Refurb or eWaste? You be the judge

 As mentioned elsewhere, Computer Aid International has released results of their study determining "the preferred low-cost, low-power computer solutions appropriate for rural settings in developing countries." Yes, it's a bit comprehensive, their claim. After all, some rural settings have limited electricity, some have none, some rural settings have the Internet, some have none, some rural settings are in schools, some are in post offices (and some go wee wee wee all the way home). 

Why does this make any difference? First, the test is skewed against the OLPC dedicated solution (which, while it might be great with first-graders, would make a college student feel like a clod) and perhaps against others. Second, the test doesn't address important considerations such as: maintenance, reliability and support; physical security; usability. Third, well, third is that the market for refurbished PCs is shrinking faster than the stock market these days, and rather than find a new way to be of service, CAI is opting somewhat disingenuously to plump the potential for refurbs in thin clients arrays. 

The ever-charismatic Wayan Vota of OLPC News offers a gentle take-down of the CAI report based on the test's concentration on computer-use in university settings:

Did you every wonder if the XO laptop was designed for use in African universities? I hope not. In even the name, One Laptop Per Child reminds us that they are designing technology for children....Pitting the Asus 701 & 900 laptops against the XO-1 may seem logical to a refurbished computer vendor - to them everything shiny and new must be confusing - but its illogical to expect university students to have the same use case as primary school students.

Wayan gets to one of the major flaws in the report: By focusing primarily on cost, power consumption, use of office-style software and video, the tests are biased against the OLPC laptop, which is designed to be a world-class dedicated solution for primary and lower-secondary learning. The test doesn't score for the battery of learning-related software that the machine offers, or for its collaboration-centric user interface, or for its mesh-networking feature. And goodness knows what stuff it overlooks on the other platforms... (NOTE that this is not an endorsement of the OLPC option!)

But the report is most disturbing in its concluding recommendations, which "imagine" three "ideal" scenarios for 20-user installations: one using the Asus eeepc (the preferred machine, based solely on "power, performance, and price"); one based on nComputing's x300 thin-client network with new PCs; and one combining the nComputing solutions with Computer Aid refurbished PCs.  

Excuse me? How do refurbs creep into the picture? Sure, they can be arrayed in thin-client networks, but they are at least as power hungry as new models. And the CAI scenario is based on, per the report, a "Pentium 4 PC with flat screen (when available)." How often have you seen old flat-screen monitors set out on the sidewalks of your street? (Here in lovely Oakland, Calif., we see a lot of stuff that could be called eWaste set out with a handwritten sign, "Free!" Might be there for a week or two, in fact, before someone gets fed up and junks it.) It would be helpful to know how often CAI ships container-loads of flat-screen monitors, or Pentium 4s for that matter. 

But it's a tough time to be in the refurbished-computer business: Prices of new PCs have dropped a lot and are still dropping; requirements for computing power have increased, at the same time, to the point that even 5-year-old PCs are challenged by some software; the "refurb reputation" has, as a result of bad-faith exports, fallen low enough that countries (Trinidad and Tobago for one) have adopted standards for the importation of refurbished computers (none of that eWaste on our sidewalks!). And now, there's all this hubbub about low-price, low-power solutions designed specifically for use in developing countries! What's an eWaster refurbisher to do?  

In all fairness, I should mention that CAI is very publicly advocating that developing-country governments crack down on eWaste. 

I should also, however, mention that I have a degree of personal experience with refurb-based projects. In 2005 in Rwanda, to take one example, I visited a number of schools that had received 20-computer labs courtesy of World Links. I found installations that were 50% Pentium I (one) computers (!), with a mixture of Pentium II's and III's. None of the Pentium I's had optical drives, so students couldn't use CDs, several were missing monitors, and a station in one school (at least one) was comprised of a monitor, keyboard and mouse, without any CPU. In 2005, Pentium I computers were well-over 10 years old. Needless to say, there was not much value in this project. I'll leave you to guess who the hardware supplier was...

at last development shows the way to the private sector (sort of)!

 Per the NY Times article "In Developing Countries, Web Grows Without Profit," it's tough to "achieve sustainability" when you don't charge for your services:

"Last year, Veoh, a video-sharing site operated from San Diego, decided to block its service from users in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe, citing the dim prospects of making money and the high cost of delivering video there."

The problem is that the biggest online media-sharing sites--YouTube, Facebook, MySpace--and their smaller wannabees have based their business models on the free distribution of bandwidth-intensive media, with revenues derived from bundled ads. In developing countries, demand for videos and music is enormous while bandwidth is in short supply, forcing the companies like YouTube to cowboy up more servers to provide something like the high-quality streaming that users experience in high-bandwidth countries (and even in the Mbps-challenged US).

