With hope on their laps
The One Laptop Per Child pilot project was started in a little-known village in Maharashtra, 10 months ago. Last week, the children got laptops with Marathi keyboards. Anita Aikara reports….Anita Aikara
The One Laptop Per Child pilot project was started in a little-known village in Maharashtra, 10 months ago. Last week, the children got laptops with Marathi keyboards. Anita Aikara reports….Anita Aikara
In the interiors of the Raigad district in village Khairat, which comprises of just 30 families, 20 kids are charging their laptops in the local school. They are excited with their computers and use it all the time. They are those lucky children who were given the opportunity to study using laptops when their village was chosen for a pilot study on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, by the Digital Bridge Foundation (which runs the project in India), with the purpose of providing interactive learning to the poorest and most remote areas in India.
It’s been a little over ten months since the pilot study began and the results have been beyond expectations. Sandeep Surve, a teacher at the school, says that not only have more children from the village enrolled in the school this year, but also that the number of children attending school in the monsoons has increased, unlike in other government schools. He says, “Children in most government schools don’t have proper rainwear and umbrellas and refuse to attend school during the rains. The same was the case in this school too, till last year. But this year there has been near to full attendance.” This year there are 28 kids in Surve?s class unlike last year where there were around 20 kids. Surve adds that the number should have been over 30, but a few families have shifted from the village.
Last week, the kids got another pleasant surprise. New laptops with Marathi keyboards were gifted to the kids. He says, “We had been waiting for the Marathi font keyboards as the kids come from homes where Marathi is the only language spoken.” The kids have learnt calculations, science and English lessons on the laptop and with the new keyboards they are even learning to make words, sentences and poems in Marathi, other than taking photos and chatting on the laptop with their friends in class. After a seven-hour-long class, the kids leave to go home but unlike during the previous months, this time they carry their laptops with them. In the earlier months, due to technical problems, the laptops took longer to charge, due to which the kids were forced to leave their laptops in the school. The school has solved the problem and with a common server now the children can charge the batteries faster.
Datta Gore, 10-year-old student says, “We don’t have TV at home, so I can play games on the laptop till dinner time. Earlier, the battery in the laptops used to die early, but now I can use the laptop till bedtime.” He adds, “With the new Marathi letter keyboards, my sister who goes to another school can use the laptop, too.” Surve adds that the kids are at a disadvantage as they can study in the school only till their fourth standard after which they go to another school which does not have the laptops. “However, kids who have left the school keep visiting me and narrate episodes of how they kept telling their computer teachers of what they know and how the teachers were impressed.”
Owing to the success of the pilot study, there are six new pilot projects waiting to be launched in different parts of the country. With the government reluctant to commit to the project due to the high cost of the $200 laptop, the project is now looking at NGOs for funding. The government’s budget for primary education, which allocates a few hundred rupees a year for each child, will simply not be enough to cover the laptop?s cost. Nicholas Negropontem, the founder of the OLPC association says, “The pilot is meant for people in India, especially the Indian government who want to test whether they can implement the laptop or not. It is up to India to decide whether it wants it.”
Sumit Choudhary of Digital Bridge Foundation, who has been responsible for the pilot study, adds that the government has not approached him yet. He says, “We are hoping that the government involves itself. Without governmental intervention the project will be restricted to few pilot studies. But we?ll continue with such pilot studies as providing laptops to 10 kids is better than nothing”.