Ethiopian kids hack OLPCs in 5 months with zero instruction

[NGONGE]

 

What happens if you give a thousand Motorola Zoom tablet PCs to Ethiopian kids who have never even seen a printed word? Within five months, they'll start teaching themselves English while circumventing the security on your OS to customize settings and activate disabled hardware. Whoa.

 

The One Laptop Per Child project started as a way of delivering technology and resources to schools in countries with little or no education infrastructure, using inexpensive computers to improve traditional curricula. What the OLPC Project has realized over the last five or six years, though, is that teaching kids stuff is really not that valuable. Yes, knowing all your state capitols how to spell "neighborhood" properly and whatnot isn't a bad thing, but memorizing facts and procedures isn't going to inspire kids to go out and learn by teaching themselves, which is the key to a good education. Instead, OLPC is trying to figure out a way to teach kids to learn, which is what this experiment is all about.

 

Rather than give out laptops (they're actually Motorola Zoom tablets plus solar chargers running custom software) to kids in schools with teachers, the OLPC Project decided to try something completely different: it delivered some boxes of tablets to two villages in Ethiopia, taped shut, with no instructions whatsoever. Just like, "hey kids, here's this box, you can open it if you want, see ya!"

 

Just to give you a sense of what these villages in Ethiopia are like, the kids (and most of the adults) there have never seen a word. No books, no newspapers, no street signs, no labels on packaged foods or goods. Nothing. And these villages aren't unique in that respect; there are many of them in Africa where the literacy rate is close to zero. So you might think that if you're going to give out fancy tablet computers, it would be helpful to have someone along to show these people how to use them, right?

 

But that's not what OLPC did. They just left the boxes there, sealed up, containing one tablet for every kid in each of the villages (nearly a thousand tablets in total), pre-loaded with a custom English-language operating system and SD cards with tracking software on them to record how the tablets were used. Here's how it went down, as related by OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte at MIT Technology Review's EmTech conference last week:

 

 

 

"We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He'd never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some ***** in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android."

 

 

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.

 

If this all reminds you of a certain science fiction book by a certain well-known author, it's not a coincidence: Nell's Primer in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age was a direct inspiration for much of the OLPC teaching software, which itself is named Nell. Here's an example of how Nell uses an evolving, personalized narrative to help kids learn to learn without beating them over the head with standardized lessons and traditional teaching methods:

 

 

 

Miles from the nearest school, a young Ethiopian girl named Rahel turns on her new tablet computer. The solar powered machine speaks to her: "Hello! Would you like to hear a story?"

 

She nods and listens to a story about a princess. Later, when the girl has learned a little more, she will tell the machine that the princess is named "Rahel" like she is and that she likes to wear blue--but for now the green book draws pictures of the unnamed Princess for her and asks her to trace shapes on the screen. "R is for Run. Can you trace the R?" As she traces the R, it comes to life and gallops across the screen. "Run starts with R. Roger the R runs across the Red Rug. Roger has a dog named Rover." Rover barks: "Ruff! Ruff!" The Princess asks, "Can you find something Red?" and Rahel uses the camera to photograph a berry on a nearby bush. "Good work! I see a little red here. Can you find something big and red?"

 

As Rahel grows, the book asks her to trace not just letters, but whole words. The book's responses are written on the screen as it speaks them, and eventually she doesn't need to leave the sound on all the time. Soon Rahel can write complete sentences in her special book, and sometimes the Princess will respond to them. New stories teach her about music (she unlocks a dungeon door by playing certain tunes) and programming with blocks (Princess Rahel helps a not very-bright turtle to draw different shapes).

 

Rahel writes her own stories about the Princess, which she shares with her friends. The book tells her that she is very good at music, and her lessons begin to encourage her to invent silly songs about what she's learning. An older Rahel learns that the block language she used to talk with the turtle is also used to write all the software running inside her special book. Rahel uses the blocks to write a new sort of rhythm game. Her younger brother has just received his own green book, and Rahel writes him a story which uses her rhythm game to help him learn to count

 

http://dvice.com/archives/2012/10/ethiopian-kids.php

[Yunis]

NGONGE;884904 wrote:

 

"We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He'd never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some ***** in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android."

