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Web-Surfing Indian Slum Kids Ask: "What's a Computer"
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.
Reminds me oddly of the book version of 2001... Forcing a bit of odd westernization-evolution on the kids...
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.
What amused me the most was the comment about the kids doing things that adults couldn't understand. Children learn at a faster rate than adults, especially it seems where technology is concerned. This can be seen by looking at the case of programming a video. In most households it is the children who are most able to use technology to its fullest.
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.
That was my
its 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.
in that "Hackers" book by Stephen Levy .. but i dont remember the exact idea ... something in San Francisco and a terminal in the wall -- maybe someone else could elaborate
I happen to live in a small town where a lot of the population are what we call "fisher people"; meaning that one (or less) generations ago they lived on fishing boats, which are their livelyhood, and had little education.
Today the kids do go to school, and have TV and everything but life is still pretty simple for them and your typical fisher family would not have access to a PC. (though dad probably has some fancy sonar and radar on the boat)
Well our public post offices now have free Internet Kiosks as part of a "internet for all" program; which is great.
The other day I saw a fisher girl of about 6 in front of the terminal. I was rather surprised and had a sneaking peek over her shoulder to see what was going on.
She had just gone to some web site which for some reason had crashed the browser. So not hesitating she brought up the task manager, killed the hung task, and loaded the browser again to continue.
I have desktop support people who work for me in the office who are not as comfortable doing things like that!
R.
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.
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.
Familiarity with computers without the background education in reading, writing, composition, and comprehension, not to mention basic math and science will take a person only so far.
Most westerers are appalled when they see a eight year old kid repairing motor vehicles in the streets in India, but would not think it is as bad helping the people to be "skilled" in just using computers.
Many experienced "programmers" these days with fancy "java/c++/oracle" education are finding it hard to get a job. What use would computers be to these kids other than trianing them to become a "consumer"?
Sastry
The mouse was invented in the 60's, IIRC, but it pretty much stayed in the lab until the 80's. Partly this was because machines with enough graphical capability for a mouse to be really useful cost around $50,000 -- maybe you'd find one in an engineering workstation, but not anything 99% of people could ever get their hands on. But arcade video games started in the 70's; these could cost over $50,000, and some did need a good pointing device. Put a mouse on them, and frustrated customers would have torn the thin, flexible cord right off. So they turned the mouse upside down (and expanded it to bowling-ball size, IIRC) and mounted it in the console so only the ball was exposed.