One Laptop Per Child Talks

In May 2006, Tom Munnecke interviewed Michail Bletsas at the NetSquared Conference about One laptop Per Child and the role of technology in education, the design of the laptop, and the technologies be developed. Roland Berger from Club of Rome makes a cameo at the end.

The transcript of the interview of Michail Bletsas:

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TM: This is Tom Munnecke with Michail Bletsas from the MIT Media Lab, and we’re talking about a, the $100 Laptop Per Child project. We’ve been talking about this on some other video blogs, by the way.

But, the question I have, has to do with the difference between good intentions and net benefit that’s delivered. And if I were a woman in Nepal, living on $50.00 per year, would I want other people to invest in a $100.00 laptop for my child?

And my concern is (inaudible name) a very powerful and charismatic leader, whose brother is a UN Ambassador, (inaudible name) who knows Kofi Anon. And there’s a tremendous upsurge of putting down technology and funding and political power behind this, which can be very positive.

And the MIT Media Lab is developing some very innovative technology here, but when it actually gets into field, what’s the feedback loop to know that this is a net beneficial activity?

MB: First of all, the laptop is not as it sounds. We (inaudible).

MB: We think what we are not going to do is put down. And try to use any kind of political connection that says, you know, we think the laptop is the best way to go. This is a full laptop. We chose (inaudible) pilot council in the beginning, just to be geographically diverse, to be big, so the expense for the laptop, one may (inaudible words).

MB: It’s a different thing talking about Nigeria…

MB: ...which has a hundred twenty million people and lots of (inaudible). The different thing we are talking about Nepal. There are very few people and very few natural resources.

MB: We don’t think the laptop is by itself…

MB: …a panacea, or it’s going to solve a lot of problems, unless it goes into a more holistic, if you want, framework. (inaudible) use the laptop in Niger.

MB: If you can use it in Nigeria, we think we can use it in Nigeria, and it’s going to make a big difference in Nigeria, it’s about time for Nigeria to be more (inaudible) and we can put other things in Nigeria’s spot.

MB: But, yes, putting it in Niger…

MB: … is going to be a lot more tolerated. That’s why (inaudible words) because we don’t know exactly how to do it. On the other hand, we do believe that access to information does include life. We do believe that giving kids…

TM: Keep talking.

MB: We do believe that giving kids a platform,

MB: …on top of which, they can practice construction is learning. Will improve education whether the teacher are trained or not. It will do immensely more good, if the teachers are trained, definitely. But it is a way, also to get away from not having good teachers, good libraries…

MB: …with materials, educational materials in a lot of places,

MB: just the e-book.

MB: Yeah. It’s what gets (inaudible ) education solved completely. And we also think in order to get yourself into the new era,…

MB: …you don’t have to go through all the evolutionary stages.

MB: You don’t have to go through everything that the Western world went through. So the laptop is a way for some of the kids to (inaudible) into the new era. Now, do we, are we absolutely, positively sure…

MB:… that the laptop is going to have a positive effect on each and every one of the kids that it’s going to get that? No. And they can’t tell that. But we think that it’s going to have a positive effect to the majority.

TM: And how, how are…What’s your feedback mechanism? How will you evaluate this and know if you’re going in a positive direction or not?

MB: That’s a health question. This is an education al project.

MB: And as an educational project, you either have to do testing…

MB: …at the end of the year, but we don’t think is going to measure…

MB:…the qualities that the laptop is trying to instill in kids.

MB: And it’s also driven by governments. And governments also have to show results in four year periods, in the good places of the world. The bad places of the world, usually they don’t care.

MB: So, it is a health question. And we’re trying to put, localized measures in place by the government’s exam.

MB: This is not something that we are going to go and tell them, measure this. Now, I can give you some examples though.

MB: From the state of Maine. The state of Maine is probably the world’s largest, not largest anymore, because it’s (inaudible) as other places…

MB: But it’s a large one laptop per child experiment.

MB: It’s not been done in our ideal way.

MB: It’s only been done in grades six and seven. But once thing that’s immediately obvious was language skills have improved.

MB: Typing skills have improved. Because the kids have a lot more…

MB: …enticing ways to practice that. Truancy has gone up dramatically. That’s not something…

TM: Has gone up or down?

