Testing Technology on a Veritable Army of Children?

golem1024 asks: "I've been presented with the opportunity to design and implement any sort of project with a technological/learning/experimental bent that can be carried out over two days in 2005, across six continents, involving on the order of 3000 children as participants, drawing from a multi-million dollar budget. An example project that is being seriously discussed is to equip each child with a PDA that we will design from scratch, implement, and manufacture in quantity. (Think Neil Stephenson's 'Diamond Age') The organizers/funders (to remain unnamed until the event is publicly unveiled) have every intention of 'changing the world'...whether or not they will succeed is yet to be seen, but I think its certainly worth trying. To that end, I'm interested in gauging the thoughts of the Slashdot community." Sounds damned cool! If it weren't for the fact that the age group was targetted at a younger audience, I might think someone was reading last week's Ask Slashdot.

"The idea is to bring together children ages 10 to 15 years old from around the world at 8 or 9 centers scattered about all continents except Antarctica. The children will congregate at these centers for two days in 2005 to participate in creative technology workshops both virtually between centers and hands-on at their particular center. There will be a heavy emphasis on community building and shared information, in many ways similar to Slashdot. The entire event and all the projects it entails are designed to live on after the kids go home when the two days are up. How this will be done is as of yet uncertain, but will most definitely involve net connectivity to some extent (whether through the village kiosk's 28.8kbaud line in Cambodia or the living room broadband line in NYC). Naturally, issues such as language barriers will have to be addressed. In the particular case of the language barrier, there is talk of designing a custom written language (again, think mediaglyphs from 'Diamond Age') for children to use, build upon, and shape. What other projects are worth considering?"

Comments

don't overestimate technology

[whiteben]

Simply dropping a huge load of technology on children doesn't make them inherently smarter. Giving each of them PDAs won't necessarily make their educational experience any better. I would first consider this: given that we want to spend a big gob of money on a first-rate educational/learning experience, what should we do. Then and only then ask how technology can serve to bring about that experience.

BEN

Re:Off the top of my head...

[lscoughlin]

No. It should absolutely not be cultural based. "cultural" programs have a long and sordid history of complete failure. What I mean by "cultural programs" is programs who's focus is specifically and by design on the interaction of groups from different usually arbitrarily defined social groups, for example, the Camp David experiment with the Israeli and Palestinian children.

Cultural exchange and interaction is an incidental effect of lots of other things. It's only possible when people already have an interest in each other for more personally motivating reasons.

Example? Chess. Lots of cultural and philosophical interchange happens between chess players because they share a passion. When they meet people who share that passion with them and who in interesting within that context they naturally try to enlarge the context: who are you, where are you from, what's it like to be Swahili or Pakistani or American, or whatever...

But placing the focus on cultural interchange is dooming a project to failure. Firstly, it does so because most people (let alone children) do not identify strongly motivational level with their cultural groups. How often have you heard a programmer say, "I program because I'm a Jew", or an athlete say I wrestle because I'm Chinese? Secondly, because if that "cultural" is the context, people - regardless of intentions - will try to find things that motivate them. Their stereotype themselves in order fit with what they perceive as their grouping (ethnic, cultural, national). This results in talented programmers not talking about programming because they're a Cossack and Cossacks are warriors and programming is beneath any good Cossack. And thirdly, once you've established that context you make it irrelevant by claiming equality and just confuse everyone.

Base it on soccer.
Base it on chess.
Base it on a proper appreciation of falling snowflakes in summer.

Whatever, but don't force a "cultural" basis.

human swarm problem solving

[GCP]

For heaven's sake, don't pit them against each other across cultural/national dividing lines. If you must divide them into teams, make the teams cross-cultural. Even better would be to make them all one team.

Then come up with a dramatic demonstration of what they can accomplish as a human swarm if they ignore cultural boundaries and all cooperate. Concentrate on drama. Give them an experience that will imprint on their minds the power of letting go of nationality and attacking problems instead of each other.