among the few subjects of learning that all educational curricula, the world over, agree on, at least in words.  It is also something innately hard to measure and to give life to.  It can be accepted, though, that it involves responsible involvement of the individual into the affairs of the community, the res publica.  Many less developed countries fail in attaining any level of economic and well-being success not through a complete lack of resources, but because of bad use of what they have or what is given to them.  Individuals are coerced into mindless submission, exploitation and abuse are rampant within the country and from outside of it, abetted by cliques, corruption, and desperate poverty.
                       The XO/Sugar tool offers many possibilities already built-in and the potential for world-changing community building and accomplishment that constructs self respect, but most of those tools never have a chance to be of any use. 
                       To begin with, it is felt as if Executives have a very top-down approach to decision-making, encouraging the same type of behaviors that are the bane of poor countries, such as "amiguismo" (friends-of-friends of executives get a chance for special deals, disconnected individuals are out of luck), secrecy (decisions are made behind closed doors, information that could help others is never made public or published grudgingly, as a matter of practice if not of policy), lack of public accountability, as to details on use of funds and budgeting, hiring is not advertised but dealt with by insiders...  Feels much like a fictional Banana Republic, while the avowed goal is to support quality education, of the kind that will end up with the causes that create such behaviors -in others...
                       Local as well as international Executives and project administrators should be aware of and have a strong conviction against not just what actually are illegal and unfair practices, but even the appearance of such.  Countries deep in corruption, which coincidentally happen to be the countries where education is the farthest behind, and the digital divide the deepest, are precisely the ones where any chance of change in education has to begin by a change in management practices, away from the as-usual hanky-panky, on to substantive increase of trust and honesty.
                           o In practice this means an obsessive approach to transparency and public accountability coming from management, where everything that can be made available for others to look at and discuss is in plain sight.  I am convinced that going overboard as to this area will pay off handsomely in achieving one major, crucial learning objective in developing countries: incorporating tools and living the day-to-day use of best practices of resource accountability.  No foreign aid project will ever be successful in many countries unless this gets to happen, and it might be the one element we can introduce that might make the most impact the fastest.
                           o For the teachers, collaboration begins when during teacher training educators are introduced first to the "chat" tool, and enabled (though XO-based learning modules, not conferences or lectures) in figuring out the need for moderation, respect, and honesty, the risks thereof, and the way a mature user of that kind of tool is supportive of others and shares what he thinks.
                           o Then we can start work with content-creation. 
                                 + Teachers need to be encouraged early and often to see themselves as creators of knowledge.  It is absurd to expect them to do likewise for kids if they themselves still think that knowledge is something that comes from set-apart experts in Capital City or beyond. 
                                 + The real goal of course is for kids to see knowledge as something they are owners of.  This is important because in the Age of Information, knowledge equals wealth.  For kids to get there, across the board and in depth, we first need teachers that feel comfortable with that role of ownership themselves.
                                 + No doubt the content-creation tools of Sugar are clumsy and very much a work in progress: I am working on this document on Googledocs not out of a conviction for Google tools, but because Write is still very limited and usability-challenged especially as to Styles and shortcuts.
                           o Later teachers get to be exposed to and some eventually achieve mastery of other collaboration tools.  Moodle has a hearty start thanks to ML's work, and while it has been discussed to death, seems to be the best alternative for sharing content right now.
                       What can go wrong:
                           o It would be infantile but not unheard of to have an expectation that all teachers will  now pull up their sleeves and get on to elaborate a national curriculum and appropriate content right away, and have that ready by First Day this school year.  Yes, it would be nice.  No, it will not happen, especially with lecture "trained" teachers, especially with the current state of tools. 
                           o To begin with, teachers are not motivated to elaborate content
                             they will not even try unless they gain a deep conviction
                                 + of the usefulness of the XO tool,
                                 + of their own can-do attitude
                                 + of trusting their skill in using the content-building tools
                           o Next, the currently available tools are totally ungainly, both for building content as to delivering it to the kids, not even counting evaluation of use and learning.  Some extraordinarily gifted teachers have done some, about five or six out of over 20.000 already involved in the project.
                       Administrators have resorted to "cheating" - they hire tech developers to fill in the gap.  A crying example is Intel's Classmate content project, which after spending a couple small fortunes can barely show a few demo activities, some of which are  actually wrong as to the data they pretend to teach.  Otherwise some volunteer or outside developers have done a few other demos for open source projects, like Gcompris, MaMaMedia and such.  Nothing yet that is 1) connected to a country's official curriculum 2) integrated to the user community.
                       The solution here is multifold. 
                           o Teachers need enabling, in pectore among administrators that there is no actual expectation that they will all respond. 
                           o Teachers need to have something to gain, especially in the beginning, but any rewards should be carefully nursed so they do not become the reason for the action. 
                           o Teachers need to be able to work on easy-to-use tools, that do not add insult to injury to their work, willingness and involvement.
                       While the currently available tools are limited, some good can be achieved even under Write, and that effort should be done.  Basically a few templates would be a good start, and the tools to enter and process the information.  Maybe something web-based (run through the school server) might be even better, but the promises of Moodle are still to come to bear fruit.
                       There is a great need for professional hand-holding here, through community enablers or community catalysts whose role and heart desire is to see teachers being successful at building community and  creating content. Alas, this is an inexact science even when the weather is good, more an art form than an easily replicable and scalable process.  Yet we know enough about it to be able to predict and expect reasonable good results if humble and respectful relationships are built by the administrators reaching out to the users.  Extraordinary results still need some unknown aji or veishe.
                           o The initial community-building goal is to get people to open up, to participate in a safe environment where respectfully voicing opinions is seen by others as a good thing. 
                           o Ultimately we want to see people who can reinforce the democratic process in their own countries and pass on these skills at sharing, listening, helping each other in getting community consensus, compromise and as necessary also respectful disagreement. 
                           o The challenge is in established patterns of "no te metás", the wisdom older nails have not to show up their head for otherwise they might get it whacked right back in.
                       When kept safe, encouraging and empowering. eventually people do rise up to leadership in these communities that run on email lists, wikis and blogs. 
                       These were normal people, people who otherwise would never have had a chance to exercise their God given skills to lead, foster and empower others, and now they are doing it!
                       If access to a dynamics of learning and growth is possible, people do grow.  If they are kept dependent by top-down structures, they will not, and administrators will only have themselves to blame, which anyway would be a moot point, for top-down administrators do not expect much of people and thus do not get much out of people, and are happy to blame people for, according to them, people do not want to grow or improve their lot, and thus people need forever their expert and benevolent rule.  That management style is a self-fulfilling prophesy, and the alternative, that trusting people to grow gets people to grow, will bear its own fruits in season.

Partnerships

We are seeking to work with all other interested in implementing this concept for Bolivia.

Chronologically we have built contacts with the following persons and institutions to move this project forward:

OLPC Community

     Maybe the most extraordinary happening about the OLPC concept is the community of volunteers that has risen around it andd sometimes on the side

SCELinux

Estamos en La Paz Bolivia