One Laptop Per Teacher

This is co-operative research work on a learning project for in-service technological training of teachers.

This page contains the 10 page version of the cut-down 6 page version accepted for the real conference, SITE 2007. This is V0.34 --146.141.15.223 06:57, 15 December 2006 (UTC)--Ian Kennedy 05:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

One Laptop Per Teacher: Content and Curriculum for (in-service) Teacher Training

Ian Kennedy PhD PrEng *, Delia Pass Ed.D.**, Roxan Cadir***
 * *University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
 * ** Rutherford County Schools, USA
 * *** University Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique

Abstract

"The economy depends on education. A major problem exists with the quality of education in developing countries. The major problem lies in teacher education. ICT can provide an answer in delivering on-site education to teachers, but requires overcoming teacher resistance. One promising medium is the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) when used by the teacher, and which is here called the One Laptop Per Teacher (OLPT). This paper proposes structure and content for in-service training of teachers in the use of OLPC, using the OLPT. The operation of the OLPC works with activities being the central concept; this is contrary to the MS Windows approach, where applications are the central concept. This and other differences must be conveyed to tutors, teachers and pupils. A key point with the OLPC is for pupils to build each other up by co-operating and collaborating using the mesh networking facilities built into the OLPC. So too, a key point is for teachers to build each other up by co-operating and collaborating using the Internet. The curriculum for the child is envisaged to be provided from three sources: the international teaching community co-op; the national and cultural norms of the country; the parochial quirks of the local community and environment. So too the curriculum for teaching teachers technology is provided from the same three sources. The paper concludes by pointing out that unless teachers (and their tutors!) become lifelong learners and embrace technology, their pupils will not. So the problem is really one of encouraging tutors of teachers to adapt to and adopt technology. It is recommended that a suitable phased introduction could follow the ARCS model: Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. Towards this end, Wikiversity was used as the repository to keep the current master copy of material prepared by the community for the course (here called a Learning Project) for in-service teachers."

Keywords: in-service teacher's training, professional development, Learning Project, Learning Group

Introduction
It is 2007. The moment has come in a rural school in Nigeria. The teacher whom the children call Fat Fingers (for she does have very fat fingers) has told the class of 39 they can now open their packages. As each member of the class receives one laptop per child (OLPC), the teacher keeps back the 40th laptop for herself.

She experiences the excitement that her children experience as they open the packaging and try to solve the puzzle of how to open the latches to part the screen from the keyboard. But, she also experiences trepidation. Will she cope? Will her fingers manage to operate the keyboard with the smaller-than-usual pitch? Will the children still respect her now that she is no longer the source of all knowledge? What extra knowledge should she possess to help her pupils? Does this mean more work?

This paper addresses the problem of introducing teachers to the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). How can we best prepare tomorrow's teachers to use tomorrow's (2007's) technology?

Learning Projects in Learning Groups in an E-Learning Community
In the Wikiversity,  Learning Projects are the equivalent of what traditional universities call "courses" or "units". Learning Projects are relevant to achieving the particular goals of a  Learning Group. A learning project is a means for members of a Learning Group to advance their professional development through systematically following organized learning activities based around a key work-related theme. A learning project is over an extended period, and it is a considered, concerted, conscientious endeavour to master the material. It is composed of a course of closely related endeavours to help the individuals to master the material. A learning project is effectively a themed container for lessons. In scope it might require about eight hours of work spread over half a year. In our context, a Learning Group is a group of in-service teachers who communicate and collaborate to form a virtual group for the purpose of professional peer education. The goal of joining a Learning Group is to help teachers to achieve their goals and objectives and to help them in learning to live in this world that is changing so rapidly. The Learning Group typically meets on-line every week and the Learning Group provides teachers with an opportunity for mutual support and challenge.

It is the reminder that they are not alone in their endeavours to advance professionally. In the lonely night as each teacher studies, with the room lit only by the light of the OLPT screen, each teacher can be comforted by the thought of that self-same light lighting up countless similar rooms.

