[IAEP] Is "Most Sugar Users Use XO Laptops" True?

[Adam Holt]

On Apr 24, 2016 1:18 AM, <forster at ozonline.com.au> wrote:

> Does anyone disagree with the assertion that "most Sugar use is in a
>> school/classroom setting"?
>>
>
> Hi
>
> The two largest OLPC deployments, Peru and Uruguay account for 50% of XO
> laptops.
>
> Peru, 60% of use was in school [1]
> Uruguay home use > school use [2]
>
> Uruguay was 100% take home, Peru had a mixed take home policy.
>
> It is not clear what happened in the remaining 50% of deployments.
>
> These statistics are 4-6 years old. It is not clear how the usage changes
> as XO's have got older. They are presumably perceived to be less valuable.
> This could relax take home policies, it probably tends to lower school and
> home use.
>
> So I disagree with the assertion that "most Sugar use is in a
> school/classroom setting". I think its too close to call. Home and school
> use are roughly equal.
>

Huge thanks Tony Forster highlighting those 2 critical data points,
surrounding initial Peru/Uruguay uses in the years after XO acquisition.

There are more than a few flies in the "One Laptop Per Child" ointment both
those well-known, and more we're learning from every day.  I know of more
than a few schools (which do not want to be named, in the name of
self-preservation) where, to oversimplify the numbers: 100 XO laptops
arrived, of which 90 were used for 100 hours each, and the remaining 10
laptops were used for 1000 hours each -- roughly speaking a common outline
is:

   - 9,000 hours of XO/Sugar use, by 100s of students broadly, back in the
   day
   - 10,000 hours of XO/Sugar use, by a few elite IT/Sugar/community gurus,
   ongoing today, the best of which are giving back to their communities in
   powerful ways

These are arbitrary numbers to illustrate the larger common pattern, and
not to embarrass specific schools which do not want to be named.  The lack
of structured project ideas / professional development of teachers /
culturally relevant content/pedagogy needs to be addressed at some other
time, among other fundamental reasons that many XO/Sugar dreams gathered
dust.

But back to the original question, if (as Tony Forster and I suspect)
most-if-not-much-all Sugar use is happening outside of class time in 2016
-- starting many years back now: how can we now get a better grip on these
very real, evolving, important extracurricular -> personal patterns?
Moving beyond glory days anecdotalism?  Where do we have a moral
responsibility to move beyond our Negroponte founders' days "don't measure
it, just do it" idealism?  Where have we unintentionally expanded
male/female rich/poor digital divides, as several OLPC communities
privately ask me to keep quiet about?  When Silicon Valley companies now
publish gender/race stats routinely, to expose accidental/unconscious
injustices, how do we too learn to look in our own mirror?

Half a decade later, we can collect as many anecdotes as we want, let's
jeep at it keeping our blogs fired up before the clock runs out.  But
before the clock runs out, we require professional sociologists too, if we
are halfway serious about our Environmental Impact at all, and moving
beyond statistics that can easily made to lie for any fundraiser.  Many
people ask me very pointedly -- are we across the OLPC/Sugar legacy a
listening organization, or is there a core tone-deaf MIT dream unwilling to
self-assess, needing a firm kick in the rear-end like even George Bush gave
to Donald Rumsfeld, to finally force an existential assessment of our
purpose?  The bare minimum groundtruthing being serious amateurs like
Christoph Derndorfer, Tony Anderson and Morgan Ames etc who chose to put
their life in the village, stepping outside of the Jeep, to spend Many
Weeks Each in a broad diversity of communities -- Rwanda, Uruguay, Peru for
sure -- and many others too thankfully.

Who today will follow in their footsteps spending weeks and months in
community, in listening mode, challenging their own assumptions, bridging
the various self-serving post/neo-colonial narratives?  How do we help our
new generation find heartfelt diaspora families, willing to struggle for
progressive truths/opportunities beyond the happy-happy-joy-joy
founding/fundraising narratives?  How do we help the embedded visitor speak
the local/indigenous language enough to get inside heads and then beyond
the founding days' multi-stakeholder mythologies, as new generations of
kids/siblings have come AND gone?  What humility does the embedded visitor
need to bring to scratch below the surface building confidences among
several Confederates in the grassroots community, exposing Actual
(post)Implementation Challenges -- even if Not All Are Printable?  What
Wayan Vota's (detached from the founders) will fund the Christoph
Derndorfers of our time over the coming decade, getting to the core
spiritual truths of what we have and have not accomplished?  How do we
cultivate dry-by voluntourist visitors ethics to develop loyalty with the
community's generation-long asiprations they are now increasingly a part
of, while developing journalistic integrity at the same time?  What
spare/repair/support companies must develop do bring rebirth to this OLPC
ecosystem like Activity Central and iLoveMyXO and XOexplosion.com and the
broad map of community repair centers we once had?  (
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Repair_center_locations)
Etc!  We will face or ignore these exitential questions at our own peril
:-)  Compare: http://laptopstudy.net



> Tony
>
>
>
> [1]Frequency: sessions in last week By place % at school
> Table 9 Technology and Child Development: Evidence from the One Laptop
> per Child Program , IADB Feb 2012
>
> [2]"Children reportedly use the XO's about an 1 to 1.5 hours per day at
> home...The XO's are not used as much in schools"
> http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/uruguay/plan_ceibal_a_better_designed.htm
> May 2010
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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