[IAEP] Sugar Numbers

[Adam Holt]

On May 16, 2015 10:29 PM, "Sora Edwards-Thro" <sora at unleashkids.org> wrote:
>
> In Haiti, OLPC sent laptops to four towns: Kenscoff, Lascahobas,
Thomazeau, and Jacmel.

As far as I know, the OLPC nonprofits (OLPCF & OLPCA) had little to do with
selecting these four Haiti towns, and their in-country logistics.  IADB and
Haiti's central govt were much more involved in deployment
planning/management/oversight, despite some brief early efforts by OLPC/MIT
consultants to get Haitian Creole content translation moving in 2008.

Despite detailed IADB-centric planning in 2008 especially, execution of
those plans was already widely mocked even before the earthquake struck in
2010, with a few too many parallels to Birmingham.

Sebastian is quite correct XO laptop hardware's high durability continues
to surpass expectations 7 years later, in Haiti and many other places.
Whereas Birmingham's volunteers/staff had to work thru a quite high number
of repair issues.

Tragically many XO laptops lacked electrical power in Haiti's govt
deployment, sadly rarely turned on for this reason especially, but also for
other reasons...

Haiti govt insiders/alums more full retrospective would be valuable some
day, adding to Sora's spot excavation insights below.  (Tim Falconer and
Bill Stelzer used to meet many of these official implementation alums
around Port-au-Prince: a diversity of their enigmatic stories deserve to be
told, there are lessons to be learned here, before it's too late--)

Of course those who love numbers will be frustrated in Haiti, a fascinating
society and stunningly beautiful landscape, but a nearly-failed state that
does not have census-electoral clarity, nor any agreement whether 100,000
or 300,000 died in the quake :/

> I've visited three of them to try and figure out what happened to the
XOs. Here's what I found:
>
> https://projectrive.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/kenscoff-special-report/
> https://projectrive.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/special-report-thomazeau/
> https://projectrive.wordpress.com/2014/07/27/worth-it/
>
> On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 6:26 AM, Sebastian Silva <
sebastian at fuentelibre.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 15/05/15 21:44, Dan Tenason wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> laptop.org states that about 900,000 XOs are in Peru. I was wondering
if Mr. Silva, who is active in Peru, is willing to comment on the number of
laptops in daily use in Peru.
>>
>>
>> Perhaps like Adam, I am first and foremost a volunteer, who has been
often critical of central government deployment.
>>
>> There was a wide, official survey in 2013, whose results summary are
available here [1].
>> On page 21 it says:
>> Laptop Educativa Primaria:  64% operative, 36% inoperative     (XO-1 in
rural schools)
>> Laptop Educativa Secundaria: 71% operative, 29% inoperative (XO-1.5 in
towns, without Sugar)
>>
>> The machines themselves have proven quite durable. Two pages later, 52
and 53 percent of respondents state that the cause for inoperativeness was
"deprogrammed/deconfigured". Personally, I attribute this to the misguided
DRM locking mechanism (wrongly called "security"). I can't think of another
practical way to "unconfigure" a laptop to the point of it being
inoperative. This is my informal perception from the field as well: The
main reason laptops aren't used is this locking mechanism.
>>
>> Our own (SomosAzucar+SugarLabs Platform Teams) first version
grassroots-community driven operating system update, which was distributed
officially by the Ministry in 2014, has a monitoring mechanism that is able
to tell us how many machines have been installed which have ever been
online on the Internet. At this time there are over 27300 laptops who have
ever called home. Considering low connectivity penetration, and the fact
that this OS is aimed only at primary, rural schools, we are quite pleased
with the adoption of this project.
>>
>> Certainly it is still possible to have a massive impact in Peru, thru
these laptops. Our own volunteer efforts are aiming at setting up a
permaculture station/learning laboratory in the rainforest region, where we
can have a place to experiment and work with volunteers in the field, with
different kinds of technologies applied to the environment and common good
[2].
>>
>> Our logic is, the value of the project is not the the sum of value of
each individual equipment, it is potentially the value of a network of
children who have cameras and connectivity at their disposal. What is the
value of a network of children, actively sharing information about their
surroundings? It is not measurable, I think. This is the inspiration that
continues to fuel our efforts, regardless of the hardware.
>>
>> As a technical volunteer in the field, my time is of a lot of value,
especially since we are in the middle of an expedition.
>> So I would ask you to share more about your own project so that we can
better give you relevant information and try to help you be useful to the
ecosystem.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Sebastian
>>
>> [1] http://educaciontic.perueduca.pe/?p=810
>> [2] http://pe.sugarlabs.org/ir/ClaVi
>>
>> --
>> I+D SomosAzucar.Org
>> "icarito" #somosazucar en Freenode IRC
>> "Nadie libera a nadie, nadie se libera solo. Los seres humanos se
liberan en comunión" - P. Freire
>>
>>
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>
>
>
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