Policies

OLPC in Rwanda

Context and Issue

Nicholas Negroponte was an advocate of constructionism, a learning method that is student-centric and discovery-based. Negroponte believed that knowledge sharing should be the norm and advocated for creating a $100 laptop that could be distributed to underprivileged kids worldwide. Rwanda was one of the nations that introduced this program to their country. It aimed to remake its education system to develop it up to the 21st-century standard.

Solution

To do this, Rwanda introduced the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program in 2008 to their country. This was used as a mechanism to introduce technology in primary schools. It had four main objectives: enhancement of education by utilizing digital courses and gamification, altering the role of the teacher from a knowledge holder to a facilitator, enabling students to learn computer skills, and teaching students how to conduct online research to expand their knowledge. Additionally, students attended international competitions and competed with kids their age worldwide. For example, students attended International Scratch (block-based visual programming tool) days in May ’13 and ’15 and competed with students worldwide.

Impact

Since its inception in 2008, the program has handed out over 296,000 laptops in 933 schools. In the first phase, every district was to have a minimum of five schools running the OLPC program. In the second phase in 2011, all administrative schools in the country had to have one school running the OLPC program. Additionally, 9350 primary teachers between grades 4-6 were trained in 850 schools.

Analysis

Analysis

The OLPC program demonstrates that it is practical to introduce technology in education in lower-developed countries. The kids in those schools could grasp how to utilize this technology, and it assisted them in learning more modern mechanisms. Additionally, this program also boosted the skills of the teachers. It allowed them to change their role from knowledge holders to facilitators, which is the global change occurring in the field of education currently. This program underscores the importance of introducing technology within primary schools and showcases that it is possible and allows for the advancement of education, aligning with international standards.