IXL Social Enterprise Case Studies Education March 2010 | Page 5

One Laptop per Child: Taking the Next Step to Realizing Nicholas Negroponte’s Vision

While conventional laptops require up to
20-40 watts of power, the XO was designed to run on an average of two watts.
At these levels, the XO can be used with
sources like solar power, human generated
power and others.

While the overall progress of OLPC’s global vision
has been steady and promising, the program has yet
to really catch fire with many groups of stakeholders
globally: teachers, parents, and government officials.
Overcoming Significant Barriers to Adoption
With Negroponte’s great vision to make the XO
the global standard for laptops in the classroom
came many other obstacles to success. In experiences from all over the world, OLPC found ways to
overcome many of these obstacles and concentrate
efforts in arenas that had the most promise.
Red Tape and Bureaucratic Inertia
OLPC’s goals (either to lower the price of XO-style
laptops or to increase the numbers of XOs adopted)
has typically entailed targeting large public and
private entities. A typical barrier in many of the
developing countries where OLPC hopes to make
in impact is bureaucratic inertia. They have overcome this by building close relationships with major
players in the government who understand how to
champion OLPC’s offering through the government
bureaucracy. Because many of these governments
are relatively centralized, getting buy-in from a high
placed government official is a very helpful first
step. In the United States, in contrast, education is
often run at a local level, so scaling efforts in the
U.S., even though there is more money available, is
much more difficult.
Another barrier in dealing with governments is the
high cost of buying hundreds or thousands of laptops
at one time. Also, government officials are subject
to turnover through elections. This can put OLPC
efforts at risk if election cycles occur before people
have time to see the benefits of the XO on education. More fundamentally, some critics contend that
laptops are very low on the priority list of many
developing countries.24 However, OLPC and its supports make the case that childhood education — that
is efficiently and effectively supported and enabled
using technology — is critically important for children in developing markets25.
Cost
While OLPC has not yet produced a laptop that costs
$100, the XO 1.0’s $180 and the XO 1.5’s approximately $200 (depending on quantity) price tags
represent an amazing achievement in cost reduction.
Nevertheless, many countries still feel that the cost
is above their ability to pay. One way countries may
calculate their return on investment is to factor in the
durability of the laptops (averaging at five years),
which offers another large benefit for the large cash
outlays for the XOs.
And there are many other costs associated with making the XOs part of the education process: building

the power infrastructure in power (on grid, alternative, solar, etc) as well as recurring power costs;
maintenance if something goes wrong with the
infrastructure; establishing connectivity; recurrcing
connectivity costs; repair costs for XOs; capacity
building of teachers; distribution in country; and
storage among other costs.26
Teachers and Technology
Beyond introducing these devices to children (many
of whom have had little or no experience with computers), many teachers also had to be persuaded to
bring it into the classroom. Even when XOs get into
the c lassroom, their acceptance still depends upon
such key variables as: the capacity of teachers, the
methods of introduction (e.g. if XOs are requested
vs. mandated from higher institutions like a Ministry
of Education), and others.
While the XO appealed to forward-thinking government officials as well as to students who were
very curious about the new technology, teachers
sometimes represented an unanticipated obstacle
to adoption. Many of them were also unfamiliar
with computers and had never integrated them into
their work efforts. Suddenly, there were pressures
from above and below for the laptop. From above,
authorities like governments had or were interested
in investing in the XOs as a silver bullet. And from
below, children almost always react positively to the
XO and nearly always learn quicker than the teacher.
This adds a new dimension to the classroom: children
are in a way undermining the teacher’s authority if
they know more about a particular technology than
the teacher. Indeed, part of the educational outcome
of the XO was to help foster independent learning.
OLPC reacted by being more careful and deliberate
about building the capacity and capability of teachers to use the XO in the classroom.27
Technical and Infrastructure Concerns
Inadequate or intermittent power and communications can be a problem in the developing world,
especially in remote areas. While conventional laptops require up to 20 — 40 watts of power, the XO
was designed to run on an average of two watts. At
these levels, the XO can be used with sources like
solar power, human generated power and others.
This very low use of energy put less stress on existing infrastructure28.
In Peru, for example, some effective responses to
infrastructure concerns were relatively inexpensive. In some remote villages in mountainous areas
of Peru, for example, a satellite dish could make
acquiring conventional telephone wires unnecessary. Also, solar panels could be installed at the
schools to provide the power necessary to run the
XOs in remote locations.29

24 John A. Quelch and Carin-Isabel Knoop, “Making the ‘$100 Laptop,’ ”HBS No. 9-508-024, (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishind, 2008), pp. 7-8.
25 Interview with Charles Kane, March 10, 2010
26 For a detailed breakdown of costs associated with a country-wide deployment, please see OLPC, “Deployment Guide/Workbook,” OLPC wiki, http://
wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployment_Guide/Workbook, accessed March, 2010.
27 Interview with Charles Kane, January 7, 2010.
28 Laningham, Scott, “developerWorks Interviews: Walter Bender on One Laptop per Child,” IBM developerWorks, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/
podcast/dwi/cm-int042407txt.html, accessed March 10, 2010.
29 “The XO Computer in Action in Peru,” narrated slide show, BusinessWeek, http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/06/0606_olpc_peru/index_01.htm,
accessed March 8, 2010.

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