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Web-Surfing Indian Slum Kids Ask: "What's a Computer"
Posted by
chrisd
on Wed Apr 17, 2002 10:02 PM
from the teach-a-man-to-fish dept.
from the teach-a-man-to-fish dept.
chaoticset writes "An experiment in minimally directed self-learning has been going fairly well, from the article: To test his ideas, Sugata Mitra launched something 13 months ago he calls "the hole in the wall experiment." He took a PC connected to a high-speed data connection and imbedded it in a concrete wall next to NIIT's headquarters in the south end of New Delhi. The wall separates the company's grounds from a garbage-strewn empty lot used by the poor as a public bathroom. Mitra simply left the computer on, connected to the Internet, and allowed any passerby to play with it...he discovered was that the most avid users of the machine were ghetto kids aged 6 to 12, most of whom have only the most rudimentary education and little knowledge of English. Yet within days, the kids had taught themselves to draw on the computer and to browse the Net." Update: 04/17 22:23 GMT by M : Mitra has a website about his experiments.
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Web-Surfing Indian Slum Kids Ask: "What's a Computer"
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draw on it? (Score:4, Funny)
License (Score:4, Funny)
That's pretty interesting... (Score:3, Informative)
I'd be interested in seeing a learning curve for teachers vs. computers, and in self-learning vs. independant.
Perhaps practical education is MUCH better than being taught, which would show that our education system is very unefficient...
Re:That's pretty interesting... (Score:4, Funny)
heh, no kidding...
This is incredible (Score:3, Insightful)
It's these things that remind me what the Internet is all about: learning and communication. It's not about making money (although that might work for some people). It's just about making the world a better place, one page at a time.
This is seriously cool. Nobel Internet Peace Prize anyone?
Re:This is incredible (Score:4, Insightful)
A: There is one experiment that scares me. These children don't know what e-mail is. If I gave them e-mail, I don't know what would happen. I'll probably try it anyway. But remember the stories one used to hear about people finding lost tribes and introducing them to Coca-Cola? I'm really seriously scared about what would happen if suddenly the whole wide world had access to these kids. I don't know who would talk to them for what purpose.
It is kindof sad in todays world that he would be afraid of what somebody would do to these kids but I understand. With all the perverts in the world... well. It just seems sad though that they are missing on a fundamental aspect of the internet because of the (literal) danger it poses to them. Plus, they would probably get spammed to death.
The only other thing I wanted to add is just how interesting it was that they could use the web (Disney's site even!) without really knowing English. I mean, think about it. Go to some Chinese/Japanese/French/Whatever site and try using it. Almost impossible (without the fish) but here these kids have figured out how. And to think we bitch when sites use flash...
He has my vote for some sort of award.
Re:This is incredible (Score:5, Funny)
I imagine they would just suddenly have a lot of people trying to sell them printer toner, university diplomas or penis enlargers.
I can see it now (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these...
Sigh. (Score:5, Funny)
Yet our organization still has full-grown, western-educated employees who hold the fucking mouse upside-down.
Re:Sigh. (Score:5, Funny)
institutional review board (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not saying that there are a not great deal of potential positives form this type of "experiment" as well. I just want to point out that there might be some ethical issues. I am sure there are some simple arguements that can point out the cost to implement the hole in the wall system vs. the cost to feed/educate/clothe a number of children. (The counter arguement states that if a single child is able to rise out of poverty due to the exposure to technology, the purely economic analysis states that the experiment was a win...)
The groaning aside, it is again amazing that kids will figure out how to use stuff. It does not seem to matter who the kids are or what the stuff is, they seem to figure out how to use it.
Re:institutional review board (Score:5, Insightful)
You realize that by those standards, hardly any research should be done at all in the world? And on a related note, by those standards we should all sell our computers and donate the money to charity. I mean, it's amazing how much money is spent on luxuries when some people don't even have food.
Getting back to the topic at hand, I don't think most IRBs actually care about those standards (they don't care how little we pay starving undergrads, for example...) I belive that they are more concerned about preventing physical harm or mental stress to human subjects. As long as no harm is done, and no personal information is reported (e.g. only aggregate statistical data and anonymous examples are used in papers and talks about the study), then this sort of thing should be fine.
