Given tablets but no teachers, Ethiopian children teach themselves
October 29, 2012
(Credit: OLPC)
Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. “I thought the kids would play with the boxes. 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 two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android,” Negroponte said. “Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.” ….
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.
The experiment is being done in two isolated rural villages with about 20 first-grade-aged children each, about 50 miles from Addis Ababa. One village is called Wonchi, on the rim of a volcanic crater at 11,000 feet; the other is called Wolonchete, in the Rift Valley. Children there had never previously seen printed materials, road signs, or even packaging that had words on them, Negroponte said.
READ MORE: MIT Technology Review
Comments (31)
by the solar india
This initiative is very similar to the “hole in the wall.. from India”,What is common between the two projects is, Kids have a ability to learn Quick …only given an opportunity to do so..
by Bob Blackledge
Cybernettr is comparing apples and oranges. Back in the day of the Commodore 64 there was no World Wide Web. “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Sir Winston Churchill
by Cybernettr
Not terribly impressed by this anecdotal “news story”. When Apple released its iBooks software a few months ago, there were big claims of how it would revolutionize education.
A few spoil sports pointed out how the same claims were made for the Commodore 64 with its huge raft of educational software, and how long ago was this…30 years ago? (The same claims were made later for educational CD-ROMs). So why is our educational system such a mess?
The idea that kids need no supervision and will just “teach themselves” reminds me of this “innovative” school I went to where kids were allowed to be “self-guided” and were not required to attend any classes. The school didn’t last long, and kids who stayed at that school too long had to take grades over.
When kids have computers at home, what do they spend most of their time on…”educational games” or Facebook?
Just goes to show that old lies never die, they just get more funding.
by GETNET ai.
Given tablets but no teachers, Ethiopian children
That will be very cool than sending guns for the rest of african too.
Education is the power for democracy and for freedom.
If the people lacking the knowledge they will come up with the idea of force .
help by giving tablets than teachers, we are unable to pay teachers salary and expanse. Send tablets and Ai software for teaching.
We know how to power on/off the tablets.
by Ralph Dratman
This is very exciting, and I would love to believe it, but that would require some form of corroboration.
by Clyde
I agree with our Editor and Dr. Mitra who says, “… I think the hole in the wall gives us a method to create a door, if you like, through which large numbers of children can rush into this new arena. When that happens, it will have changed our society forever.”
by Dan Sutera
Kids are self-motivated enough to learn how to play with a computer. The article doesn’t say anything about the success of self-motivated / self-taught literacy. Will be curious to see if the experiment works.
If it does work it will be very cool, but I’m not sure what problem it is actually solving. Why chose to eliminate teachers from the picture entirely? There are now less than 10% of students worldwide still out of school. It would actually be more cost effective and sustainable to empower teachers with technology like Khan Academy and others than it would be to spend $100 per student on a 100% student-centric model. At least at the primary level, it will be a blended learning (teacher + tech) that will most likely come out on top…
by Dennis R.
I feel like there are parts of the story which are missing. Why are only “first-grade-aged” children participating (unless there is some authority figure to establish such a boundary)? What happens when the children all become vision-impaired from squinting at a screen? How helpful is it for them to learn read English if their native language is something else? [This is the sort of thing that can backfire destructively] What happens if a laptop (or conceivably all the laptops) are stolen or destroyed? Do girls get the same access as boys? Do they get to keep their laptops when they “graduate” from first grade?
I don’t want to make the argument that so far this experiment DOESN’T show lots of promise. I wouldn’t mind seeing this carried forward throughout the lives of these children. Or, indeed, seeing it spread to the other members of their community. I think it’s very early to start congratulating ourselves for saving lives.
And, really, if it’s such a boon, why isn’t the experiment being replicated in English-speaking territories, like the United States?
Bravo to anyone who can improve the learning experience for anyone. But this seems like less than a real-world test and more like a controlled environment with a screening process for the participants.
Just my $.02.
by Aaron
I totally agree. Also, they would need to charge the tablets, so all of them either were relatively well off with electricity and or other such benefits that I don’t believe they would have in a remote Ethiopian village, or they had some pre-planned assistance with this matter. At any rate, they would eventually need SOME direction. It’s all well and good to learn the basics like reading and writing and maybe basic math, but what about after that? I suppose the OLPC people only installed educational apps, but if there is the possibility to connect to the internet to get more apps, I’d forsake those educational apps and download me some good old indie games or other more game-related apps.
by Thomas Watts
OLPC have hand-cranked generators.
by Paul Cooper
According to other articles these Android Tablets (not OLPC laptops) came with solar chargers. Some adults had been told how to use these.
