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> A fundamental aspect of the project was to rethink education in relationship with technology. Disclaimer: I worked on early software for the OLPC (had an ori

by coob 7y ago

> A fundamental aspect of the project was to rethink education in relationship with technology. Disclaimer: I worked on early software for the OLPC (had an original dev board) for a group that (long after I left) went on to win the Global Learning X-Prize [1]. I actually think the issue with the OLPC not achieving its goals is that they focused too much on the hardware and not what software was on the device and the learning outcomes the software delivered for children. The classic "here's some tech go figure out what to do with it" approach doesn't work. There was more interest in teaching to code and open software rather than basic numeracy and literacy. Content is king here. That's why initiatives like those of the winners of the Global Learning X-Prize[1] have shown measurable impact on learning outcomes. [1] https://www.xprize.org/prizes/global-learning https://www.xprize.org/prizes/global-learning

cptaj 7y ago
I work in education technology as well and I definitely see what you're saying. There is always a focus on more and more tech... but content remains shitty across the board. Youtubers are lightyears ahead of content providers in the education industry.
dr_dshiv 7y ago
Completely agree! We started playpower.org to build 8bit learning software for existing $10 tv-connected computers because it seemed like the OLPC didn't get that the market would happily make dirt cheap hardware, but wouldn't produce the software. At the time, we thought an open-source approach could work for content production, but gradually shifted into a for-profit funding mechanism. We still contribute to open source education (such as one of the global xprize finalists) but see our best work in helping commercial education companies produce better digital experiences. It is slow, incremental and often frustrating (working with textbook companies), but the scale of impact is enormous. Bottom line: market forces can easily support cheap hardware but not support educationally effective software (since edu markets don't pay for efficacy)
inimino 7y ago
I disagree. Access to understandable technology is more important than content. These are not mere content delivery devices. Unfortunately, decision makers are poorly informed, and people are lazy, and prefer something already polished over a box of pointy tools.
- schoen 7y ago
  Seems like there was a perennial disagreement (which is continuing today) about the degree to which OLPC was meant to help teach computing, or a curriculum, or just give students and teachers some tools to do parts of what they were doing anyway in a higher-tech way. Edit: I particularly appreciate bryanwb's comments on autodidacticism at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21047351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21047351, which point at a fourth possibility: the idea that just having access to computers is good for kids.
  - inimino 7y ago
    Yes, this is true. I don't mean to say better software wouldn't have helped--I think OLPC was killed by a combination of factors. (Not least the early trajectory of its hype cycle.) But better software alone ... I don't think it would have materially changed the outcome in any way.
tamizhar 7y ago
> That's why initiatives like those of the winners of the Global Learning X-Prize[1] have shown measurable impact on learning outcomes. [1] https://www.xprize.org/prizes/global-learning https://www.xprize.org/prizes/global-learning Sorry, but I have to challenge your authority. You're saying "measurable impact on learning outcomes" and then linking to same site which doesn't give any evidence of this. As far as I can tell, these prizes are being awarded by people who are all in the same social circles and even their peer reviewed papers don't seem to carry serious outcome analysis. The whole Nicholas Negroponte-Epstein-Ito scandal just shows these people are not interested in the outcome. Again, as he self-described himself "a rich white guy", Negroponte didn't suddenly wake up and care about the welfare and education of children in the third world, nope, not believable, as shown by his subsequent actions. Negroponte's OLPC wasn't his first debacle either. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/71fe/5e987a89dfb7a6e7dbb3dd152ef6959d1ecd.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/71fe/5e987a89dfb7a6e7dbb3dd... Negroponte and his gang of destroyers went from developing country to developing country intent on destroying simple proven-to-work schemes and replacing them with his costly OLPC. He knew that local NGOs desperate requests for funding would be bypassed in favor of his large contracts which could be utilized by bureaucrats to hide corruption. I'm sorry that you wasted your time working on the software. I was tasked to work with the XO-1 and it was an utter waste of our time. We'd have been far better off if those funds had been spent on providing vaccinations, and lunches at school which have been proven to have a vastly better long term outcomes than a underpowered unconnectable amd-geode board with a wonky unusable pixelqi LCD. Honestly, when I first heard of OLPC, I was so excited by all the claims. I remember they sent us screenshots of MIT engineers designing a pulley type charger and they told us the OLPC would run for hours from a few minutes of pulling. It was all fake and total marketing BS. Honestly, after the OLPC, my respect level for MIT Media Lab went down the drain. I realized these people aren't really significantly different than a reasonably educated grad student in a developing country. They just use their accents and mannerisms and social circles to get themselves perceived as being capable of delivering something superior, when in reality they delivered a barely passable netbook. The whole Joi Ito-Epstein pedo scandal has further reinforced my opinion. Developing countries would be better off not buying into the whole MIT aura as it does not seem deserved. It is sad that MIT continues slurping funds from developing countries to do jobs-for-the-boys club type projects. I had thought better of such an institution but I was completely wrong.
duskwuff 7y ago
> I actually think the issue with the OLPC not achieving its goals is that they focused too much on the hardware and not what software was on the device and the learning outcomes the software delivered for children. I worked with some of the early OLPC hardware as well, and I absolutely agree. The software which shipped with the OLPC was strangely designed and half-baked (at best!) -- the user interface was bizarre, many of the advertised features were unusable or barely usable, and there was an inexplicable lack of basic educational apps on the system. Most of the value of the OLPC in an educational environment probably came from its web browser and word processor, which were simply wrappers around Firefox and OpenOffice.
SomeOldThrow 7y ago
> The classic "here's some tech go figure out what to do with it" approach doesn't work. Actually I think this does work, many us on this forum learned this way. It's just a shitty general purpose approach to intentional education. I think this would have been fine had they been able to sustain the project and someone else could have tackled the problem a different way. It seems like there was nobody with the right vision to attract money. It also just was not clear what problem it was solving.