 

http://dvice.com/archives/2012/10/ethiopian-kids.php

 

Crazy world, or perhaps there is method to this madness and MIT is comparing research data on tablet experiences between chimpanzees at the Zoo with that of poor African students.

[NGONGE]

^^ Straight to defence, huh?

 

Here is another one:

 

Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire had its origins in professor Sugata Mitra's research in the slums of India Link to this video

Lots of people criticised the title of the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire - but Newcastle University's Professor Sugata Mitra had a personal reason to complain. His Indian education project, Hole in the Wall, was the inspiration for Vikas Swarup's Q&A, the novel that became Slumdog.

 

The film, which won eight Oscars at last week's Academy Awards, tells the story of a Mumbai teenager competing in Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, answering the questions with knowledge he has picked up throughout his impoverished life. That story is now well known - but few people know that the tale behind its inspiration started in 1999, when Mitra was working as an academic in Delhi.

 

Mitra's office was near a slum, which gave him the idea of knocking through a wall to install a computer with an internet connection for local children to discover. He left them to use it unsupervised, and found that after only a month the kids had taught themselves how to use the computer - boosting their English and maths skills at the same time.

 

It was hearing about Mitra's computer that led to Swarup dreaming up the plot of Slumdog. He has told Indian newspapers: "I was inspired by the Hole in the Wall project, where a computer with an internet connection was put in a Delhi slum. When the slum was revisited after a month, the children of that slum had learned how to use the worldwide web. That got me fascinated and I realised that there's an innate ability in everyone to do something extraordinary, provided they are given an opportunity. [The project showed that] knowledge is not just the preserve of the elite."

 

Mitra, who is originally from Delhi, read Swarup's comments and realised that his project had inspired the film.

 

Obsession with riches

 

The pair engaged in an email exchange, culminating in Mitra telling Swarup that the film's name was inappropriate. But it was not the "slumdog" adjective that Mitra objected to - he believed the film should have been called Slumdog Nobel Laureate, rather than millionaire. "That kind of plot would have been more in the spirit of my Hole in the Wall project, which had been aimed at encouraging kids to think beyond monetary gain, to aim to change the world, not obsess about riches," says Mitra.

 

Like the film, Mitra's educational initiatives have also beaten all expectations. Delhi now has 48 computer "holes", and Mitra - who has taught educational technology on master's courses at Newcastle University for the past two years - is expanding his project to UK primary schools, using the same techniques to help children in Gateshead as he used in Hyderabad, India.

 

"Although aspirations aren't such a problem in India because the gap between rich and poor is so large, in some places of the UK and India there are the same problems with uninspiring teaching - or kids so disengaged that they are not being taught at all," he says.

 

Holes are not being smashed in walls in northern England, but Mitra does believe that technology can best be used in "remote" situations in the UK - not just settings geographically apart like the Indian slums, but failing schools that aren't attracting the best teachers.

 

"There will always be places in the world where good schools don't exist and good teachers don't want to go, not just in the developing world but in places of socioeconomic hardship," he says. "If the teacher is sitting there wishing they were somewhere else, children sense these things and it has a knock-on effect on how they learn. So I look at how technology can improve primary children's education, particularly through independent learning. I'm encouraging kids to use computers at their own pace to build aspirations.

 

"Too many pupils at schools in the UK want to have careers as footballers or TV hosts, or models, because that's what they're constantly exposed to as the heroes of our time. I use the internet to introduce them to unlikely heroes, such as material about people working for Nasa, and volunteers in Congo, then I leave them to do their own research, unsupervised. People expect the kids to abuse the technology, but they don't. After as little as eight or 10 exposures, the kids have new dreams about what to do with their lives."

 

Mitra believes that technology should be seen not as a threat to teaching, but as an asset. "Computers cannot replace good teachers, but they can get a high standard of education into the schools where they are needed most," he says.

 

His latest plan involves uniting Indian and UK initiatives. He himself teaches a class in Hyderabad from his office in Newcastle, and he also has plans to set up educational facilities in remote areas of India so that groups of children can organise their own learning to pass the government high school examinations without a teacher.

