OLPC 2011-2012 research/papers
This page provides reviews and links to reports and research OLPC related. The material includes evaluations and follow up on OLPC deployments and research regarding One Laptop per Child projects
Contents
2011-2012
Warschauer 2012
Warschauer, M., Cotten, S.R., Ames, M.G. (2012) One Laptop per Child Birmingham: Case Study of a Radical Experiment. Massachusetts Institue of Technology. International Journal of Learning and Media. Volume 3, Issue 2, pp. 61-76
The article presents findings regarding a study on the OLPC Birmingham deployment, an initiative that put 15.000 XO laptops in the hands of students from first to fifth grade on primary level. The paper offers a great overview and background on OLPC as well as the specific features of the Birmingham 2008 OLPC deployment. The research includes an interesting body of research on 1:1 projects that offers a good view of potential positive, neutral and negative impacts of such initiatives and that is worthy to read.
- Statistics:
1. 15.000 XO laptops
2. Two focal schools (for multisite study)
3. First - fifth primary school grades
4. 95% African-American students
5. 3 states (multisite study) Birmingham, Colorado and California
- Methodology:
1. A pre-post survey
2. A multisite case of study
a. 25 hours classroom observation
b. 30 interviews to teachers, students and staff
c. District wide survey for teachers and students
d. Students online writing samples analyses
- Findings:
The paper classifies the findings into three main areas:
- Low level of interest and use by teachers and schools.
Although the authors recognize that some of the results could be overstated, an interesting analyses on low level of laptop usage in the classroom with an 80.3% of surveyed students indicating they never used the XO at school (20.4%) or use them a little (59.9%) with just a 19.7% using it often at school. These findings are contrastive to the ones found on the two other sites where students reported a 2 – 1.8 hours average usage.
- Inadequate social and technical infrastructure
Lack of sufficient teacher training prior to deployment, absence of a support system inside and outside the school, no connectivity as well as critics around the hardware are among the findings.
- Types of XO use
Interesting data from the post-test survey that suggests laptop ownership does not increase the use of the laptops for design or academic purposes.
- Discussion:
The Technocentric Approach, Child Ownership and the XO laptop hardware were identified as the main characteristics that differed from other laptop initiatives and that could be directly related with the “unimpressive results” of the OLPC Birmingham program.
Mora, Barragán & Urrea 2012 (Unpublished)
Mora, A., Barragán, S., Urrea, C. (2012) Forthcoming. Ed-Media Conference 2012. The One to One Model, One Laptop per Child, On the Strengthening of Education and Culture.
