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re: Hothouse flower effects
Hi Jaspal,
Many thanks for your comment; we appear to be in general agreement here.
Introducing an 'innovation' is often much easier than sustaining it. When I read of the excitement and optimism that are *very* apparent (undeniable) in many schools when the OLPC XO laptops first arrive, and in the months afterward, I am often reminded of the early days of the World Links program (http://www.world-links.org), with which I was closely involved for many years. We found that it was relatively easy to get communities excited about the prospect of using computers to aid in the education process, but that building long-term sustainability for such a program was a much tougher challenge. Rigorous *independent* evaluations (even when we didn't like what they said -- actually, *especially* when we didn't like what they said) were key tools that we used at World Links to help guide our work. (By the way, many of the evaluations of World Links programs in various countries are available on-line, http://ow.ly/62jR).
Once I have more information about the Mongolia project that can be shared, I will do so here (and/or invite some of the project principals to post to the blog as well).
-Mike