Now, after years and millions in venture capital, the trouble with not building revenues (or "sustainability," in development-speak) from the get-go into your plan for poor countries has become apparent: If users can get the service for free, the demand curve can be nearly vertical; if there are optional costs, they'll be declined by almost everyone; and if you find that you can't keep funding the provision of free services, well, you're talking about our discretionary cash, and we'd rather spend it somewhere else.

The problem, though, centers on the fact that getting really, really big is what those business plans are all about:

"Internet start-ups that came of age during the Web 2.0 era, roughly from 2004 to the beginning of the recession at the end of 2007, generally subscribed to a widely accepted blueprint: build huge global audiences with a free service, and let advertising pay the bills."

What that means (although it's not put forth in the article) is that MySpace, Facebook and YouTube are locked in a kind of death spiral of expansion: They're all living on investors' capital because they're not profitable, and they're each hoping to outgrow and outlast the other two, so becoming the single global go-to option for free streamed stuff. (Remember, Google owns YouTube, Microsoft owns some chunk (5%?) of Facebook, and Rupert Murdoch owns MySpace--these apples have basically rolled themselves toward appropriate trees.) So if any of these three sites flinches and stops providing free media to Internet users in the global south, that company's investor-funded dreams of global presence drop off the table, and subsequent injections of funding become much less impressive. (Note that the problem isn't that users in developing countries aren't buying things, over the Internet or otherwise. it's that advertisers know that most of them can't or won't buy--little money, and no credit card--and so aren't buying click-through ads from the Big Three of Media that target those countries.)

Veoh, a smaller company, is blocking access to developing-country users to control costs. The Big Three can't do that, based on the above-mentioned death-spiral, so they're exploring other options: MySpace — the News Corporation’s social network with 130 million members, about 45 percent of them overseas — is testing a feature for countries with slower Internet connections called Profile Lite. It's a stripped-down version of the site that is less expensive to display because it requires less bandwidth.

Meanwhile, in San Bruno, California (just a jump up 101 from Google in Mountain View):

"YouTube has slowed the creation of new international hubs and shifted its focus to making money. [Tom Pickett, director of online sales] says that does not rule out restricting bandwidth in certain countries as a way to control costs — essentially making YouTube a slower, lower-quality viewing experience in the developing world."

Facebook is also apparently considering ways to cut costs that don't require user payments. These activities can be grouped in 3 strategies: blocking access to users in countries where most people are too poor to attract advertising (Veoh); cutting back the quality of service in entire countries (YouTube); or creating a two-tier system that lets individual users pay for higher-quality service (MySpace and possibly Facebook). The ever-so-slight irony is that the development banks, foundations and NGOs, those supreme practitioners of the unsustainable giveaway, cottoned on years ago to the near-impossibility of shifting from free-access to revenue-generating models in mid-project. A bunch of donor-funded services remain free (education in poor countries is sometimes completely funded by donors), but agencies and organizations have learned, to a degree at least, to avoid starting projects that will require ongoing injections of funds (like ad-free streaming of media over the Internet) if the model involves providing services free at the start. And so, another vision of the global commons founders on the reality of cost:

Web entrepreneurs like Mr. Shapiro of Veoh, still struggling with his decision to restrict his site from much of the world, might have to find a way to soothe their battered consciences.“The part of me that wants to change the world says, ‘This is unfair, it shouldn’t be like this,’ ” Mr. Shapiro said. “On the other hand, from the business side of things, serving videos to the entire world is just not supportable at this time.”

 

Computer Aid International posts comparison of low-power options

Computer Aid International has posted an analysis of 5 short-listed alternatives for computer hardware that consumes less than 20 percent of standalone computers. The five options--Asus eeepc, OLPC, Intel Classmate, nComputing networked computer, and Inveneo low-power workstation--encompass many of the highest-profile solutions. 

Information and opinions about the results will be coming soon. 


 

Teaching innovations and socio-economic status, or something

(Cross posted in a slightly more vitriolic form as a comment to OLPC news) 

There's a swell compendium of different active-learning strategies posted to OLPC news. But the post reads like active-learning propaganda, in a way: the poster claims that these strategies were deeply embedded in the original vision of OLPC, because they have been proven to benefit kids in poor schools to such an extent, and that the current plan pursued by OLPC defaults on that original vision. If nothing else, the post shines light on what, at least in my opinion, made OLPC so outrageous in 2005. (And outrageous, in relation to school and education systems in poor countries, is a difficult pose to strike.)

Here's the money quote:

"They [the active learning strategies outlined in the post] are all being used in environments in which the formal school system has failed or the parents have given the schools a vote of no confidence."

