The whole point of the 1-to-1 concept is that each kid has a laptop of his own, to grow, explore, develop, together with others but fundamentally on his own, following his own curiosity, interests and giftings, at home, in school, "under a tree". It is (meant to be) his tool, his learning tool, and where everything else fails (school, teacher quality, access to books, etc), maybe his only tool out of poverty.

One. Per. Child.

Think about it.

That is the billboard picture. One Per Child, and then the game is well engaged. So we are told. Not much else is suggested by OLPC. Yes, connect it to the Internet. Sounds sexy, dun'it? One, Give 'em a laptop. Two, watch them flourish. Now step back, and as Calvin and Hobbes would have it, "high fives and promotions all around".

So, it's a bummer when we find out that in "Usos y Cuidados de las XO (ceibalitas)..." - study by S.Iglesias and M.García (note, it is remarked this is a provisional version) - 55% among 253 XOs delivered that year had something broken after the first eight months.

Is this for real, and if so, does it matter?

The facts: It's only one school, out of several thousand in that deployment. Yes, yes, fellows, notwithstanding otherwise unverified reports dating as far back as 2008, and a lot of circumstantial data published, and several requests in writing and in person for clarification to several people in that deployment - first response here - this is the only piece of seemingly hard data we have. Even some OLPC people, in personal and list communications, indicate they don't know much more about this or any deploy.

BTW, this deployment has published their own official numbers elsewhere in a document I wouldn't want to source from. Slide 35 there would have us believe, were we to consider it accurate and representative, that this one must be some very freak school. Also BTW, the authors of the "Usos" report honestly insist their data are preliminary, and more should be sought and shared - and I couldn't agree more.

IMHO waiting for more data is not needed to start acting - strategies need be implemented, and I don't mean an auto-de-fe or any such cornered not-my-fault tactic. Announcing nationally, as was done, that no more will free repairs be performed for twice damaged XOs and those should now be kept in-school, is not really much of a solution. Lowering the prices for repairs might help some, but that's not it either. (old prices and policies - the conversion rate is $1 USD for 20$)

We need to look at the problem. The problem is poverty, among its associate causes/effects in a circle is ignorance and what smacks of carelessness. Teaching someone to fish is better than giving them a fish, fine. But anyone involved in development work knows that enabling people involves some level of success in their owning the role to care for equipment, give their tool proper maintenance, treat it for the purposes it was meant, build local self reliance and not dependency. This is as important or even more, in the long term, than just giving them the boats, nets and tackle, to follow the metaphor.

Then, we need to inform and educate

The "Usos" report indicates only one machine appeared to have a manufacturing issue. 74.7% of the 71 surveys returned by parents indicate a broken machine. The different figure, 55.3%, came from more direct, reproducible observation. Some of these issues are old hat stories, like broken keyboards being reported by over 2/3 of the parents responding. Screen and chargers would each affect over a third of the cases. Minimal issues with the battery, good job, Richard! OTOH, the battery is the only thing that will be replaced without cost...

But, were it not for this report, we wouldn't really know where to begin - part of what they found out is that parents basically had no idea on how to follow the repair policies implemented there.

Dare we be un-politically correct?

...and run the risk of respectfully recommend that we need to work with individual teachers? Compare these three tables.

data, averaged nationally for rural areas
(no equivalent info has ever been made available about urban ones)

There is some problem, among the poor mostly, but it is sort of not terrible maybe, and we still can make believe the average Total Cost of Ownership (TOC) is merely $250 USD.

in School "2" the problem is all over the place

This one, the closest table ever to raw data, thank you Caryl for pointing this out to me, tells us we may need to ask the 2nd Grade B and 3rd C teachers how they do it. Was it the basic wisdom of the poor that keeps anything valuable under lock and key? Or, this would be enormously valuable, they manage to keep the XOs running in spite of what is clearly a most deadly school environment for laptops?

We need more information. Otherwise, how can policies and changes be enacted without data? Informed decisions made? Training given? Credibility with major funding institutions established?

And the winner is....

Ugh, I don't know. Maybe someone in Capital City who is oblivious and ignorant enough to make his livelihood saying there are no problems really in doing this carelessly, and offering TOC expertise as consultants to other countries? I don't see many winners here. I see a bunch of kids who no longer have an XO that can be used. I see those among the best informed people in the field gently backing away from supporting this kind of projects. I see opportunities lost. I see the poverty cycle keep going, by default maybe, but it walks away unscathed.

A conversational interlude

let me introduce to you Simplicio Bobadilla y Comejaiba, an old friend from my Caribbean days, rather clever in his own way.

Simplicio.- You don't like self-administered surveys - but you like this one

Yama.- I believe that 11 forms, out of 18, filled out by teachers simply counting how many XOs are broken among those their own students have, is a reasonably objective approach, and I point out the parent-filled surveys returned were few

S.- How can you deal with what seems, looks, and quacks like wilful vandalism?

Y.- No sure-recipe solution, my friend. OLE Nepal makes a big point of involving the community, especially the parents and most essentially the teachers in this kind of things. Breakage there is so low their national log is two post-it notes on the wall. This deployment instead gave teachers something like a day of training before sending the XOs in.

S.- You insist in saying "this deployment". It looks silly, I saw the links, we all know who you mean

Y.- ... I'm a bit concerned, that's all, and not so much about myself. My experience there is that they prefer to blame the messenger instead of fixing the problem. An email from Ing. Fiorella Haim received the day before this note was published might mean a change in their policy on refusing to answer queries. Time will tell, will keep you posted.

further reading:
Weston and Bain, The End of Techno-Critique: The Naked Truth about 1:1 Laptop Initiatives. They suggest the approach should be "systemic and ubiquitous" in a community

Ceibal, Report 2009
"El porcentaje de máquinas funcionando a junio de 2009 era de 86.7%. La cantidad de máquinas rotas y bloqueadas afecta principalmente a los niños de contextos socioculturales más desfavorecidos, además de crecer proporcionalmente a la cantidad de meses que transcurrieron desde la entrega."