[kictanet] Opinion split on whether laptops are a priority in schools

Sun Apr 14 18:19:52 EAT 2013

+1 @Rigia,

I know it is still "honeymoon" time for the new government and anyone 
"opposing" their policy is easily seen as a spoiler/disgruntled element 
as it were during the KANU days.  I have tried to keep quiet since I 
also dont like playing the role of telling the King "he is naked when he is". It is easier, perhaps even fashionable and beneficial to cheer him on and so my apologies for the long post reiterating why the King is naked.

I have read and appreciated points shared regarding my submission on 
Curriculum, Training of Trainers, Security & Maintenance and entry 
point (Form1 or Std1) and  am afraid am still not convinced.  Most 
submissions say we do not need curriculum because Kids can self-teach 
and even hack the laptops/tabalets in 5mnths @Karanja?. OK fine, then what after the 5mnth? do we want to produce 1million hackers with this initiative? What happens next after the five months 
Folks, we MUST have a long-term projection/objective for this initiative that includes what is taught, when it is taught, who teaches it and 
possibly when and what to examine. I liked the point that said content 
should go beyond IT and include say Kiswahili or English units being 
accessed on the laptop. This is very good, but it only reinforces the 
point about thinking through an e-curriculum because a simplistic 
scanning of say an English text-book and saving it as a "PDF" on  a 
laptop has little pedagogical value and is not what e-Learning is about. Learning has multiple 
facets/ecosystem that includes content, its delivery, assessment, 
feedback  and a simple PDF cannot begin to deliver these fronts. 
Throwing in one component (a laptop) of the ecosystem while wishing away the other components is really flashing down billions of very scarce 
Kenya Shillings. 

But what am saying here is NOT secret knowledge. Kenya Institute of 
Education (KIE, i think it has new name now?) has been doing a 
comprehensive job around this concept for high school e-curriculum over 
for the last 10years.  Why dont we just leverage on this by connecting  
the two initiatives and minimizing the risks/problems? Yes, there are 
political promises to Standard1s but was it former VP, Micheal Wamalwa 
who said that a good idea (Std1) must yield or give in to a better idea 
(form1)? Even Obama promised the Americans to close some prisons and end the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan but failed to do so - he still won a 2nd 
term.  Politicians simply need to explain the rationale behind the 
change in policy rather than get fixed on an idea that will require a miracle to have positive returns. That reminds me, @Ikua said Goverments are not in the business of short term positive gain/returns - I just hope they are not in the business of long-term losses or failures either :-)  

There was the point I agree about early exposure having advantages. Very fine, but this can only apply once you have addressed the above ecosystem 
around digital education. Early exposure at Std1, Form1 or even late 
exposure at University level within a poor digital ecosystem will take 
us nowhere. Yes, I did see the MIT research showing Kids doing excellent staff - including hacking without a mature supporting ecosystem in 
terms of teachers,curriculum, security etc. But we need to interrogate 
this research objective further because from where I sit, it only proves our kids are bright (which is not in dispute) but does not provide evidence to show that we DO NOT need the supporting digital ecosystem. A better experiment 
would be to compare this group of kids (without the digital ecosystem) 
against those with the ecosystem and then draw conclusions after 
comparing both outcomes.   

Infact, I got a more relevant research example - Technology and Child Development: Evidence from the One Laptop per Child Program or found at
http://www.iadb.org/en/research-and-data/publication-details,3169.html?pub_id=IDB-WP-304
It says in its abstract:
>>>

Although many countries are aggressively implementing the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, there is a lack of empirical evidence on its 
effects. This paper presents the impact of the first large-scale 
randomized evaluation of the OLPC program, using data collected after 15 months of implementation in 319 primary schools in rural Peru. The 
results indicate that the program increased the ratio of computers per 
student from 0.12 to 1.18 in treatment schools. This expansion in access translated into substantial increases in use both at school and at 
home. No evidence is found of effects on enrollment and test scores in 
Math and Language. Some positive effects are found, however, in general 
cognitive skills as measured by Raven’s Progressive Matrices, a verbal 
fluency test and a Coding test.
>>>
You can read the whole publication but my take is that the digital 
investment at Primary level gave less than average returns in terms of 
improving only verbal fluency but had no impact on Maths and Language (grammer)...which may support @Rigia's submission that lets get the Kids to develop their manual writing, reading and numeric skills before moving this to the digital platform.

Finally on Security, I was surprised to read a contribution @Savver?  saying security of the laptops is the easiest to sort out - using technology.  Yes, I do understand the technology and even have it on my Galaxy (not I-tab :-).  But halloo, 
it requires INTERNET!  Are we saying these gadgets are going to be 
internet enabled (the easier bit) and they will have internet access 
paid for (the harder bit).  Internet access remains "costly" even for 
our university level where it is government subsidized, we still have 
many university falling behind their internet payment schedules. So 
unless I missed it, I still need to understand  how we shall  address 
the safety of these gadgets (from both the outsiders  insiders within the school).

walu.
NB: @Mark- I like your example because they targets high school and throws in Public-Private Partnership (i.e share risk). Maybe do another visit to a rural public and primary/elementary school in SA and share the experience.NB:  I know we all hold different views and can never fully agree. But we do need a face-2-face to thrash these out and so whether Min of IT, Min of Education, KITOS, CSK, Kenya ICT Federation, KICTAnet or whatever; I think it would be nice to interrogate this policy further in a face-2-face set up.

________________________________
 From: Warigia Bowman <warigia at gmail.com>
To: jwalu at yahoo.com 
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> 
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2013 1:58 AM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion split on whether laptops are a priority in schools

Personally, I believe it is more important to get the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic down. If there is a small computer lab, that is fine. But until every child in Kenya has a free secondary school education, I argue that this is an example of misplaced priorities. 

On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 3:13 PM, Grace Githaiga <ggithaiga at hotmail.com> wrote:

IN SUMMARY
>	* Critics say the idea is noble but many schools lack basics and laptops are a mere luxury
>	* Report shows that as high as 90 per cent of teachers are computer illiterate; who will aid pupils?http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Opinion-split-on-whether-laptops-are-a-priority-in-schools/-/1056/1747588/-/item/1/-/sxhoh3/-/index.html 
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-- 

Dr. Warigia Bowman
Assistant Professor 
Clinton School of Public Service
University of Arkansas
wbowman at clintonschool.uasys.edu------------------------------------------------- 
View my research on my SSRN Author page: 
http://ssrn.com/author=1479660 
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