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I worked on the one laptop per child project for three years of my life. I co-founded olpc Nepal and its succeeding organization OLE Nepal together with rabi ka

I worked on the one laptop per child project for three years of my life. I co-founded olpc Nepal and its succeeding organization OLE Nepal together with rabi karmacharya who is referenced in the article. I was also co editor of olpc news for a time. It was a great experience if not altogether successful. The most problematic aspect of olpc IMHO was that it was dominated by male autodidacts who looked down on professional educators. Ole Nepal from the very beginning worked very closely with Nepali educators. Rabi continues to do great work and I am rooting for him. You can find out more about OLE Nepal here http://www.olenepal.org/ http://www.olenepal.org/

hhas01 7y ago
“dominated by male autodidacts” Nerds make the worst martinets. Sympathies. See also: The White Man’s Burden.
ivanmilles 7y ago
Can you say more about the autodidacts and the conflict with professional staff? I'm interested in specific areas that were problematic, and if you have any learnings from mitigating it.
- bryanwb 7y ago
  Olpc leadership saw government education bodies and curriculum groups as potential road blocks best avoided. This is with some reason as it can take years to work through then. That said, they can't be advoided in my experience if you expect to have any impact. They also disregarded the concerns of every day teachers because they presumed every kid could be an autodidact just like them once they had the magic laptop. It all stems from Seymour papert's original vision that inspired olpc. This theory is called constructionism and held that children can develop knowledge of the world through experiential learning. They can "construct" their own knowledge. Unfortunately, the role that a teacher might need to pay on this process was often underestimated. To counteract this, we engaged the most creative Nepali teachers (of which the re are a large number) to create educational activities that aligned with the nationial curriculum and addressed content areas where nationally Nepali kids were struggling.
  - ivanmilles 7y ago
    >every kid could be an autodidact just like them once they had the magic laptop So, if I understand you correctly, OLPC went in with a constructionist perspective and it didn't work out? This is hyper-relevant to what I'm working on, so: did a proper theoretical constructionist framework fail you, or was underestimating the role of teachers the main problem? Did engaging Nepali teachers give any insights in the above?
    - nnq 7y ago
      > went in with a constructionist perspective and it didn't work out I have no knowledge of OLPC, but it seems obvious to me: successfull autodidacts in societies where self-directed-learning is not commont (probably most societies...) tend to be internally motivated, so higher proportion of them are introverts, also higher proportions have at least little bit of aspergers-like traits etc. Extroverts on the other hand tend to learn most from human teachers they physically interact with! If you'd crunch the numbers and compare them with the personality traits of "influencers", you'll likely see they are opposite. So any chance that a positive view of the device will spread via word of mouth is low, aka any change of whatever the equivalent of "going viral" would be amongst African villages is low! By targeting the self-learners you're basically going anti-viral... you're doing anti-marketing! You'd need to try and hit the "micro-influencers", and probably only chance of that is by hitting teachers and some community leaders and local "celebrities". We techo-focused hyper-individualistic self-learners only thrive in societies after they've been properly wired up both socially and technically. Drop us in a borderline-medieval society and we're useless and have zero influence on the people around us. Heck, "geeks" started to thrive in medieval Europe after the church managed in a primitive way to network part of the world. Probably similar patterns happened in China and the Arab world too. Most underdeveloped societies today totally lack that kind of useful networking ...otherwise they likely wouldn't be underdeveloped in the first place!
      - tudelo 7y ago
        internal motivation == introvert == aspergers? got some stats on that?
pacman-ghost 7y ago
>>> I co-founded olpc Nepal and its succeeding organization OLE Nepal together with rabi karmacharya who is referenced in the article. The project looks very interesting. I'm a 35-year veteran developer looking to maybe volunteer my services, and would like to have a chat with someone about how I could perhaps help out. I just sent them an email, but do you still have contacts there? Thing is, I'm going to be in Kathmandu for 4 or 5 days from Wednesday this week, and Pokhara after that, so if someone would like to have a sit down and a chat, I'd be more than happy to do that.
- bryanwb 7y ago
  I recommend contacting them directly by the contact email on the site. It is an amazing team and I am sure they will be very responsive.

hhas01 7y ago

“dominated by male autodidacts” Nerds make the worst martinets. Sympathies. See also: The White Man’s Burden.

ivanmilles 7y ago

Can you say more about the autodidacts and the conflict with professional staff? I'm interested in specific areas that were problematic, and if you have any learnings from mitigating it.

bryanwb 7y ago
Olpc leadership saw government education bodies and curriculum groups as potential road blocks best avoided. This is with some reason as it can take years to work through then. That said, they can't be advoided in my experience if you expect to have any impact. They also disregarded the concerns of every day teachers because they presumed every kid could be an autodidact just like them once they had the magic laptop. It all stems from Seymour papert's original vision that inspired olpc. This theory is called constructionism and held that children can develop knowledge of the world through experiential learning. They can "construct" their own knowledge. Unfortunately, the role that a teacher might need to pay on this process was often underestimated. To counteract this, we engaged the most creative Nepali teachers (of which the re are a large number) to create educational activities that aligned with the nationial curriculum and addressed content areas where nationally Nepali kids were struggling.
- ivanmilles 7y ago
  >every kid could be an autodidact just like them once they had the magic laptop So, if I understand you correctly, OLPC went in with a constructionist perspective and it didn't work out? This is hyper-relevant to what I'm working on, so: did a proper theoretical constructionist framework fail you, or was underestimating the role of teachers the main problem? Did engaging Nepali teachers give any insights in the above?
  - nnq 7y ago
    > went in with a constructionist perspective and it didn't work out I have no knowledge of OLPC, but it seems obvious to me: successfull autodidacts in societies where self-directed-learning is not commont (probably most societies...) tend to be internally motivated, so higher proportion of them are introverts, also higher proportions have at least little bit of aspergers-like traits etc. Extroverts on the other hand tend to learn most from human teachers they physically interact with! If you'd crunch the numbers and compare them with the personality traits of "influencers", you'll likely see they are opposite. So any chance that a positive view of the device will spread via word of mouth is low, aka any change of whatever the equivalent of "going viral" would be amongst African villages is low! By targeting the self-learners you're basically going anti-viral... you're doing anti-marketing! You'd need to try and hit the "micro-influencers", and probably only chance of that is by hitting teachers and some community leaders and local "celebrities". We techo-focused hyper-individualistic self-learners only thrive in societies after they've been properly wired up both socially and technically. Drop us in a borderline-medieval society and we're useless and have zero influence on the people around us. Heck, "geeks" started to thrive in medieval Europe after the church managed in a primitive way to network part of the world. Probably similar patterns happened in China and the Arab world too. Most underdeveloped societies today totally lack that kind of useful networking ...otherwise they likely wouldn't be underdeveloped in the first place!
    - tudelo 7y ago
      internal motivation == introvert == aspergers? got some stats on that?

pacman-ghost 7y ago

>>> I co-founded olpc Nepal and its succeeding organization OLE Nepal together with rabi karmacharya who is referenced in the article. The project looks very interesting. I'm a 35-year veteran developer looking to maybe volunteer my services, and would like to have a chat with someone about how I could perhaps help out. I just sent them an email, but do you still have contacts there? Thing is, I'm going to be in Kathmandu for 4 or 5 days from Wednesday this week, and Pokhara after that, so if someone would like to have a sit down and a chat, I'd be more than happy to do that.

bryanwb 7y ago
I recommend contacting them directly by the contact email on the site. It is an amazing team and I am sure they will be very responsive.