Apparently there is a “sneaker net” (not 100% sure what that is but I assume a form of wifi as that is what those devices are going to have in built-in hardware) so technicians from the project can load more apps later. As to them using of English language only rather than their native language according to one article this was at the Ethiopian Government’s request.
What I feel that these articles on this story are lacking are real details of what is going on and most importantly the words of the children themselves and their parents.
by Jerry
>What happens when the children all become vision-impaired from squinting at a screen?
There’d be a huge new discovery overturning the previously held belief “overuse” of eyes doesn’t cause damage. It’s another myth that continues to hold like that of wearing someone else’s glasses causes harm.
by Editor
The same thing happened in the famous “hole in the wall experiment” in New Delhi: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india/thestory.html. I suspect what makes these experiments so effective is that there’s no regimenting adult (teachers, etc.) around to spoil the fun and make the kids feel stupid. I’d like to test that hypothesis with a controlled experiment (if that is possible in this case) in which kids who find the tablets are then forced to sit immobilized all day listening to teachers drone on and have their tablet use monitored and controlled.
by Giulio Prisco
It is not surprising that children learn by themselves when given the chance. Children are natural learners and they can learn everything fast, except when we adults get in the way. Semi-serious (but serious enough) suggestion: send teachers home and use OLPC also in the Western world.
by Editor
Yes, leave a bunch of tablets outside schools.
by Elise
The key is to not have the teachers control the access or the learning process.
by Editor
Given the power of teacher’s unions, that will be hard to do, so communities will have to pass laws forbidding compulsory
brainwashingattendance.by Kevin Haskell
So true. The question is, how do we get people to start realizing this can be a paradigm change if they want it to be, and that perhaps they can start downsizing the teacher’s unions, and the building of new schools, that are bankrupting every community and state, but are no longer necessary?
Maybe attendance for K-12 can’t be completely ended, but if we can reduce expenses 80-90% by reducing most personnel and the need for attendance for most children, it will greatly help the budgets of every community in the U.S., or world, that verge on economic collapse.
by GatorALLin
worth a watch ….waiting for superman DVD.
part 1 of 11 total, (now free online). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEOOCTmR-k&feature=related
by Kevin Haskell
Agree completely.
by alliwant
An extraordinary result, by any measure. I have to wonder if the person who disabled the cameras was really being careless, or thought to add another challenge to the experiment.
by Ron Abate
Unlike many adults, children take to computers naturally. Their brains are more malleable and adaptable. The anxiety factor is missing.
by Vin
Obviously children have been a wasted resource all over the world for much too long.
by Sherrie
fyi everyone OLPC is not a charity and Nick Negroponte is an MIT educated/trained engineer who also happens to be a visionary. I have a question though, just in case anyone here is on the project: how can the XO be upgraded?
by deadalus
with this kind of thinking those countries will grow and prosper very quickly, its sad that these kids have been starved not only for basics like food and water but knowledge as well, like the old proverb “give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him how to fish and he feeds himself blah blah, sept its a cheap simple tablet and thankfully its going to the kids and not the elders. the change that will unfold in a single generation will be orders of magnitude over the past century I’m sure.. if someone does not blow it up first :(
by Bri
We don’t know the reasons that the camera was disabled. Whether you agree with the rational is a different issue. Off the top of my head I think it might be related to doing ” serious” work with the tablets, as apposed to just playing with the camera. Maybe they fear sexting. I love the fact that the children figured out how to reengage it. This article is a good example of crowd sourcing. The kids feed of each others efforts. In the long run, it has been the best lesson plan. They have learned to cooperate and to integrate with the group.
by Trudi
Aftter teaching first grade for 24 years this does not surprise me, Children Learn at surprising speed inspite of their environment. They are very curious. Education is changing and about to leave the brick and mortar classroom on a grand scale.
by Ron Abate
Trudi, your comment is very insightful. We need more educators like you!
by Ethan
anyone who just disables a camera on a tablet IS an idiot
by Satan
“Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab…”
This guy is a boss at a charity? nice.
by Marcos Marin
Why Satan? Don’t you put them there?