Communications of the ACM

Ken Kahn

OLPC had many failures and successes. When I try to evaluate it I think about my efforts to introduce 15 second-hand XOs laptops to Papua (the Indonesian half of New Guinea). Yes, the batteries were terrible and it was awkward to provide power (especially since there were frequent power outages). The track pads didn't work so I bought 15 mice. But otherwise they worked very well. And the local mesh network worked very well and was heavily used. Students used nearly every app on the machines. And after a few weeks the children were asked to introduce the computers to new students. I was impressed how well that worked. Ironically the lack of an Internet connection helped avoid many distractions (such as browsing for videos of pop songs or downloading Scratch games).

Sustainability was an issue. The school and teachers were very enthusiastic but hands-off. After I left they hired an undergraduate student part-time (an English major) and all remained well until she graduated. They then hired another undergraduate who was good but refused to obey the school's dress code and eventually she was fired and the laptops were locked away.

So how should one judge OLPC? By the balance of successes and failures?

While I haven't read Ames's book, the reviews describe a very different experience than I had.

Here's the blog I kept: http://west-papua-olpc.blogspot.com/

Here's a paper about this I wrote: http://constructionism2014.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/papers/2.7_3-8298.pdf