Wikiversity is one example of a Learning Community. A learning community is a group of people and hopefuly at least one educator who are motivated by common vision and volition, and who for a period are engaged in the pursuit of acquiring knowledge, abilities, and changing attitudes. A learning community is characterized by active teaching and learning, collaboration, belonging, shared decision making, and a strong sense of democratic participation. According to Wikiversity itself, in the policy proposal document What_Wikiversity_is_not, Wikiversity "is a university in the sense of a transnational community of teachers, learners, and researchers ... dedicated to lifelong learning."

In-service learning projects for teachers
In our case, the group is composed of in-service teachers, and their goal is to learn how to introduce OLPCs into the class and make the best use of them. (We avoid the use of the word classroom, as the class may be held under "the tree". (See Figure 1.)

The in-service teachers are supported by material provided under the learning project [Collaborate_and_Create_In-service], and as part of preparing this paper, the authors have created a framework for the material that will be provided in the learning group collaborative [Collaborate_and_Create_In-service]. The repository has been called "Collaborate and Create In-Service", and this Learning Project Learning_project is located at Wikiversity. This measure provides free hosting, and enables the worldwide community to contribute to the learning project.

Review of Teacher Training Literature
This section dips into history to establish precedents and parallels from which we can learn.

An initial warning
Ehrmann (ca 1991) warns us of the importance of asking the right questions. "It takes just as much effort to answer a useless question as a useful one." So we take care to pose a useful question. Our useful question is: How does the introduction of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) impact the way we teach teachers?

A good basic approach
Chickering & Ehrmann (1996) speak about higher education. We are interested in developing the teacher as a professional.

For the school environment, we paraphrase them.

A Good Practice will:


 * 1) Encourage contacts between children and teachers
 * 2) Develop reciprocity and cooperation among children
 * 3) Use active learning techniques
 * 4) Give prompt feedback
 * 5) Emphasize time on task
 * 6) Communicate high expectations
 * 7) Respect diverse talents and ways of learning.

We believe that teaching with the OLPC can follow these practices and that learning with the OLPT should also follow these practices.

Ehman et al. (2002) believe: "Important factors include classroom-based curriculum projects, teacher choice, systematic reflection on practice, reports by teachers of their work to other professionals, and impact by teachers on others in their schools." Surely today these are still valid factors in ensuring the success of in-service training of teachers in technology?

The authors Moursund, D and Bielefeldt, T. (1999) ask," Will new teachers be prepared to teach in a digital age?" http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2/content_storage_01/0000000b/80/11/5a/3c.pdf

Most institutions had IT available in K-12 classrooms for student teaching, but IT was not used routinely during field experiences. With the OLPC, this changes things completely, as the OLPC is highly portable. It is designed to be lightweight, small, robust, rugged with a long battery life. Thus it is eminently suitable for field expeditions. By the same token, the OLPT is ideal for the teacher to take home, to school and into the field. For example, the teacher can use it to gather photographs of the neighbourhood of the teacher for inclusion in the local lesson plan.

The vision has come to pass
The major prophet in the field is the visionary Papert (1993), whose wonderful vision for the one computer per one child ratio is translated on the project by his colleague Nicholas Negroponte, the creator and mentor of the [OLPC initiative http://www.laptop.org/] which is only coming true and being vindicated as this paper is being written: [Papert (1993) The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer. New York, NY: BasicBooks,] In this book, Papert looked back over a decade during which American schools acquired more than three million computers and assessed the progress and resistance to progress. He was able to give stories about visionary teachers who had used computers to enrich learning which provided a glimpse of their potential, but the school as an institution resisted. The school only regarded Technology as an add-on to a preconceived system of education. His book was particularly critical of the schools' way of isolating the computer in a separate room where computer literacy becomes just another subject, or computer-aided instruction was used as a new technology for teaching the same old curriculum. In his proposed vision, the computer will be as much part of all learning as the pencil and the book were in the past.

With the new OLPC, children will now master areas of knowledge that were inaccessible. Self-directed work will allow children to adopt an unprecedented diversity of learning styles and there is now the opportunity for pupils to learn to take charge of their own learning.

So too, the OLPT provides a heaven-sent opportunity for teachers to follow their own learning styles and to seize the opportunity to take charge of their own learning.

