The smell of old dusty books collected in a library is how many of us in the United States grew up thinking of a library. In those library's we found ways to escape from the mundane daily schooling, or we found out about the Titanic in the Encyclopedia Britannica, or we researched cutting edge research that was just published hours ago on the internet. However, in developing countries in South America and Africa many of the schools don't have a formal library, many simply having a teacher set of books, let alone computers or e-readers for each of the students. This has brought about illiteracy for these communities and in turn poverty, which breeds less money to improve schools, and the cycle keeps going.
Many countries now wish to stop this cycle. To prevent the next generation from experiencing the illiteracy their fathers and mothers experienced. Organizations like OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) and Worldreader are implementing programs with governments to bring technology into the classrooms of developing countries. OLPC claims to have programs set up in over 40 nations and Worldreader has programs set up in 3 countries, all in Africa. While the end goals of both programs are similar, in that they hope to increase educational performance by placing technology in each students hands, the implementation of both of these programs are different and are generating different results. While OLPC is being lambasted as both a waste of time and money, Worldreader's program has been slowly gaining traction as a viable supplement in the classroom.
OLPC program only seems to place a laptop in each students hands. The study from IADP explained that many teachers did not have the proper training to fully use the laptops to the full capabilities. Also, it seems that while the books were loaded with over 200 books the laptops lacked software for math and science. In addition it seems the students used the computers for music, video, and multimedia purposes more than for educational purposes.
Worldreader takes a different approach in that they went only with e-readers; to lower costs and to prevent distractions in classrooms. The initial contents of the e-readers are decided with the help of the teachers, community, and government. With further content decided by the students and teachers. Finally, they train the teachers for two weeks, the students for two fulls school days, and hold a community event to launch any new programs. With a more hands on approach Worldreader programs have produced good results in improving students love of reading and standardized test scores.
Through an examination of the two programs it is clear that technology can bring about improvements to students in emerging countries but only with working the educational system in place and proper training of the teachers, students, and community.
Do you believe these programs are worthwhile? How would you improve them? Leave your comments below.
