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A World Bank Blog on ICT use in Education

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Exploring issues related to the use of information and communication technologies to benefit education in developing countries

evaluation

What have we learned from OLPC pilots to date?

Submitted by Michael Trucano on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 23:01

CC licensed photo courtesy of Daniel Drake via Flickr It's been four years since the The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project (known then as the '$100 laptop) was announced.   According to recent unconfirmed news reports from India, one quarter million of the little green and white OLPC XO laptops are now on order for use in 1500 hundred schools on the subcontinent.  Four years on, what have we learned about the impact of various OLPC pilots that might be of relevance to a deployment in India?  Thankfully, preliminary results are starting to circulate among researchers.  While nothing yet has approached what many consider to be the gold standard of evaluation work in this area, some of this research is beginning to see the light of day (or at least the Internet) -- and more is planned.

Why are there so many poor evaluations of ICT use in education?

Submitted by Michael Trucano on Fri, 03/20/2009 - 11:11

Despite increasing attention to the impact of ICT on teaching and learning in various ways, the ICT/education field continues to be littered with examples of poor evaluation work.  A few of them arrive in my in-box every week.

The Use and Misuse of Computers in Education: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Colombia

Submitted by Michael Trucano on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 18:17

World Bank Economist Felipe Barrera-Osorio, working with Leigh Linden of Columbia University, has just published a very useful and rigorous study on the impact of ICT use in Colombia.

The Use and Misuse of Computers in Education: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Colombia (PDF) looked at  97 schools and 5,201 children over two years of participation in the Computers for Schools program.