Further information on the topic of teacher training in technology
Further information on the topic of teacher training in technology is easily accessible from Google's Scholar by feeding it the three keywords.  and from ERIC: []

A key author in the field is Brush (2003) [], who identified problem areas as being in pre-service and in-service training as well as at teacher's education colleges where the tutors taught without exemplary technological practice. Pre-service practicals by teachers present a good opportunity for intervention, but affect only the fresh intake.

The OLPC
Although pupils might use mainly Microsoft products in the commercial world, we are not a technical training school for commerce. The whole idea is to make an OLPC that "pays nobody no royalties and nobody no profit-margins" to make it affordable. A "WIntel" machine will cost $400, meaning that we would instead have to share one "WIntel" laptop among 4 children. Initially, the OLPC project is aimed at rural communities in less affluent countries. (Each participating country can only participate if they agree to buy a minimum of 1 million OLPCs). Obviously urban shack-dwellers and rural private schools do exist, but as the OLPC project does not concentrate on these, we just mention them in passing. We do realize that there should be benefits of this study to teachers in these circumstances, because teachers there can tap into the same international resources. We assume that we do want to teach teachers how to use the technology e.g., the hardware, the software such as the operating system, the networking and multi-media facilities (possibly with some face-to-face lectures?). We propound therefore the need to develop a generic course. The course will be online and be downloadable or can be put onto an SD card and carried around.

We realize in the big picture that material for the child / teacher can be categorized into three segments: what is an unquestionable international common core of knowledge; the national and cultural aspects that are peculiar to each country; the parochial peculiarities of each local community. The curriculum for the child is envisaged to be provided from three associated sources: the co-operative effort of the international teaching community; the national and cultural repositories of the country; the parochial quirks of the local community and local environment. So too, the curriculum for teaching teachers about technology is provided from the same three sources.

Delimitations of this work
This paper prepares the framework for a course, but deliberately stops short of completing this course and steps back so that the community can step in. The benefit of this work is that it lays the foundations for teachers to be taught the technology to enable them to use this technology to teach any subject in any area of learning.

This includes:
 * How to find data on the Web


 * How to download data


 * How to communicate with other teachers (e.g. by Voice over IP, E-mail)


 * How to present data (e.g. using freeware substitute programs for Microsoft Word / Excel / Powerpoint)

We have made the following deliberate delimitations in order to limit the ambit of this work:
 * The material we consider will be material for the training of qualified teachers (i.e. it covers in-service training only). We realize that the number of qualified teachers is different in developed, developing and under-developed countries.
 * We have concentrated on in-service training of teachers to give our paper focus, but realize that there should be benefits of this study to teachers on campus, because students there can tap into the same international resources.
 * A obvious corollary in order to make any progress is that we have to make the following assumptions: We assume the target teachers already have acquired the required knowledge about learning theory etc. and that they can actually teach.

Method
This section analyses and catalogues teaching plans with a view towards inclusion in in-service teacher technology training, analyses the wants and needs of in-service teachers, and then proposes the OLPC be populated with learning projects for the in-service teacher to use, and prepares a framework for such training tomorrow's teachers in tomorrow's technology.

An analysis and cataloguing of in-service teacher technology training
A Web search has revealed a wealth of teaching plans that are available (even for teaching the teacher!). So one contribution of the paper is to map out their existence and prepare a meta-analysis of their structure and fields. A key point is that we need to get the teacher actively involved successively through: 1. Using stock lesson plans 2. Learning from this what goes into a lesson plan 3. Modifying someone else's lesson plan 4. Researching, Preparing, Testing and Debugging the teacher's own lesson plan 5. Contributing it to the community.

An important early lesson plan is a lesson plan in making lesson plans! Other lesson plans of importance include:


 * Teacher's guide to the OLPC (self-study)


 * Child's guide to the OLPC


 * Photography


 * Audio recording


 * Introduction to wikis Introduction_to_Wiki


 * Learning to learn a wiki way Learning_to_learn_a_wiki_way


 * Scholarship Wikiversity_scholarship


 * Citing sources Cite_sources


 * If you have one, give one (lesson plan); If you need one, take two hundred.

