Early childhood education is substantially beneficial to a young child’s development, but Nigerian students are dropping out of primary school at an alarming rate. Even more worrying is that only a fraction of students who attend primary school, continue on to secondary school and even less matriculate to a tertiary institution. While the Nigerian Education System has made major improvements, we are still playing catch-up to the world’s more developed nations. But Nigeria and the rest of the world are now at a pivotal crossroad – modern technology has developed immensely and now it is possible for each child to have their education enriched with state of the art tools for learning. A pioneer in education technology is One Laptop per Child (OLPC), developer of the low-cost, durable “XO laptop.” OLPC’s goal is to provide each child in the world with their own laptop. As someone who has worked first-hand in OLPC deployments in Nigeria, I strongly believe that, through OLPC, Nigeria can not only improve primary school dropout rates, but also revolutionize our educational system and hold Nigeria as an example for the world.
The One Laptop Per Child Association, Inc. (OLPC) is a U.S. non-profit organization set up to oversee the creation of an affordable educational device for use in the developing world. Its mission is "To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning." Its current focus is on the development, construction and deployment of the XO laptop. The XO is designed to operate on less than 5 watts of power. It is a brightly colored plastic laptop with rounded corners with antennae that folds up the sides to form ears. It utilizes the "sugar" interface which presents people icons in a neighborhood metaphor, a built-in camera and other media options which offers scope for creative schoolwork. The basic hardware specifications are 256MB of DRAM and 1GB flash memory.
OLPC's mission focus is not on its state-of-the-art innovative technology, but on its educational approach that fosters discovery of knowledge by the children themselves, encouraging them to find the application of that knowledge in a practical and meaningful context. Both, the technology of the OLPC laptop and the methodology of the Constructionist educational approach has been inspired, researched, developed, and implemented by MIT scholars. Large-scale OLPC deployments are underway in Rwanda, Uruguay, Peru , Mali & Cameroun (just to name a few). In Rwanda’s case, schools have seen a 200% attendance increase in primaries schools with the XO laptop, similar findings are reported in Nigeria was one of the first countries to benefit from the XO, along with: Uruguay, Mexico, Rwanda, Haiti, India, & Peru. In 2007, OLPC started a pilot in Nigeria which provided L.E.A Primary School Galadima, located in the outskirts of Abuja, with an XO laptop for each child in Primary 4, 5 and 6 (and also for each member of the staff). Children took home their laptops each day. The children enjoyed working with their laptops both during school-time and after. They helped each other in their activities and also produced projects on their own, some individually, and some in collaboration with their mates.
While the positive effects of the laptop so far outweighed any of the negative, if is extremely unfortunate how much attention was paid to the minor instances of laptop abuses. First, it was felt that the XOs were a distraction from academic activity as they indulged in spending school-time “playing” with the laptop's camera and surfing the web for entertainment material. I for one am happy to live in a time where a child being able to access a wireless network, use a search engine and find their desired materials is considered “play.” I think many can see the direct benefit this will provide the children in the adult lives.
In a few cases, children were found visiting inappropriate websites showing pornographic material. But, we must ask ourselves did the children not consider these things before the laptop was there? Of course they did, the laptop was just a venue for them to explore this. I hope the parents of the children who visited these sites used the opportunity to talk with their children about such things, and turned it into a learning experience. Additionally, if we are fortunate enough to have more laptops in the country, we can use content filtering software, which will make these sites inaccessible.
Lastly, we must ask ourselves, should we deny Nigeria’s children a good that just a few years ago unimaginable because a small number of bad things are possible? I hope not! To me, it is no different than denying a child a pencil for school because they could use it has a weapon!
As the pilot phase of the OLPC deployment in Galadima came to an end, the kids were obviously saddened by the departure of the OLPC team that worked with them over the months as they’ve become attached to them. Good thing is that most of the children, if not all, are now in secondary schools sharing their experiences on modern technology with other children. This proves that with proper motivation, children won’t drop out primary school at an early age.
Fast forward to 2009, the OLPC came up with a grassroots initiative tagged the OLPCorps Africa program where students and volunteers all over the world were asked to write proposals for deploying 100 XO laptops to an African country of their choice. After which selected proposals (teams) would undergo training in Kigali, Rwanda for two weeks before heading to the selected African country of their choice for eight weeks with operating stipends for the duration of the project.
In total, 220 proposals were sent to the OLPC only 30 applicants were picked, out of which, three Nigerian teams were selected. The teams selected were; 1.) Texas A&M University with Sam Ade Jacobs as team lead deploying in Kingdom Heritage Primary School, Otta, Ogun State; 2.) University of Lagos graduates with Adetola Adeola as team lead deploying in the IBB Primary School, Minna, Niger state and; 3.) University of Ibadan with Kolawole Oreoluwa as team Lead deploying in the School for handicapped in Ibadan, Oyo State.
Their mission is to use the XO laptops to improve literacy in Nigeria, encourage cross-cultural interaction and help children relate subject matters to real-life scenarios. The three teams started their deployments in their various schools as soon as they returned from the workshop in Kigali, Rwanda putting all they have learned to good use.
All three teams worked closely with the teachers in the first two weeks of the deployment to get them familiar with OLPC, the XO laptop and the theories of constructionism. The teams had sessions with parents of the students to demonstrate how they can become actively involved in their child’s learning experience before ultimately handing over the XO laptop to the students.
The children, teachers, headmasters, OLPCorps teams and parents with the support of the sector’s educational authorities, as well as government, private and non-private organizations made the OLPCorps Africa 2009 educational project a huge success as the students now use their XO’s at school and at home, in class and, quite often, even at during lunch breaks for various educational projects as well as games. All of a sudden, all three Primary Schools have gone from the age-old chalk-and-board teaching technology to the avant-garde one-laptop-per-child XO technology with cutting-edge features.
Adetola, Team leader of the OLPCorps Minna says, “This project is more about education than it is about technology - the laptops are enabling the children to work together and learn themselves, rather than by note memorization, which is often the norm in our schools today.”
Kolawole, Team leader of the OLPCorps Ibadan also claims, “The students are interested in learning new things everyday and most of the kids want to further their education beyond the primary school.”
The teams rounded up their deployments after eight weeks and all recorded a successful project as they were able to see visible improvements in the children they worked with. They hope the kids all turnout to be future leaders and continue their education beyond primary school level, while just eight weeks made a major difference in the lives of several children, we need the support of the Nigerian community and government to make this opportunity possible for each child in Nigeria. We need to act now and recognize the importance of technology in the classroom and not wait to follow in the footsteps of developed nations, this time, we can be first. I hope that Nigeria will be among the first country to provide one laptop per child.