OK, it's impossible to argue with the statement's truthiness: all of these approaches have in fact been used by some teachers in some crummy schools at some time. But these strategies are far, far more likely to be implemented in private and/or elite schools than in failing ones. Whereas in failed schools--whatever they are--and schools censured--however that happens--by parents the outcomes that are by far the likeliest are the introductions of strict discipline, programmatic instruction and increased emphasis on test preparation and improved results (e.g., NYC Dept of Education, or NCLB for that matter). 

In my reasonably direct experience, integrated learning, cooperative learning and PBL were all explored and popularized in schools that were among the elites in their regions--check out the Cherry Creek schools in Denver, for example, or the public schools of Singapore, or the private schools of Turkey and India in comparison to their public brethren. And by comparison, see what's passes for educational innovation in Laos, or west Oakland and East Palo Alto. 

The reasons for this situation are fairly obvious: schools in wealthier districts spend more on teaching (and on teacher development) and are located in communities that demand and can at least occasionally recognize the development of higher-order thinking skills as opposed to mere performance.

Conversely, the single most compelling (indeed the only even potentially compelling) argument in favor of NCLB, which excises all of the active-learning strategies that you outline from the realm of classroom possibility, is that it reduces achievement disparities between schools in disadvantaged schools and schools in better-off communities. (Bravo for that I suppose.)

So, sure, the original OLPC vision was radical, but its radicalness was precisely based on the fact that it purported to infuse learning by poor kids in poor communities and crappy schools with the possibility of real, self-and-peer-driven exploration--something that kids in elite schools can experience in almost any country in the world. But that vision was always suspect, because the main OLPC purchasers, at the outset, were to be the governments that had, prior to that time, created the crappy schools, underpaid and under-educated teachers, and held all kids accountable for high-stakes exams from which only the elites (and, I suppose, the few true geniuses who didn't have their smarts snuffed by malnutrition) emerged victorious.

It was exciting to think of replacing the education system with systems of learning, but the OLPC vision was at odds with the business model. And the pedagogical strategies--effective, adventurous strategies for learning--that you catalog will remain the province of the elites.

The straw-man parade

Economist Wm Easterly takes time off from defending Dambisa Moyo to post a semi-ad-hominem attack on hisfavorite whipping boy, economist Jeff Sachs. The question really is whether either Sachs, an advocate of the "big aid" approach to development, or Easterly, in favor of market-based approaches, is offering a serious argument or simply re-circulating the ideas with which they've become linked. Easterly starts by contrasting the "root" approach to planning--generate a comprehensive plan in advance--to the "branch" approach developed by the American political scientist Charles Lindblom in his article, "The Science of Muddling Through."

Easterly, who famously contrasts searchers (muddling through) and planners in The White Man's Burden, swipes at Sachs for clinging to an outmoded root model that would otherwise be entirely lacking adherents:

Is the “root method” kind of a straw man? Surely nobody could be that extreme? Well nobody except for Professor Jeffrey Sachs and his many followers. Professor Sachs wrote a column in the New York Times last week about agricultural aid (Sachs seems to have at least briefly returned to aid after a prolonged foray into global warming and commenting on rich country macroeconomic policy vis-à-vis the Crash). A bit of the “root” planning method seems evident:

The {aid} recipient countries should be invited to prepare plans and budgets that would be reviewed by independent experts. These plans would describe the inputs needed by the farmers, the expected increase in production, how the strategy would be put into place and how much money would be required.

OK, Sachs' approach as it usually does places enormous faith on the willingness and ability of governments to develop plans in order to justify the acquisition of aid. And in this instance, he cites Cambodia, Malawi and Honduras (tagging a few countries on a few continents as sweepstakes winners) as likely participants. Even IF these governments have the capacity to accurately plan an agricultural intervention, they have no incentive to do so. An inaccurate plan will do just as well, especially given that they'll be competing for subsequent funds with other authors of inaccuracies, and that the donors' agents have no incentives to point out gaps that occur between plans and the realities of their implementation.   

However Sachs' essay is written in response to the Pres. Obama's proposal to double U.S. overseas aid for agriculture to $1 billion in the form of support for small-hold farmers. Sachs, however optimistically, is at least trying to provide an answer to a reasonable question (why give what funds to which countries?).  Easterly, in his eagerness to trash Sachs, proposes a counter-model that skips Sachs' premise ($500 million for small-hold farmers requires some method of administration) and ends up implying, when both articles are read in full, that the best means of distributing such funds if they were ever authorized by Congress would be to, well, distribute them to governments who would muddle through their distribution to farmers and the others in the farm sector who would muddle through figuring out what to do with them.

Neither of them can be serious, can they?

(Weirdly, however, in the essay in question, Sachs is contrasting his proposed approach--developing-country governments draft plans and apply for funds--with an even more plan-based scenario: "The traditional approach, and the wrong one in this case, would be for Washington to try to decide what's best for each country, and then spend considerable time and money on report-writing, site visits and professional advice." Now, that's a straw-man, at least these days.)