Repeatedly using the 80:20 principle to identify the major problem in teacher training
Using the 80:20 principle, we reason that since the majority of teachers are already in the system, and the majority are reluctant, the focus of integrating interventions should be aimed at this target group. As they may be over-worked, fully occupied, part-time workers or disinterested, it necessary to get the interventions out to the in-service teachers. Because of limitations in resources, digital delivery seems to be mandated.

Case study: The problem on-the-ground in Mozambique
This sub-section gives a shocking summary of the extreme numbers and the situation on the ground in a specimen country, Mozambique. It is based on work done by Cadir (2006). Primary education schools have the largest enrolment. Primary school teachers are formally trained after a minimum formal education, completed in specialized centres located in a few main places in the country. After this formal training the teachers are left alone completely at their appointed locations with no further training. Re-training or even a complementary training of the teachers represents a huge financial burden to the ministry of education and is unsustainable for the current state of the economy. The effect of the financial burden can be seen in Figure 1 and Figure 2, which present extreme conditions of classes and classrooms. Classes are dogged by large enrolment numbers, multiple sessions, part-time and inadequately trained teachers, and inadequate classrooms.

Figure 1: Teaching in a crowded, non-conventionally built classroom in Cabo-Delgado province of Mozambique

During the turbulent war (which ended in 1992), more than half of the schools were destroyed. Even with substantial efforts by the government to build new schools and provide education to all members of the population, there are still many children studying under very poor conditions or even under a tree as shown in Figure 2.



Figure 2: A teacher teaching his class in Mozambique under the tree (no classroom)

Most of the schools lacks on resources like water and electricity. The problem is worse in rural areas, as can be seen in the figure, where the students have to attend classes under a tree. The water supply to the school is considered vital input for the welfare of pupils and teachers. In one of the most populated provinces of Mozambique, viz. Zambezia, the water is supplied only to 13% of the existing schools. The student / teacher ratio reaches stunning values in average of 69 for rural areas and 57 in urban areas.

Electricity is of great importance for the efficient resource operation of a school. Often night shift classes reuse existing classrooms and teachers. In Zambezia province, the percentage of schools with a supply of electricity is only 6%, and almost one fifth of those with electricity have a solar panel as the source of electricity. Therefore, any training strategy to be adopted for teachers in rural areas should take these vital factors into account.

The automatic assumption that Web access will be available to every child is as flawed as are the assumptions of solid classroom walls, running water and a stable electricity supply.

Field research has shown that there are some distance training methods which covers certain parts of the country but these are limited to printed materials, which are delivered to the schools. Once a year a group of examiners go to the schools to evaluate the learning progress. Rarely have other technologies such CDs, radio, or video tapes been used. Since IT and computer education programs have been slowly introduced into teachers training institutions and a project initiated to connect all schools nationwide to the Internet and e-learning programs, there seems to be a promise for providing continuous training for in-service teachers. Widespread deployment of ICT is seen as the only solution to rapidly improve the quality of education and related outcomes.

What teachers want and need today in in-service technology training
It is not enough to simply provide student access to technology in schools. Instead, a quality-learning environment in which these technologies are used must be implemented, and this environment must begin with the teachers. Involving the teacher from the beginning helps the teacher to "buy-in" to the concept.

Thus it is important to investigate what teachers want in technology training, as plans to integrate technology for learning often fail (Cuban, Kirkpatrick, & Peck, 2001). Teachers want resources to integrate technology into the classroom that are easy to use and readily accessible. Training should be on-site with continuing support by experts and training must not be complicated or time consuming to develop and implement. These wants are at odds with the provision of teacher training using pure distance education.

To be successful, continuing teacher professional development to integrate technology need best-practices that will promote teacher self-efficacy and positive attitudes about computers, collaborative learning, and building proficiency in technology through hands-on experience. Empirical studies have demonstrated that employing these activities does encourage technology integration. So many school reform initiatives actively involve teachers in the design, cooperative planning of student lessons, and provide sustained support to ensure that the changes become part of teachers’ daily routines. (Cuban, Kirkpatrick, & Peck, 2001). These needs are not at odds with the provision of teacher training using pure distance education.