Before anyone gets too excited... (Score:5, Informative)
Would be like IIT here coming out with a "study" based on putting a computer kiosk in South Central. Wait a minute, I'd like to see that....
Can you imagine? (Score:5, Funny)
MIE = Unschooling (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article:
Minimally Invasive Education (MIE) is a pedagogic method and derives its name partly from the medical term minimally invasive surgery. MIE believes that in the absence of any directed input, any learning environment that provides adequate level of curiosity can cause learning.
This is not a new theory, ./'ers. People have been teaching themselves all along - indeed, our school system is the newcomer to the scene. Read, oh, "A People's History of the United States"... but I'm drifting off my topic...
An education system such as this already exists in the States. It's called "unschooling". Give the child materials to learn with, help learning when they need it, and said child will actually teach themselves.
Children are supposedly "lazy" and "not wanting to learn" because they've been forced into it by repetitive cookie-cutter education. This study just gives an old technique a new and more politically-correct name - "unschooling" pisses off the NEA.
Re:MIE = Unschooling (Score:4, Informative)
As a graduate of an Unschooling highschool (and now a freshman in college) I can say I felt much more prepared coming into college than my peers.
There were kids on my hall with 3.8+ GPAs who had never read a book completely in 2 years. Product of a public school education.
I wish I spent more time at mine (Only two years). Luckily, my parents were helping me be unschooled before I started there, even if they didn't realize it themselves.
Cause I feel strongly enough about my school, I got to plug it: www.shackleton.org
Funny... (Score:5, Funny)
messed up title (Score:5, Funny)
What a fantastic idea (Score:3, Interesting)
I would be interested to know whether a childs ability to learn how to use computers (or other technology) is to do with their natural inquisitiveness and readiness to try new things(as opposed to the technophobia that many older people show), or whether there is some sort of 'critical period' (such as for syntax) after which it becomes more difficult to learn such things. This study would seem to suggest that it is not only the increasing contact with computers that makes children more skilled in their use, since these are kids who have never seen (or heard of) computers before.
Re:What a fantastic idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Kintanon
Re:What a fantastic idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Yet, having worked for almost 20 years in IT and software implementation, I have to say it is more complex than that. First, adults have to deal with something kids do not: consequences. Kid accidently deletes Paint drawing, cries a bit, sits down and does new one. Adult accidently deletes the Accounts Receivable database and remembers that he forgot to change the tape yesterday. He loses his job, and he can't borrow money from his friends because the company went out of business the next day [exaggerated for effect but more realistic scenarios are easy to construct]. When adults do things with computers, there are real effects that have real, and sometimes devastating, consequences. That can understandably create fear, keeping in mind that fear is designed to keep us alive.
Yet even that is too simple, because some adults manage to figure out where they can safely push the barriers, and where they must call for help first. These people manage to teach themselves what they need to know, and often move up to the next level. Yet the person sitting next to an "explorer", with the same job, same educational background, same starting level of knowledge, either (a) sits paralyzed with fear (b) does random stuff until he causes real damage.
What is the difference between these two types of people? How can they be identified in advance? Could the second type be taught to act like the first type?
sPh
Re:Unanswered questions... (Score:4, Interesting)
I owe my career - my life - to this sort of experiment, except that at the time, nobody knew it was an experiment.
My first encounter with a computer was on a "professional activity day" - the teachers take the day off to eat donuts (the professional activity), and the kids get the day off school.
My folks, unable to find a babysitter that day, took me to work. Mom worked in a place with an Apple ][ that was used to do data entry and run rudimentary statistical analyses.
I was left alone in an office at age 10ish with a computer and two complete strangers.
Stranger: "How 'bout playing with the computer?"
Me: "What do you do with it?"
Stranger: [wanting the kid to stop bugging her so she could get some work done] "Well, we use it to enter our test data. You might want to try those books in the bottom shelf."
Me: [Picks up an Applesoft BASIC guide, concludes that "programming them" is what one does with "computers", and doesn't say a word for the rest of the day]. I was hooked by that afternoon. Went through the book that day, then hit the campus bookstore, bought a magazine with some programs you could type in, came back and "played with it" on the rare occasions I could.
A year (only about 6 "professional activity days", and maybe a couple of hours a week during the summer holiday) later, and I'd found the monitor ROM and was experimenting with 6502 assembly.
