Ethiopian kids teach themselves English, hack OLPCs in 5 months

[Lord Cataplanga]

The experiment:

Closed boxes with Motorola Xoom tablets with solar chargers and custom software were left in two isolated villages in Ethiopia. Some adults were taught how to recharge the batteries and nothing else. They didn't have instruction manuals or anything (very few people at the village knew how to read anyway). The devices had special software that tracked how they were used.

The result:

“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.”

Elaborating later on Negroponte’s hacking comment, Ed McNierney, OLPC’s chief technology officer, said that the kids had gotten around OLPC’s effort to freeze desktop settings. “The kids had completely customized the desktop—so every kids’ tablet looked different.  We had installed software to prevent them from doing that,” McNierney said. “And the fact they worked around it was clearly the kind of creativity, the kind of inquiry, the kind of discovery that we think is essential to learning.”

This experiment began earlier this year, and what OLPC really want to see is whether these kids can learn to read and write in English. Around the world, there are something like 100,000,000 kids who don't even make it to first grade, simply because there are not only no schools, but very few literate adults, and if it turns out that for the cost of a tablet all of these kids can simply teach themselves, it has huge implications for education. And it goes beyond the kids, too, since previous OLPC studies have shown that kids will use their computers to teach their parents to read and write as well, which is incredibly amazing and awesome.

I've been told that one of the reasons OLPC isn't implemented in the schools in my area is not that the laptops are expensive or anything, but that the teachers don't want to learn how to use them. This experiment suggests that the teachers can be unnecessary.

Also, how did you guys learn how to use computers? Did you guys read instruction manuals and stuff?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Built my first computer from a Heathkit in 1982.  Learned along the way.

[Don Coyote]

Playing computer games and surfing for porn.

[Lord Cataplanga]

Built my first computer from a Heathkit in 1982.  Learned along the way.

When I started using computers, it was already past the point where pretty much anyone could use them. Anyone who knew how to press F1 and read instructions, anyway, which the Ethiopian kids don't.

It used to be that you had to know how to assemble your own computer to use it. After that you had to know how to read (preferably English) and understand the instructions.

Now even that is unnecessary. Or maybe it was unnecessary since the beginning, and anyone with free time and motivation can learn how to use computers. That would explain why illiterate kids can do it but my middle school teachers couldn't.

[Placid Dingo]

The experiment:

Closed boxes with Motorola Xoom tablets with solar chargers and custom software were left in two isolated villages in Ethiopia. Some adults were taught how to recharge the batteries and nothing else. They didn't have instruction manuals or anything (very few people at the village knew how to read anyway). The devices had special software that tracked how they were used.

The result:

“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.”

Elaborating later on Negroponte’s hacking comment, Ed McNierney, OLPC’s chief technology officer, said that the kids had gotten around OLPC’s effort to freeze desktop settings. “The kids had completely customized the desktop—so every kids’ tablet looked different.  We had installed software to prevent them from doing that,” McNierney said. “And the fact they worked around it was clearly the kind of creativity, the kind of inquiry, the kind of discovery that we think is essential to learning.”

This experiment began earlier this year, and what OLPC really want to see is whether these kids can learn to read and write in English. Around the world, there are something like 100,000,000 kids who don't even make it to first grade, simply because there are not only no schools, but very few literate adults, and if it turns out that for the cost of a tablet all of these kids can simply teach themselves, it has huge implications for education. And it goes beyond the kids, too, since previous OLPC studies have shown that kids will use their computers to teach their parents to read and write as well, which is incredibly amazing and awesome.

I've been told that one of the reasons OLPC isn't implemented in the schools in my area is not that the laptops are expensive or anything, but that the teachers don't want to learn how to use them. This experiment suggests that the teachers can be unnecessary.

Also, how did you guys learn how to use computers? Did you guys read instruction manuals and stuff?

In my experience, teachers are horrifically resistent to change. Also administration is horrifically scared of giving mandates.

maybe it's better in bigger areas but I suspect it's still a problem.

[Cain]

I learnt how to use a computer via trial and error.  Started with MS-DOS, which was...quite a learning curve, though I didn't experiment too much since it wasn't my own machine.  That came later, at university, when I was in a building full of wannabe hackers abusing the shit out of our shared network.  Then I had to get creative, because otherwise some pimple-faced Computer Science student was going to steal all my music.

[Pixie]

Those kids give me warm fuzzies.

[M. Nigel Salt]

My son figured out how to use my Mac to surf the web before he could talk. I never figured out how he knew how to navigate to the right websites, but he did.

My favorite line from the article was "within five months, they had hacked Android,”

That's kids for ya. 

[Forsooth]

observation and exploration

I learned how to use PCs by watching somebody else do it first, then just dicking around on them. I don't program anything so I never bothered with in-depth study of computers

A year or so ago, I bought the wife a thousand dollar web browser a Mac, and had to look for help on anything more complicated than the internet and double clicking (actually getting to a program's file and contents on a Mac is not intuitive)

[Queen Gogira Pennyworth, BSW]

I taught myself html and css through trial and error and google. The first image editing I did was in MS Paint removing watermarks from tv screen caps.

[Cainad]

My first devices were a Mac LC II and then a first-generation iMac, so I think it's a stretch to say that I ever really learned how to use a "computer."

[M. Nigel Salt]

My mom got a 286 in 1986 and I learned to use it so I could play games. The end!

[Don Coyote]

My mom got a 286 in 1986 and I learned to use it so I could play games. The end!

I was two years old. Stop talking about vacuum tubes.

[Lenin McCarthy]

How I learned to use computers? Do people learn how to use computers? I'm unfamiliar with that concept. 

Most of what I've learned about computers comes from my Linux fanatic phase when I was 11-12, though.

[M. Nigel Salt]

My mom got a 286 in 1986 and I learned to use it so I could play games. The end!

I was two years old. Stop talking about vacuum tubes.