A study by Mills and Tincher (2003) addresses the needs for provision of technology professional development activities which focus on instructional strategies and methods to integrate technology into student learning rather than on activities to increase skills in using computer hardware and software applications. We must not train operators, but must train students to be users of technology. Their study found that integration skills must be embedded in the operations training and demonstrated that the characteristics delineating differences among the teachers were more sharply defined by those who were novice users than those who were facilitators and integrators of classroom technology. The study showed that teachers were progressing toward expertise in technology integration knowledge and skills (Mills & Tincher, 2003), and concluded that through the establishment of a well-defined set of pedagogical standards and indicators, higher levels of technology integration in classrooms can be identified and achieved. The lesson to us is that clear standards are essential. When teachers know how to use and actually do use technology, the potential for student learning is increased. The author's recommend further research to examine how teachers develop expert teaching practices with technology in ways which encourage the integrating use of technology by students. The time is now just right to start research into how the OLPC becomes integrated by the children into their learning activities.

Proposing One Laptop Per Teacher as a solution
The One Laptop Per Teacher (OLPT) is an OLPC additionally loaded with content for teaching the teacher how to teach with the OLPC. Since it is functionally like the OLPC, it provides an ideal means for the teacher to learn how to teach children to use the OPLC. The OLPT is not an alternative to a whole classroom of OLPCs, but a simultaneously delivered adjunct to them.

If the teacher can discover that the OLPT can help the teacher with administration, this might be enough motivation for the teacher to investigate other ways to use the OLPT. As the smallest example, it can be used to record the attendance and grades of the children. In the bigger picture, the OLPT can be used to download fresh HTML, PNG, Audio, MPEG clips and associated driving computer programs via wi-fi to the OLPCs on a daily, weekly, term or annual or on an ad hoc basis as appropriate. (It is a happy accident that the mesh network that interconnects the OLPCs uses a protocol that is known as an ad hoc networking protocol.) The OLPC (and by extension the OLPT, is an "eBook" and an "encyclopedia". The OLPT is a "tape-recorder", "music player", "story teller", "camera", "video recorder", "video player", "mirror", "typewriter", "word-processor", "typesetter", "game console", "drawing board", "notebook", "diary", "calendar", "clock", "calculator", "collaborator", "class and mark register", "communicator", "educator". It is obviously not just an attendance register.

Lessons, homework, assignments and school newsletters and school reports are downloaded from the OLPT to the OLPCs. In the reverse direction, the OLPCs upload the completed homework and assignments to the OLPT, leading to a virtual paperless administration.

Of all the OLPCs, only the OLPTs are likely to have all three USB ports used simultaneously, e.g. flash key-disk, printer, and modem. Physically then, the only requirement to turn an OLPC into an OLPT is to augment its memory with a flash-memory key-disk. The next most important peripheral developed for the OLPT will be the low-cost USB data projector, as the laptop purposely does not have VGA port.

In general, the targeted children are from developing countries or part of rural and poor communities. They will not have dial-up or any other Web access from home, but may be lucky to have the ability to download from the Web via the OLPT at school. The OLPC has 1/2 Gigabyte of flash memory and will sometimes be networked to the Web at school, from where downloads can be made. Not all of the 1/2 Gigabyte of flash memory will be available for "user data", because the start-up program, operating and filing system, and programs such as the browser, compression software and the ad hoc networking software will all need part of the memory budget to make a functional computer.

Syllabus, Content and Learning Material for training tomorrow's teachers in tomorrow's technology
This sub-section prepares a framework for delivering distance education about the OLPC through the medium of the OLPT. This work stops short of providing the entire content, as we believe that this should be accomplished through teacher collaboration as part of the Learning Project. The interventions are envisaged to be delivered in the wrapping of a Learning Project. The framework for Learning materials is made up of the following components:


 * Study plan
 * Study guide
 * Study timetable
 * Links to Lessons
 * Assessment (Successful uploading of an original Lesson Plan to Wikiversity)

The study plan and study guide will consist of lessons provided to OLPT participants in a usable format depending on location and immediate resources. A timetable for developing and implementing lessons based upon the individual teaching curriculum of teachers who are involved in the project will be outlined in a distance learning format. On-line resources will contain information for the development and dissemination of completed lessons to share with other teachers and for student access (when Internet is available). This on-line resource may be updated to users who do not have Internet access on a timely basis.