So in answer to your question - probably about 6 months, tops.
Hello? (Score:5, Funny)
I am pooosting from a box in a wall.
Have you seen this "All your base are belong to us" movie?
I wonder how long... (Score:4, Funny)
Day 386, I came in and found a dozen chocolate roses with a note for me from the kids, paid for with some poor American slob's credit card.
is it that hard to believe? (Score:3, Insightful)
My favourite part of this experiment (Score:5, Interesting)
That was my
Re:My favourite part of this experiment (Score:5, Funny)
Wonderful Effects! The Medium is truly the Message (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps one of the most important observations made by Dr. Mitra was, "The terminology is not as important as the metaphor."
Metaphors, by their nature are transformational. As Marshall McLuhan wrote in Understanding Media, "All media are active metaphors in their power to translate experience into new forms."
(By "medium," McLuhan means anything that we conceive or create - tangible or intangible, everything from tables to televisions to televangelists. The "message" of a medium is the set of effects or changes that the medium will induce in us, our society or culture.)
In this case, the Indian children used metaphors to which they could relate to effect changes in, and transform, the way they experienced common-place life: Indian music, letters, Shiva's drum and so forth. In doing so, they will tend to view the rest of the world through changed eyes, and will undoubtedly "demand" (even tacitly through imagination) these new experiences. They will likely be dissatisfied with the conventional approach to instruction, perhaps preferring more self-guided, exploration and discovery-based education. What effects might this have on the educational system in India? What effects will this have on educators in North America and Europe who will be forced to confront massive investments in seemingly unnecessary "computer literacy" programs. How can approaches to adult education take advantage of child-like curiosity and discovery?
In the graduate-level course I teach, the majority of the course is discovery and exploration. Where we end up at the end of each seminar is largely irrelevant. If we reach a point of being able to ask a profound question as a "conclusion," the seminar is a resounding success. As seen with these Indian children and Dr. Mitra's brilliant experiment, "The teacher's job is very simple. It's to help the children ask the right questions." To which I would add, adult learners, too.
human subjects (Score:3, Interesting)
One could never do this experiement (as
presented) in the United States (and
probably other. more controlled societies
as well) because you couldn't get Human
Subjects Approval with out informed
consent.
It would be interesting to get some sort of
grip the real long term effects on the
kids will be.
Intuition... (Score:5, Insightful)
Q: Of all the things the children did and learned, what did you find the most surprising?
A: One day there was a document file on the desktop of the computer. It was called "untitled.doc" and it said in big colorful letters, "I Love India." I couldn't believe it for the simple reason that there was no keyboard on the computer [only a touch screen]. I asked my main assistant -- a young boy, eight years old, the son of a local betel-nut seller -- and I asked him, "How on earth did you do this?" He showed me the character map inside [Microsoft] Word. So he had gotten into the character map inside Word, and dragged and dropped the letters onto the screen, then increased the point size and painted the letters. I was stunned because I didn't know that the character map existed -- and I have a PhD.
Re:Sick (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok. Enough of the sarcasm. I agree with you that more should be done to fight poverty. But instead of complaining about an experiment that included one PC being made available to poor kids, and the person doing the experiment pushing ahead to get funding for more access to technology for underprivileged illiterate kids, you might instead try to direct your complaints against people who do nothing.
Yes, he isn't giving them food or shelter, but he isn't solely responsible for stopping poverty in the world. However giving these kids knowledge is as important as a long term strategy to help people out of poverty as food and shelter is as a short term strategy. Both is needed. Without better education most of these kids will never get out of poverty.
Do you seriously prefer to make people stay dependent on charity?
Of course your complaint about "Western civilization" is quite amusing when the article is about an experiment being done in India, by an employee of an Indian company.
Dial-up and ISDN (Score:3, Informative)
So what's their connection at? I bet its the good old fashiond 65 baud tin can and string.
Hardly an acoustic coupler. From the article [niitholeinthewall.com]:
The following was more interesting:
That must be a pretty d*ng big cache. How many clicks is it from the average US site to WinMX.com or Kazaa.com? (WinMX and Kazaa are two popular P2P file-sharing apps for Windows.)
Re:Hmm.... (Score:3, Funny)