Given Tablets But No Teachers, Ethiopian Kids Teach Themselves

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OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) workers dropped off closed boxes containing tablets, taped shut, with no instruction: "Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch ... powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. ... Within five months, they had hacked Android."

Read more: Given Tablets But No Teachers, Ethiopian Kids Teach Themselves

With 100 million first-grade-aged children worldwide having no access to schooling, the One Laptop Per Child organization is trying something new in two remote Ethiopian villages--simply dropping off tablet computers with preloaded programs and seeing what happens.

The goal: to see if illiterate kids with no previous exposure to written words can learn how to read all by themselves, by experimenting with the tablet and its preloaded alphabet-training games, e-books, movies, cartoons, paintings, and other programs.
  • Profile picture of the author Michael Ten
    That is amazing. I used to follow OLPC fairly closely a few years ago. I'll have to go see what they are doing now!
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  • Profile picture of the author jimbo13
    Not much of an experiment as it is was done before. So pretty much a foregone conclusion that this would happen.

    Newcastle University in the UK did this way back in 1999.

    It is a very famous study called Hole In The Wall where a computer was put into a hole in a wall in some Indian slum.

    The project ran for 6 years; until 2005, as more and more Hole In The Wall PCs were embedded into poor Indian villages.

    At one village, Tamil speaking children who knew no English and nothing about PCs taught themselves Molecular Biology in English in 150 days to the same level as Privately educated children.

    Here is a bit about it.

    Self-Organizing Systems of Learning: A Hole-In-the-Wall Approach to Providing Better Education « Promega Connections

    A lot can be done to educate the developing world.

    Thanks for your link to that Ethiopian story.

    Dan
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    • Originally Posted by jimbo13 View Post

      Not much of an experiment as it is was done before. So pretty much a foregone conclusion that this would happen.

      Newcastle University in the UK did this way back in 1999.

      It is a very famous study called Hole In The Wall where a computer was put into a hole in a wall in some Indian slum.

      The project ran for 6 years; until 2005, as more and more Hole In The Wall PCs were embedded into poor Indian villages.

      At one village, Tamil speaking children who knew no English and nothing about PCs taught themselves Molecular Biology in English in 150 days to the same level as Privately educated children.

      Here is a bit about it.

      Self-Organizing Systems of Learning: A Hole-In-the-Wall Approach to Providing Better Education « Promega Connections

      A lot can be done to educate the developing world.

      Thanks for your link to that Ethiopian story.

      Dan
      Thanks for this Hole In The Wall study as well. I think they both show what is possible, if the flow of information can flow in the right directions...

      These children are hungry and challenged in every way - physically, emotionally, and mentally - and given the opportunity they can create a new environment for themselves, and assimilate into a global community...hopefully for the betterment of all involved...

      (As long as they don't just start texting each other...)
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  • Profile picture of the author williambrown
    There's a lot of tutorials online but I think they still need a teacher to guide and instill discipline to the students.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    How do they know If adults that know how to use computers didn't help the kids (at least 1 kid)?

    Also did they have internet service, because that alone is a source for hacking anything that exist.
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