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Ask Slashdot: How Would You Introduce Kids In Rural India To Computers?
asto21 writes: A friend of mine wants to introduce school kids in rural India to computers and could use some advice. Key questions: What learning material to use and how to source? What programming language to start with? What software to introduce them to? What games to introduce them to? Key constraints: The kids don't know much English and speak a local language called Odiya. There aren't any technical publications/resources in Odiya. Poor internet connectivity. No computer experts on the school staff. Any other advice/help would also be appreciated.
FreeBSD, vim and python.
Man pages are full of helpful stuff. You can set up a local ports/pkg jail. Setup a local Usenet and IRC server for Chat.
Is this better than literacy? Sex ed? Things which they can use? Like even English or math?
Or is this the growing trend of "ZOMG ... teh children must use teh computers"?
Coding? Games? Maybe your friend is missing the damned point and doing this as a vanity project?
Everyone is so damned excited to ensure every child on the planet is being taught "teh computers", and nobody seems to be stopping to ask if that's what they need most (or at all).
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
They won't have to worry about passwords, they can log in with their smile. Let them grow up on Windows 10. A more human way to do.
Your friend might not grasp this fully, but there are quite a few qualified teachers in India, who actually know how to use computers. A good first step might be to contact them, and see what they think, rather than asking a bunch of people on the Internet who haven't actually been to rural India. It's entirely possible that the teachers think kids should focus on basic subjects rather than learn Excel.
Barring that, ask your friend to get a copy of a book called "The Ugly American" by Burdick and Lederer. I'm about 95% sure that he hasn't read it.
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
This guy has a few clues on what can help, and he has done what your friend wants to do: http://www.ted.com/talks/sugat.... He might already have some project going on in India on which you can latch on to avoid re-inventing the wheel ...
What they really need is scientific and strategic thinking on how to take their life ahead, manage the village life, their farms more modern and productive, etc. in a smart way, etc. Simply throwing computers and computer education around without first giving them the fundamentals does not help at all. It just adds to the problem.
That said there are many ideas:
Write or install software where they can create friendly quiz for each other on various topics.
Teach them how to draw graphs and interpret them.
How to use maps.
If there is internet in a far away school, let the children interact with each other over Video Chat once in a month with proper agenda on discussing something important.
Really, there is no limit to how they can use computers to make their life more interesting and better , all limited by imagination.
Get them some clean running water, clean sanitation, and basic human rights before you go worrying about computers...
As One Laptop Per child demonstrated, they'll learn on their own if given a chance.
"Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. “I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android,” Negroponte said. “Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.”"
Note these are children who had never seen writing before, working with computers that did not include their local language.
A curious person will want to learn; without curiosity, anything is rote memorization and won't go far.
Don't assume good electricity and don't assume internet connectivity; it may not exist. Don't assume basics like keyboarding skills and mouse movements. In fact, don't assume much. Learn from knowledge gaps observed elsewhere: A friend who tries to bring science to rural communities in Maharashtra starts by teaching kids about the difference between an analog watch & a compass. It may seem silly, but if a person has little experience with either may not know the difference. Back to the curiosity: get the child curious about how the compass always knows to point north. Then show how a nearby DC current (battery / wire / light bulb) can move the needle. To me, these give the grounds for engaging curiosity.
Whenever the teacher then gets around to computers, a curious person will want to know why backspace allows corrections to happen, how a spreadsheet can do math, etc.
And expect all levels within India as is true throughout the world: Each person is unique. Some people are geniuses awaiting discovery; others will be lazy or lack the natural talent to thrive with technology.
They rename streets too. Streets named after British civil service officers ages ago get renamed after Indian dignitaries. These narrow short streets in the middle of town totally overwhelmed by population growth get renamed. At the same time in the suburbs roads named imaginatively 120 feet road, 80 feet road, 18th main road, 14th cross road, HAL Third Stage etc retain their difficult to remember names. A guy named A Brito used to write letters to the editor in Indian Express, Bangalore edition a lot when I was there. He got really fed up when they renamed yet another tiny street. He proposed to rename the Queen Victoria statue as Mayor Butte Gowda statue.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Is this better than literacy? Sex ed? Things which they can use? Like even English or math?
Or is this the growing trend of "ZOMG ... teh children must use teh computers"?
Coding? Games? Maybe your friend is missing the damned point and doing this as a vanity project?
Everyone is so damned excited to ensure every child on the planet is being taught "teh computers", and nobody seems to be stopping to ask if that's what they need most (or at all).
Exactly. Take the money you were going to spend on computers, and invest that into helping to pay off the loans that farmers across India have had to take to keep their farms going. You know, the loans causing thousands of farmers to commit suicide every year leaving their families further in debt. Having a computer isn't worth bearing the brunt of your dead father's insurmountable debt for the rest of your life. And for the love of God, stop skipping over the basic, ugly things like running water, access to real medical care, and reliable electricity for the "cool" things like giving a poor, malnourished school kid a barebones PC kit and teaching them how to program Minecraft in a language based on their local dialect.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Here's how: stop writing over-analytical articles like this and just give kids a computer. They will quickly teach each other how to use it.
*** Don't be dull.***
This appears to be the Odia language Wikipedia. But I know you said there's limited Internet. So I suggest you get Kiwix with the entire Odia Wikipedia (.torrent link to a complete package for Windows), and burn it to CD-ROM. (Odia isn't a popular language, so it all fits easily.) You can also look at other language Wikipedias, both because they are more comprehensive, and because they could help the children learn those languages.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Computer: Raspberry Pi
OS: Inferno
Programming Language: LISP
Editor: Emacs
Game: Leather Godesses of Phobos
For the more artsy kids Tex can replace LISP.
Suppose the project was successful, how would the kids make any practical use of their skills or improve them further on their own? Learning English or another common language opens a huge window into outside world and access to knowledge in all subjects, including computers. Personally I grew up in Soviet Union and studying English rather than any less common foreign language in school opened up tremendous options later in life.