IXL Social Enterprise Case Studies Education January 2012 | Page 5

Revolutionizing the way to make education affordable for everyone
To ensure sustainability, OLPC helped build
an ecosystem around their solution
Training for parents, teachers, maintenance
providers and education administrators was
provided
Beyond introducing these devices to children,
many teachers also had to be persuaded to
bring them into the classroom. Even once in the
classroom, the acceptance of XOs still depends
upon such key variables as: teacher capacity, the
methods of introduction (e.g. if XOs are requested
vs. mandated from outside organizations such as
a Ministry of Education) and others.
While the XO appealed to forward-thinking
government officials as well as to students who
were curious about the new technology, teachers
sometimes represented an unanticipated obstacle
to adoption. Many teachers were unfamiliar with
computers and had never integrated them into
their classroom efforts. Suddenly, there were
pressures from above and below for the laptops.
Authorities such as governments had invested
(or were interested in investing) in the XOs as a
solution to improve education. On the other side,
children almost always react positively to the XO
and often learn to use them and incorporate them
into their classroom learnings more quickly than
the teacher. This adds a new dimension to the
classroom: children’s adoption of the XOs risked
undermining the teacher’s authority as they
became more familiar with the technology than
the teacher. Part of the educational outcome of
the XO was to help foster independent learning.22
Therefore, teacher buy-in was critical to the
OLPC initiative’s success. In order to gain
teacher buy-in, OLPC incorporated teacher
training as a way to build their capacity and
capability in using the XO in the classroom. In
every deployment, OLPC provides one to two
weeks of training to teachers every three months,
depending on the number of teachers involved.23
OLPC also partnered with the “Ceibal” program
in Uruguay to provide teacher training in Rwanda
and Armenia.24

OLPC also introduced the laptop to parents and
other adults in the community to ensure their
comfort with technology and their support of
the children in this initiative. OLPC helps with
the maintenance of the laptops in three ways:
the children are taught to repair the laptops (See
Figure 2); third party facilities are set up to repair
the laptops; and individual technicians, trained in
laptop repair, visit the schools on a regular basis
to check on the laptops.25
Installation guides for power grids and Internet
connectivity were provided
Some of the concerns surrounding the laptop
focused on the infrastructure needed for the
laptop to function in remote areas where there is
not enough power or connectivity.
While conventional laptops require 20 to 40
watts of power, the XO was designed to run
on two watts in e-book mode and five watts on
average.27 At these levels, the XO can be used
with alternative energy sources, such as solar or
human-generated power. This very low use of
energy put less stress on existing infrastructure.
OLPC currently offers solar panel solutions
that could power individual laptops, and the
organization is working on designs that could
power multiple laptops at one time.
In Peru, some effective responses to
telecommunication and energy infrastructure
concerns were relatively inexpensive. In some
remote villages in mountainous areas, for
example, a satellite dish made conventional
telephone wires unnecessary. Also, solar panels
were installed at the schools in order to provide
the power necessary to run the XOs in remote
locations.28
The XO was also designed to be a collaborative
tool for teachers and children, so it had a builtin mesh network that enabled machines to
connect to each other without a standard network
infrastructure.

Figure 2. Kids fixing XO laptops26

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