 

He has also set up computers installed with telephony-service Skype in schools in Hyderabad, and has a similar set-up near his office in Newcastle for a particularly innovative initiative. "When I last visited India, I asked the children what they would like to use Skype for most, and surprisingly they said they wanted British grandmothers to read them fairy tales - they'd even worked out that between them they could afford to pay £1 a week out of their own money," says Mitra.

 

He has recruited a British woman to spend a few hours a week reading to the children, and set up webcams so that a life-size image of the storyteller is projected on to a wall in India.

 

"It works incredibly well," he says. "The children love it because it seems exotic, and she loves to use her time so productively. It's too early to say how quickly their understanding and pronunciation changes - but I'm hopeful for the future."

 

Now he is looking for more volunteer storytellers.

 

• Anyone wanting to participate in fairytale reading sessions needs a broadband connection, a clear voice, and a few hours a week. Contact:

sugata.mitra@newcastle.ac.uk

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/mar/03/professor-sugata-mitra

[Alpha Blondy]

NG, do you think Buroa-ians kids are capable of switching on a laptop?

[Somalia]

Alpha Blondy;884912 wrote:

NG, do you think Buroa-ians kids are capable of switching on a laptop?

Sxb the ones in Burco are archaic in nature, they don't have the reer magaal style of the Mid Western Somalilanders like Carafaat.

[Alpha Blondy]

i'll ignore this attempt to divide and rule. a black man can use the 'n' word, but a white cannot. you get my gist Somalia.

[Somalia]

A white man should declare himself a constitutional knight and enact free speech!

[Alpha Blondy]

waar, what do you do for living somalia becos quite clearly you seem to have the absent mindlessness about you today. if you're really bored, how come you haven't responded back to my private message about oil in puntland.

[NGONGE]

Alpha Blondy;884912 wrote:

NG, do you think Buroa-ians kids are capable of switching on a laptop?

Why not?

 

Now, you and Mr Somalia above are probably far too young to remember the way the old video players used to work. But I remember when I was younger, we had a video player that wasn't working well. The "advanced" way of fixing it was by buying a "cleaning tape" and letting it run until the "head" was clean. However, we once had a teenage visitor from Burco who, if I remember correctly, was as geel jire as they come. He wanted to watch a riwaayad but the video was playing up again and the cleaning tape was not working. Quick as a flash, he jumped up, opened up the video player with a butter knife and commenced to clean the head with the edge of his shirt. Voila! The video player was as clear as can be. Never since that day have I underestimated the ability of a Burcaawi (or a Somali for that matter) to LEARN.

 

Having said that, such "learning" methods have always been the norm in the developing world. Survival demands a can-do attitude.

[Alpha Blondy]

KKKK@NORF,

 

indeed! i agree, sometimes conventional methods of doing things doesnt equate to 'viola'. certainty, you'll need some raw can-do attitude. when your cousin was visiting your family, what did you guys make off his momentary display of talent? did you guys give more respect to him becos we all know how arrogant ciyaal carab third cultures were in those days. now they roll up their track-suits on one leg and speak broken MSA.....how times have changed ma iisitirii?

 

i'll be quite honest in saying i'm not that great at this so called can-do attitude.

[NGONGE]

^^ War like all the Somalis that passed by that place back then he was a total nuisance.

[Alpha Blondy]

whatever become of this man? where is he now and if you were to write your experiences of him, how would you sum him up in a few short words ?

[NGONGE]

^^ He lacked common sense, was full of confidence and had an opinion on everything. A bit like you and me, I suppose. A SOMALI!

[Haatu]

Read this on another forum earlier. It's amazing what so-called uneducated people can achieve.

[Alpha Blondy]

actually NG, you're a knowledgeable guy and being one of the 13 ELDERS of SOL, you know one or two things about life, of course, this is informed no doubt by your experiences and skills. laakin, i'm always the guy who doesnt say anything about everything unless he's convinced of the solution. in the past i've surprised many of my skills and innovative nature LOL. i suppose its always good to find a balance, i guess.

 

its better to be confident and assured of your own value of yourself. bro, i've seen a great many 'others' whose deferential nature can be a big obstacle. haddii aad fahantay macalin ayaa tahay dee NG!