Sri Lankan School Children May Own “$100 Laptop” Soon

By Lanka Rates

12/10/07

Some of the two million primary school students in Sri Lanka soon may get to own the “$100 laptop” if an ambitious plan to introduce the product into Sri Lanka gets adequate support, officials said.

Education minister Susil Premajayantha had responded “favourably” when shown the computer last week by representatives of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), a US-based organization that partners with several technological and academic institutions. Working with local partners and governments worldwide, it aims to get the learning tool into children’s hands.

Lanka Rates also learnt the laptop was shown to President Mahinda Rajapaksa by a top diplomat on October 6.

A pilot project may be rolled out as soon as early next year, said an official close to the project in the country, with four or five schools initially targetted.

“We often start when there’s a strong expression of interest in a country” said Matt Keller, OLPC director for Europe, Middle East and Africa who visited Sri Lanka last week to promote the product. “I understand we have reached that level in Sri Lanka,” he told Lanka Rates.

Rebecca Gonzales, a senior manager at AMD was visiting the country as well, to coordinate with local partners, and assess the Sri Lankan government’s willingness to participate in the project.

“The innovation in the device is amazing,” said Gonzales, displaying a unit which runs on less than a watt of energy, has a one gigabyte memory, and a battery life of 15 hours. Its built-in wireless capability can detect networks up to three kilometres away, she added.

AMD provides the chips for the product, but does not subsidise them. It is ultimately a business venture for AMD, she said.

“The value addition we bring is that this needs to be a business – it’s about doing good by doing good business,” she added. “It’s fundamentally different from giving aid.”

“With charity, there’s no value attached to it,” she noted.

Constructivist learning

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Nicholas Negroponte introduced the idea of an affordable laptop as a learning tool for children at the World Economic Forum in 2005 to a mixed response from academics and leaders in the computer industry.

Negroponte had previously sparred with Intel which has a competing project. But Intel set aside differences and joined OLPC in July.

Constructivist learning philosophy, which stresses the role of children as active participants in education who “learn to learn”, continues to guide the OLPC project.

“Look at these circles,” said Gonzales pointing to rings floating around the laptop screen that could be drawn by children using a programme. “When children learn to draw on this computer, they are learning the basics of the Python language,” she said.

Children’s interaction with the laptop will allow them to transcend rote learning, which discourages children from being enthused by math and science after primary school, noted Keller.

“The hard part is introducing that sea change of educational philosophy,” he added. “Children need to learn why two and two equals four and not just be told that it is,” he added.

AMD's Rebecca Gonzales explains the functions of the laptop in Colombo. (C) Lanka Rates / Profundus

Global response

The lightweight yet versatile laptop is already in the hands of thousands of students in Latin America and Africa, despite several political and economic hiccups. Thailand’s prime minister Thakshin Shinawatra committed to the project, but was deposed before it could be implemented. India has said that building classrooms and hiring teachers were a higher priority.

And Nigeria has reneged on a promise to buy one million laptops, although Rwanda has committed verbally to the project recently.

Asked how OLPC responds to the other priorities that the developing world in particular may have, Keller replied, “If you substitute the word education for the word laptop, problems disappear relatively quickly.”

Nevertheless, the cost of getting a laptop into the hands of every child would daunt any government in the global south, including Sri Lanka. Lanka Rates learnt that while Sri Lanka may support the project, it will not be able to bear its cost directly.

The government will have to coordinate with the private sector to get the project off the ground.

While government involvement is preferable because of local school participation, it is not necessary, according to Keller.

“There are two types of infrastructure that are needed for the project; the human, logistical infrastructure, and the technical infrastructure,” he said. The first is developed by the government, the private sector, and civil society, in order to marshal the political will and financial resources needed to physically get the laptop to the rural child.

The technical infrastructure may require working with pro bono internet service providers for instance, to enable internet connectivity. Even if one child’s laptop is connected to the Internet, others in the area will be able to access the internet through that computer, Keller said.

But not having ready Internet access – as is the case in many parts of rural Sri Lanka – will not prevent children in the vicinity from sharing ideas, designs, concepts, or simply chatting with each other through their computers.

This is because the laptops can talk to each other through a “mesh” over a fairly long distance.

Users also have access to a Linux-based text editing programme, an e-book reader, drawing, painting and music composition tools, and an in-built video camera.

A little girl in Uruguay had used the laptop’s video camera function to make a digital video of a cow giving birth, which she then uploaded onto the popular video sharing website, YouTube, Gonzales said.

Public-private partnership

While Negroponte envisages the cost of the laptop to decrease to $100 eventually, the product currently sells for more.

Getting the product shipped from Shanghai to Colombo will cost about $250, said Keller, factoring in the cost of shipping, a yoyo hand charger and solar panel.

It began mass production last month.

The cost apart, rolling out the project in Sri Lanka will be a logistical challenge, said a local official attached to the project.

“Some companies have there own programmes with their own branding and may consider sponsoring some units in the areas where they already have a presence,” said the official who asked not to be named.

“But some non-governmental organizations with a rural presence have indicated a willingness to sponsor several thousand units,” he said.

A non-profit foundation will be set up in Sri Lanka soon to coordinate the logistical challenges in getting the project off the ground. If the government fully endorses the project, the non-profit foundation may be able to import the laptops duty free, he hoped.

The laptop is pre-loaded with e-books, and the open source operating system will allow Sri Lankan Linux groups to adapt the machine to meet local learning requirements.

For the moment, however, there is little financial backing and lots of enthusiasm.

“We need people to evangelize for the project”, said Gonzales. Having passion for the project is even more important than financial resources, she added.

OLPS’s Keller will be back in January along with several MIT professors to host a seminar on the project. A teacher from a Latin American country who participated in a pilot project is also expected to speak at the event.

The children who get the units – and not the schools – will be the ultimate owners of the laptop.

After all, stressed Keller, it is a project aimed at providing one laptop per child.