SUMMARY PAPER

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$100 laptop, microfinance, constructivism and critical pedagogy

Offer $100.00 laptops to economically resiliant microfinanced families with children available for education and combine that with constructivist learning methods and teachers well versed in critical pedogogy. Once you have all the pieces in place you can work with the local community and identify a group of cohorts (Gow, 2001) that meet the optimal laptop profile and build on the success already within these families.

UN Millenium Goals

Two of the UN Millenium Goals have good alignment with the introduction of the $100 laptops goal of a laptop for every child in the next five to seven years. The two millenium goals are;

Goal 2. Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3. Promote gender equality and empower women

Over 30 million served

Since its inception the microfinance approach to helping people out of poverty has served between 30 and 50 million people. All these small loans amount to a total 2.5 billion dollars being loaned out by thousands of these "banks for the poor".

A closer look at the $100 laptop

Microfinance programs are available

All the places targeted to pilot the $100 laptop already have established microfinance programs. These locations would have the required financial infrastructure and families to utilize these laptops in their families education.

Community Source

How will all the software and curriculum get built? To begin with the operating system is based upon the open source offering of Linux, therefore all the open source software currently being built is freely available for the $100 laptop. A number of open source courseware (MIT & Educational Commons) initiatives have started up. The $100 laptop could take advantage of these or begin to create its own open courseware initiative. The courseware would be built by community source where groups of development teams come together and share the costs and efforts of building new curriculum and then share this curriculum back into the open courseware community...

$100 laptop isn't without critics

The $100 laptop initiative doesn't come without its critics. The criticism falls into four main areas;
1) People need to eat first
2) How are you going to dispose of them once they are done
3) Where is the curriculum going to come from
4) Wouldn't the billions of dollars to build these things be better spent on (low-tech) educational initiatives.
I believe the content of this blog answers 3 of the 4;
1) I'm proposing that Laptop recipients are engaged in some asset stabalization (like microfinance) and are already reading their family to send one of their children to school.
3) Leverage the ideas of Critical Pedagogy; where cohort programs are set up to create groups of teachers within each community. Constructivist learning methods are used.
4) Yes, maybe the Billions of dollars would be better spent somewhere else. But there not going to be, so better to engage and help it be a success and join in with helping the UN Millennium Development Goals be a success.

Microfinance works

The most passionate claims always lead back to educating their children. Fortunately, education is seen as one of the keys to ending poverty.

Ending poverty has become pop culture

With all the media exposure and all the pop stars getting involved the attainment of ending poverty may be more real now than ever before.

Based upon constructivist methods

The MIT labs have stressed the importance of using constructivist (Bender, 2006) methods when building cirriculum for the $100 laptops. Its about the world teaching its children... And it will be built from the bottom up. The recipients of the laptops will determine how they use them to learn.

http://web.mit.edu/mitir/podcasts/2006-02-21_Bender_OLPC.mp3

Enter the $100 laptop

When MIT introducted the $100 laptop and said they were going to be giving them away to the third world, I was skeptical. I believed they would be sold for food on ebay days after their arrival. basic needs become more important than a laptop when you have no food. Having basic needs already met should be a requirement for receiving a 100 dollar laptop. Programs like microfinance should be included as a part of the collaborative effort in introducing these laptops.

Technology and Critical Pedagogy

The connection of technology and the emerging pedagogy is a mute point, they are interrelated (Travers, 1999). One cannot discuss one without the other. Within the current and emerging pedagogies are contructivism and critical pedagogy. It should be noted that critical pedagogy and social constructivism are similar and the terms are sometimes used to describe the same thing (Travers, 1999). Both these pedogogical theories stress the important of the social context of the learning and that knowledge should be constructed from this social, political, cultural, ideological place. When it comes to the use of technology within learning both constructivism and critical pedagogy should be referred to when building curriculum.

