I should also mention that the toilet building course goes hand in hand with the health and sanitation awareness camps which acts as the cornerstone for most of the learning. Also to add about teaching computational thinking, that is a skill that goes beyond just computer programming and can be applied to several if not all areas of work and life in its broad adaptation. There is plenty of literature to support that idea. Like I said, get in touch with us and we are open to sharing our experiences and learning - Akshay

My friend Unni at Ammachi labs who recently interned with EPFL, Switzerland, came back with ideas to teach computational thinking and has been devising games that he has been using in villages in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh to teach children. He has created an adaptation of some popular games that help teach basic programming building blocks such as the MIT Scratch. If you write to us at Ammachi labs we can explore ideas further.

I do not wish to participate in the larger debate of the boon and bane of introducing computers, but rather than attempting to put yourselves in the village kids shoes, it would serve the commenters better to step out and test out their theories. I just wanted to say more specifically that I spent my last two months in a village called Guptapada near Bhubaneswar in Odisha as part of the Ammachi labs initiative to train and assist women in building their own toilets in their village and teaching skills such as masonry, cement block making, plumbing and plastering skills using a trained professional and tablet based video courses. You can find more about what Ammachi labs does here: http://ammachilabs.org/womenem... What I noticed computers/tablets brought to the scene is the increased interest and self esteem that is associated with technology. This itself was an enabler to reduce dropouts and instill confidence. Above that tablets allowed us to introduce standardised courses which otherwise would require the villagers to travel to the city and stay away from home for extended periods which those who live hand-to-mouth cannot afford to do.