Laptops Implemented to Improve Peru's Education System

A new program recently implemented for the schoolchildren in Peru, has claimed to bring an increase in the efficiency of the children’s education. However, is the ambitious idea to provide students with their own low-cost laptops really doing justice?

MIT Media Lab founder, Nicholas Negroponte (News - Alert) certainly seemed to think so, deciding that the One Lap Top Per Child initiative was well worth the more than $200 million that Peru’s government spent, according to reports.

Several teachers and administrators begged to differ, as they claimed to have seen no overall improvements in work ethic due to the computers, and witnessed a cultural disconnect for students attempting to utilize the machines.

“In essence, what we did was deliver the computers without preparing the teachers,” explained Sandro Marcone, the Peruvian education official, now running the program.

His belief is that the program actually created a gap between students able to benefit from its use, and those unprepared to do so.

Inter-American Development Bank researchers found the idea preposterous, and did not hold back in voicing their thoughts to the government.

“There is little solid evidence regarding the effectiveness of this program,” they said in a study quite critical of the overall OLPC initiative, based on a 15-month study at 319 schools in small, rural Peruvian communities that got laptops.

“The magical thinking that mere technology is enough to spur change, to improve learning, is what this study categorically disproves,” co-author Eugenio Severin of Chile mentioned to the Associated Press (News - Alert).

In support of the program, the laptops seemed to have introduced an “information-rich novelty” into an environment previously starved for learning material. Educators have said that it is clear that the students have never been properly introduced to the Internet or the machines to at which they are to use. Even the teachers were required to receive extensive training in the laptops, in order to manifest in teaching their kids.

Clearly these children do not just lack the sources required for improvement in their education, but rather an efficient and well-organized system devised to improve overall benefits. It seems that the students not only lack the sense needed to operate the machine, but the teachers cannot even fathom the idea of teaching their students using such a high powered system. Hopefully, with the money spent on the laptops, they can find a way that will work, to help the students and enhance the efficiency of their education system.

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