My greatest joy is I can educate my children

Microfinance is focused on providing small loans to families stuck in the cycle of poverty. These loans have been hugely successful in bringing families out of poverty. Once out of poverty the families priorities often shift to educating thier children. The common expression from two women is surprising;

"My children give me great joy because they have this opportunity to study." - Woman in Nigeria
"My greatest joy is I can educate my children." - Woman in Mexico

A coordinated combination

The elimination of poverty includes focus on many fronts. The ability to have self reliance, food, water and shelter are the first steps. Building upon the self-determination afforded by microfinance includes many services.

A coordinated combination of microfinance and other development services to improve business, income and assets, health, nutrition, family planning, education of children, social support networks, and so on. (Dunford, 2002)

Education can be a great help to eliminating poverty only it needs to be introduced with the correct combination of services and family health.

Microfinance works, and is a place to start

The idea of Microfinance is simple. If we loan people small sums of money to make the first step and become self reliant. They do become self reliant and the success builds upon itself. Once their basic needs are met, then they can consider education.

Basic necessities before education

The basic necessities of life need to be met before education can even be considered. This is twofold; do they have the resources (Appleton, 2001) and assets to allow the child to leave the home, do they have the health, wellbeing and access to learn. The biggest issue for child education is the need for the childs labor (Cockburn, 2001). If they can be freed from labor and the family has the assets; the child can persue education.

Poverty is a complicated issue

The more you read the less you know. The purpose of this blog is to be critical of applying educational technology in impoverished countries. There is no doubt that poverty shames and diminishes us all (Lewis, 2005). The main question being, could educational technology help people out of the poverty cycle? Before we apply technology to education to meet this end, it is important to know that education (without technology) can assist in bringing people out of poverty. Given the complexity of poverty (Appleton, 2001; Cockburn, 2001; Christiaensen, 2003) and the plethora of factors which perpetuate poverty it is not so simple to say, if those who live in poverty were more educated they would no longer live in poverty.

Critical Pedagogy

This blog looks at the 3rd world educational technology initiatives from a critical pedagogical perspective. Why critical pedagogy? It is a very empowering approach to pedagogy. For educational technology initiatives to be successful they need to be driven and highly influenced by the students. Critical pedagogy provides an approach to learning that is aligned with constructivist learning theory and the institutional structures of the school, and the social and material relations of the wider community, society, and nation-state (McLaren, 1998). This alignment creates an environment where students will be empowered to leverage the technology in the hopes for social change and a better lot in life.

References

Appleton, S. (2001). Education, Incomes and Poverty in Uganda in the 1990s. CREDIT Research Paper No. 01/22, University of Nottingham.

Cockburn, John. (2000). Child labour versus education: Poverty constraints or income opportunities?, Paper presented at a Conference on Opportunities in Africa: Micro-evidence on firms and households, April.

Christiansen, L., Demery L., and Paternostro, S. (2003). Macro and Micro Perspectives of Growth and Poverty in Africa. World Bank Economic Review, 17, 317-47.

Dunford, C. (2002). Microfinance as a vehicle for educating the poor. Retrieved on April 4, 2006 from http://devnet.anu.edu.au/online%20versions%20pdfs/57/2757Dunford.pdf

Gow. K.M. (2001). How access to microfinance and education through technology can alleviate poverty in third world coutnreis. International Journal of Economic Development, 3(1), pp.1-20. http://www.spaef.com/IJED_PUB/3_1/3_1_gow.pdf

Kanpol, B. (1999). Critical pedagogy: An introduction (2nd Ed.). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.

Lewis, S. (2005). Race Against Time. House of Anansi Press. Toronto, Canada.

McLaren, P. (1998). Revolutionary pedagogy in post-revolutionary times: Rethinking the political economy of critical education. Educational Theory, Fall98, Vol. 48 Issue 4, p431, 32p;

Ryder, M. (2006). Critical Pedagogy. Retrieved on March 31, 2006 from http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/crit_ped.html

Travers, A., Decker, E. (1999). New Technology and Critical Pedagogy. Retrieved on April 3, 2006 from http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue1_2/01travers1_2.html

Williams, L. (2004). Rage and Hope. Retrieved on march 31, 2006 from http://www.perfectfit.org/CT/index2.html