Ethiopian children teach themselves to use Android tablets

[Questionable]

http://mashable.com/2012/10/29/tablets-ethiopian-children/


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.”

[Raúl Duke]

well...what they did expect?

it doesn't seem surprising. I figured out how to handle a computer though use, I don't see how Ethiopians can't too.

[Let's Get Free]

Well, they aren't animals are they? They can figure out how to make the best out of cool shit just like anyone else.

To quote Neil Degrasse Tyson, children are born Scientists. We just have to get out of their way.

[Questionable]

well...what they did expect?

it doesn't seem surprising. I figured out how to handle a computer though use, I don't see how Ethiopians can't too.

Well considering that they're in the first-grade age range and they come from societies that have had little or no exposure to technology, I can see how it would be worthy of praise.

Although I'm not going to pretend I don't see the underlying racial tones in the story. "WOW, BLACK KIDS CAN USE TECHNOLOGY TOO!"

[Raúl Duke]

I think learning and adapting to new things comes easiest when one is young. I think studies have shown this and Ethiopian youth aren't an exception as the people writing this article may assume.

[Let's Get Free]

If I may add, I think it would have been better just to help them improve their living conditions, by giving them equipment they can use to improve their lives, like water supply; or for instance give them all sort of tools and raw materials to improve their agricultural capacities,etc.

But I guess its logical to spend 1000 times that amount of money to give a poor African child a useless tablet PCs, made with the same raw materials that sustain civil wars and exploitation of African people like them. I suppose its worth a child- slave life to mine for some coltan, so that we can make totally obsolescent digital pieces of crap, which are useless from their conception and will get out dated in no time, and lets give them to some African children who have the luck of not haven been spoiled yet.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Aren't these kind of devices designed to be "user-friendly"? Also I hardly think it's surprising that the kids thought the tablet computers were more interesting toys than the cardboard boxes they came in. Kids everywhere find interactive toys so much cooler than anything else.

Although I think these Ethiopian kids have been under-estimated by OLPC workers, I also think people here are being too dismissive of their efforts. Sure, a tablet computer may not be directly useful in improving one's subsistence farming, but these devices come pre-loaded with learning software and I would argue that learning to read and write is at least on the same level as farming improvements.

Do these devices have internet access? Because if they do, then they become that much more powerful and useful, as not only can they teach reading and writing, but those lessons will also open up the largest publicly available repository of information yet created, and I think that would be invaluable.