MB: Up. I mean people don’t drop,…

TM: Drop out. Okay.

MB: …don’t drop out. Sorry, my English is not perfect. So those are not things that are measured by the standardized tests. And if they are measured, they take time for that to seep in. So those are the things that we want governments…

MB: … to learn. And also, the laptop at the end of the day, if you really want to be successful, it’s not about teaching kids what they should know.

MB: It’s teaching them how to learn what they don’t at the end.

TM: Yeah. Right.

MB: And that‘s what the piece that we are trying to fill that has not been filled by traditional education.

TM: So where is the content for this coming from? Is it being generated by the kids, themselves? Do you have curriculum? Uh, where is that coming from?

MB: Uh, by nature.

MB: You have to have curriculum. You have to have software, my favorite one just because of my experience going through school where I went through physics class, which was my favorite class.

MB: Having done three experiments…

MB:…my whole school year.

MB: By having the laptop, I think, will do tremendous things for that kind of teaching. You also need multiple books and we need to work on royalties there, and things like that to get the content in place. That solves the lack of materials to a large extent, in the developing world, where most of the cost is actual distribution of physical books, which doesn’t happen. And the third, my big hope is make the kids develop content. I think this is really, that is really fundamental. I mean that’s a big deal.

TM: Interesting. Do you have any ideas for peer to peer learning models, Lancaster Method or online where kids teach each other, or you could have a tutor or mentor from MIT, teaching a high school kid Physics in Niger, or whatever?

MB: That’s teleteaching, if you want. I’m mostly concerned in kids doing their homework, for example, in an apartment building or in a village somewhere. And being able to talk with a child and ask questions with each other. I think that teamwork is really important.

MB: I think it’s also very important getting bigger assignments…

MB: … that none of them can tackle one by one, and the laptop being the platform by which they collaborate.

TM: I see. (inaudible) type the model. Are they shareable or they networkable?

MB: Yes, yes, yes. That’s the one piece that actually we are putting a lot of effort as an OLPC, as a non profit. We are actually putting resources into getting a nice, easy to use (inaudible) platform on every laptop,…

TM: I see.

MB: …so that 50 kids can actually (inaudible) without having to go through special servers, special publics in software, things like that.

TM: Do you have a camera, video camera at all?

MB: That’s the big fight, internal fight right now. It’s a (inaudible words). We want to have a camera exactly for that reason. We have very good audio support. We have voiceover id built in immediately.

TM: You do, already?

MB: Yes, we have that.

TM: So you’re just adding video right now?

MB: The video piece is something that we fund. We have a lot of internal fights and it hasn’t been resolved yet. It’s just that we don’t have four dollars…

TM: Four dollars, huh?

MB: …to spend on materials. When your total bill of materials is about $120.00 right now. We are already over budget. Four dollars is a lot.

MB: And there are various trade offs that you have to do.

MB: So one of the things is do we do double injection molding to put soft plastic around the edges, so when the laptop drops becomes durable, or do we do the camera?

MB: Personally, being an engineer and a being a geek….

MB: Walter Benders, who is the President from software, idea was to put the camera in there. It seems like the design people and the durability people are willing. But we had that specific….

TM: Well, I guess part of me wants to say do both and start with a higher cost prototype, that the cost will come down for the next generation.

MB: Yes, exactly.

TM: But open up the video channel so that you can talk about video conferencing.

MB: Not only video conferencing, but doing exactly what we have been doing right now.

TM: Yeah, yeah.

MB: And letting kids from each part of the world having these things available to other parts of the world. But for that, we have the solution. The group is going to take care of that.

TM: In the Uplift Academy, we’ve had a number of people very interested in the educational model: Peer to peer teaching, mentoring programs where women can learn, can teach Spanish lessons over the web, for example. The classroom connection, global classroom connection is another theme that’s come up, just connecting classrooms so a northern classroom could talk to a Ugandan classroom or something like that. Um, so there’s a whole lot of interest in that. Are you opening this up? Would there be open channels for people to contribute?

MB: Yes. It’s already open. Whatever lack or perception of lack of openness exists right now, has to do with the fact that we are 12 people working full time on that.