by coob 7y ago

cptaj 7y ago

I work in education technology as well and I definitely see what you're saying. There is always a focus on more and more tech... but content remains shitty across the board. Youtubers are lightyears ahead of content providers in the education industry.

dr_dshiv 7y ago

Completely agree! We started playpower.org to build 8bit learning software for existing $10 tv-connected computers because it seemed like the OLPC didn't get that the market would happily make dirt cheap hardware, but wouldn't produce the software. At the time, we thought an open-source approach could work for content production, but gradually shifted into a for-profit funding mechanism. We still contribute to open source education (such as one of the global xprize finalists) but see our best work in helping commercial education companies produce better digital experiences. It is slow, incremental and often frustrating (working with textbook companies), but the scale of impact is enormous. Bottom line: market forces can easily support cheap hardware but not support educationally effective software (since edu markets don't pay for efficacy)

inimino 7y ago

I disagree. Access to understandable technology is more important than content. These are not mere content delivery devices. Unfortunately, decision makers are poorly informed, and people are lazy, and prefer something already polished over a box of pointy tools.

schoen 7y ago
Seems like there was a perennial disagreement (which is continuing today) about the degree to which OLPC was meant to help teach computing, or a curriculum, or just give students and teachers some tools to do parts of what they were doing anyway in a higher-tech way. Edit: I particularly appreciate bryanwb's comments on autodidacticism at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21047351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21047351, which point at a fourth possibility: the idea that just having access to computers is good for kids.
- inimino 7y ago
  Yes, this is true. I don't mean to say better software wouldn't have helped--I think OLPC was killed by a combination of factors. (Not least the early trajectory of its hype cycle.) But better software alone ... I don't think it would have materially changed the outcome in any way.

tamizhar 7y ago

> That's why initiatives like those of the winners of the Global Learning X-Prize[1] have shown measurable impact on learning outcomes. [1] https://www.xprize.org/prizes/global-learning https://www.xprize.org/prizes/global-learning Sorry, but I have to challenge your authority. You're saying "measurable impact on learning outcomes" and then linking to same site which doesn't give any evidence of this. As far as I can tell, these prizes are being awarded by people who are all in the same social circles and even their peer reviewed papers don't seem to carry serious outcome analysis. The whole Nicholas Negroponte-Epstein-Ito scandal just shows these people are not interested in the outcome. Again, as he self-described himself "a rich white guy", Negroponte didn't suddenly wake up and care about the welfare and education of children in the third world, nope, not believable, as shown by his subsequent actions. Negroponte's OLPC wasn't his first debacle either. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/71fe/5e987a89dfb7a6e7dbb3dd152ef6959d1ecd.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/71fe/5e987a89dfb7a6e7dbb3dd... Negroponte and his gang of destroyers went from developing country to developing country intent on destroying simple proven-to-work schemes and replacing them with his costly OLPC. He knew that local NGOs desperate requests for funding would be bypassed in favor of his large contracts which could be utilized by bureaucrats to hide corruption. I'm sorry that you wasted your time working on the software. I was tasked to work with the XO-1 and it was an utter waste of our time. We'd have been far better off if those funds had been spent on providing vaccinations, and lunches at school which have been proven to have a vastly better long term outcomes than a underpowered unconnectable amd-geode board with a wonky unusable pixelqi LCD. Honestly, when I first heard of OLPC, I was so excited by all the claims. I remember they sent us screenshots of MIT engineers designing a pulley type charger and they told us the OLPC would run for hours from a few minutes of pulling. It was all fake and total marketing BS. Honestly, after the OLPC, my respect level for MIT Media Lab went down the drain. I realized these people aren't really significantly different than a reasonably educated grad student in a developing country. They just use their accents and mannerisms and social circles to get themselves perceived as being capable of delivering something superior, when in reality they delivered a barely passable netbook. The whole Joi Ito-Epstein pedo scandal has further reinforced my opinion. Developing countries would be better off not buying into the whole MIT aura as it does not seem deserved. It is sad that MIT continues slurping funds from developing countries to do jobs-for-the-boys club type projects. I had thought better of such an institution but I was completely wrong.

duskwuff 7y ago

> I actually think the issue with the OLPC not achieving its goals is that they focused too much on the hardware and not what software was on the device and the learning outcomes the software delivered for children. I worked with some of the early OLPC hardware as well, and I absolutely agree. The software which shipped with the OLPC was strangely designed and half-baked (at best!) -- the user interface was bizarre, many of the advertised features were unusable or barely usable, and there was an inexplicable lack of basic educational apps on the system. Most of the value of the OLPC in an educational environment probably came from its web browser and word processor, which were simply wrappers around Firefox and OpenOffice.

SomeOldThrow 7y ago

> The classic "here's some tech go figure out what to do with it" approach doesn't work. Actually I think this does work, many us on this forum learned this way. It's just a shitty general purpose approach to intentional education. I think this would have been fine had they been able to sustain the project and someone else could have tackled the problem a different way. It seems like there was nobody with the right vision to attract money. It also just was not clear what problem it was solving.