Professional development websites created for teachers to use as resources for developing technology-rich lessons may be shared among the teaching community.

For example, the grade level section posted on The Learning Page disseminates teacher-created lessons using Internet resources that are of a reasonable length for students K-5:

Teacher created grade level lessons: http://www.cge.rcs.k12.tn.us/TLP/grade_levels.htm

The Collaborate and Create website is a resource for teachers to use to learn to develop lessons based on their specific curriculum using Internet resources as a source of information. The Collaborate and Create website focuses on blended learning by providing a resource for teachers aligned with a hands-on in-service training within our school, but this information may be accessed by teachers for on-line learning and training purposes.

Teacher Resource website: http://www.cge.rcs.k12.tn.us/CollaborateCreate.htm

The Learning Page website is a student resource of themes and lessons developed by teachers in a collaborative process that includes a hands-on in-service and access to the on-line resource website, Collaborate and Create. The teacher-created student lessons are disseminated through e-mail, but has the potential to be developed and maintained as an on-line distance learning resource.

Student resource The Learning Page website: http://www.cge.rcs.k12.tn.us/TLP/index.htm

The Learning Project will contain a framework that includes an outline for developing technology-rich lessons for teachers to access with students online. This project, Collaborate and Create, will be a resource for teachers to learn how to develop and implement computer technology lessons with their students, and will include examples, lessons, and Internet resources.

This learning project, Collaborate and Create, is in the developmental stages, beginning with an outline for learning. Collaborate and Create In-service


 * Downloadable key references


 * Annotated Bookmarks


 * e.g. Major lesson plan sites, here arbitrarily arranged according to the length of the URL:


 * http://lessonplan101.com/[]
 * http://www.lessonplans.org/[] NB
 * http://www.lessonplanz.com/[]
 * http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/[]
 * http://atozteacherstuff.com/Lesson_Plans/[]
 * http://www.lessonplanspage.com/index.html[]
 * http://www.cbv.ns.ca/sstudies/english/eng.html[]
 * http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/lesson_plans/[]
 * http://www.getworksheets.com/samples/lessonplans/index.html[]

Conclusion
A revolution in teaching the child requires a revolution in the way teachers learn and that in turn requires a revolution in the way that tutors teach teachers. Involving the teacher from the beginning is a must as it helps the teacher to "buy-in" to the concept.

A Web search has revealed a wealth of teaching plans that are available (even for teaching the teacher). One contribution of this paper was that it mapped out the existence of the teaching plans and prepared a meta-analysis of their structure and fields. Specimens of teaching plans and their URLs have been noted. A key point is that we need to get the teacher actively involved successively through a staged process which ends with the teacher contributing to the community.

So an important early lesson plan is a lesson plan in making lesson plans. This paper has recommended in the body, other lesson plans of importance.

Recommendations
Further work should be undertaken to populate the OLPT with course material for the teacher to use learn. It is recommended that a suitable phased introduction could follow the ARCS model: Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. This paper is also a call for participation in populating the framework we have proposed and set up at Wikiversity OLPT Materials put there can be roughly translated from English by Altavista's Babelfish or Google's Translate services, but need polishing by native speakers before use by speakers of other languages.

Acknowledgements
The authors wish to recognise useful early discussions with Mary Metcalfe, Gavin Marchant and Rex Van Olst. Thank you.

Possible additional references

 * TeachersToolbox


 * 


 * Self-citations to authors' relevant supporting works e.g.:

Pass, D. (2006). Collaborate and Create: Computer Technology Integration in the Elementary Classroom. In T. Reeves & S. Yamashita (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2006 2292-2299. Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

OLPC (and therefore OLPT) Design philosophy references
Activity basis, not Apps

OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Core Ideas:

OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Activities:

Ubuntu:

Sugar, the core of the OLPC Human Interface:

Books
Jamie McKenzie, How Teachers Learn Technology Best.