MB: So are web publishing right now is not where it should have been, but we are doing it on our spare time. All right now, but this is by definition, an open program. And this is open for everybody to come in and contribute. We definitely have a few dogmas of our own.

MB: One of them is the One Laptop Per Child principle.

TM: Yeah. Okay.

MB: That’s why we named the foundation One Laptop Per Child. It’s really important for this thing not to be a shared resource, to be given to the kids that is going to solve the maintenance, most of the maintenance issues. And everything else is pretty much built from the beginning to be open to participation. There is nothing to lock anybody from loading their software on it. I’m pretty sure the nationals will come out if this thing gets deployed in large numbers, in the immediate future, Microsoft will come out with an operating system to run with it. And we are perfectly fine with it. And we are perfectly fine with people contributing at all levels. We think that’s more important for this contribution to happen at the LPC level. I know we said that we will do everything to our abilities to consult with the government on how to use that, but to happen at the school level.

TM: Okay. And is there a platform that we can get started on of just kind of prototypes and stuff? I mean, could we pick and cobble together a Wiki and an e –book model?

MB: You can go and contribute on Wiki right now. For people who want to port software and things like that, we have developer boards that we are making available already.

TM: Okay. Have you defined any architecture at all to design to it for software?

MB: Well, we have defined what the software stock looks like. Again, we want to avoid obesity.

TM: Sure.

MB: So, we are not trying to exclude anything from (inaudible) the laptop, but we have certain guidelines.

TM: That’s on your website?

MB: That’s on our website. So, we, to give you an idea, we think that Python…

TM: What? Python, oh.

MB: Python is the language that we are putting there (inaudible words) We had talks…

TM: Python, yes. Python.

MB: …we had a discussion and they said Python is the way to go if we want to get (inaudible) programming language that I know is going to be there, set only for younger kids, Lego…

TM: Yeah, that will be built in?

MB: Yes. And it’s scratch and squeak and stuff like that. L and K is pretty much in the beginning there. Yeah, things like that.

TM: Open Croquet?

MB: I’ve heard of them. I’m not going to say that I know exactly what it is.

TM: It’s a three dimensional squeak.

MB: Okay, yes.

TM: But high end graphics and visual, three dimensional virtual space. You don’t know that.

MB: I don’t know that. The reason is, I’m not sure how good we are into the graphics, that is not, 3-D.

TM: So you’re going to support Small Talk and Python natively on the machine?

MB: Yes.

TM: Interesting. And what Wiki format?

MB: The Wiki format, again, is an open question right now. Seems that we will probably have to develop something ourselves so that it can be integrated. So it’s the web server and the Wiki. It’s run on the same thing.

TM: And e-book format. Have you decided on that at all?

MB: An open document. PDF, unfortunately from the beginning.

TM: PDF, okay.

MB: I mean PDF is much better than doc, Word format. We are trying to be pretty adamant about doing this in open ways that it’s not going to exclude anybody from playing. We are not going to support open Office. Okay, we are not trying to turn kids into office workers.

TM: Yeah, yeah.
MB: Probably (inaudible sentence).

TM: Okay, well, it’s a very exciting project. The more I talk to you, the more interesting it sounds. If there’s anything I can do to help with you, I’ve got a meeting coming up right after the Wiki Mania in Boston, another workshop.

MB: Are you going to be there at Wiki Mania?

TM: Yeah. I’ll be at Wiki Mania.

MB: Probably we are going to cross. Half of Wiki Mania and (inaudible words).

MB: It’s going to happen at our offices and we are going to talk to all of these people.

TM: Okay. Rolondo, you want to say anything real quick, before we retire here?

Rolondo: Well, I had just one thing that I wanted to say. I think besides, the odds against this project idea…

TM: Is it centered? I don’t know yet.

R: So besides the odds against it that you pointed out, there are some question marks. I think the real value of this program is that it breaks the spell. It’s the first real example for a project that tries to reverse a trend and I think industry will somehow have to follow. Certainly there’s a trend, a natural trend towards lowering costs. I think this buys us maybe five years, I don’t know. So, that’s the real value of it.