
How kids in a low-income country use laptops: lessons from Madagascar - rbanffy
https://theconversation.com/how-kids-in-a-low-income-country-use-laptops-lessons-from-madagascar-93305
======
codetrotter
> But there was one marked difference: computer use in Madagascar tended to be
> a collective rather than an individual practice. Children and their families
> would gather around one laptop to play educational games, take photos or
> make videos. Computers were being used to strengthen existing social
> relations among siblings, parents and peers.

I think it used to be like this for a lot of people in the developed world as
well when computers were new and most people did not have computers and those
that did had only one in the whole household.

Nowadays a lot of people including the children have a smartphone each and the
household might have one or more iPads and up to several laptops. And of
course a PlayStation or an XBOX.

I don’t have children yet, but when I get children I hope to show them
programming and involve them in what I do with computers and to show interest
in what they are doing and to encourage them to be creative.

~~~
dahart
> I don’t have children yet, but when I get children I hope to show them
> programming and involve them in what I do with computers and to show
> interest in what they are doing and to encourage them to be creative.

I had the same hope for my children (now 12 & 14), so I let them start using
devices & playing games when they were 3 (even gave my older kid the first rev
of the OLPC laptop). To a large degree, I regret the decision to start that
early.

Nothing has gone the same way it did when I was a kid. I had a DOS machine
with a couple of crappy games, and a BASIC interpreter. The only thing I could
do is learn to program, it was the most exciting thing available.

Today, the absolute flood of high quality content in videos & games has
basically prevented them from wanting to spend time figuring out low level
details. They have options for spending their time that are so much better
than I had that they basically can't choose to create. At least not yet.

My oldest has been talking about creating his own games for years, he's very
curious, he's a super user of the OS's he has access too, his knowledge of
game styles and history far exceeds mine (and I was a game dev for a decade).
But when it comes down to spending time making things, he inevitably chooses
to play an interesting game rather than learn coding. My younger son is almost
as addicted to games, but has a simultaneous addiction to YouTube.

Recently I met a couple of extremely smart and creative kids whose parents (AI
researchers) have completely and severely restricted their access to any
devices at all. It got me wondering what the best way to encourage creativity
is. Pushing too much will turn them off or make them resist, but a lack of any
support can be even worse.

Making sure they have time where they're bored and don't have access to high
quality and structured entertainment choices at all times currently seems like
a good idea to me.

OTOH, they're growing out of some habits I was worried about, and maybe the
best approach is just to set a good example and love and support them in
whichever directions they want to go.

~~~
johnny313
This is a hard problem. I have three kids, we let the oldest (7) play on an
old laptop running Ubuntu, with no internet access. He goes through fits ant
starts writing some basic python, learning how to navigate in the terminal,
etc - but its hard for him to focus for too long on any one thing. We
CONSTANTLY talk about new game ideas, but have not yet been able to channel
that into making things.

We restrict access to screens to an hour a week otherwise - my kids will
always choose a game on the iPad (of any quality) over unstructured time on
the linux box. We have tried hard to follow the "set a good example and love
and support them in whichever directions they want to go" philosophy.

~~~
zeta0134
Recommendation: Python might be too advanced of a start.

Seriously.

Check out some simler frameworks that are geared more strongly towards game
development. Even as an experienced programmer, I still gravitate towards the
Love2D framework for getting an idea on screen quickly, (for 2D stuff anyway)
because it handily masks away all of the libraries and support hardware. So
long as I can navigate the Lua programming language, I can have moving
characters onscreen responding to keyboard input in about an hour.

[https://love2d.org/](https://love2d.org/)

Point being here, don't underestimate the value of instant gratification. As
much as that sounds like what you're trying to _avoid_ , since that's exactly
what YouTube and social media feel like to an outside observer, that instant
gratification loop of "change code, run game, see results" is crucial for the
early developmental stages. Let your kid learn through experience how fun it
can be to program the basics, and then stumble on something more complex that
he wants to do organically, or bump into a limit of the framework, and at that
point he'll know enough about the tools to be nudged towards tackling the
harder stuff.

~~~
rbanffy
> Python might be too advanced of a start.

I have that feeling. I learned BASIC on an 8-bit computer where the command
prompt was a BASIC REPL.

That's probably the best abstraction level for learning to program.

~~~
zeta0134
Funny you mention that! My first programming language was TI-BASIC, on an old
TI-83 Plus. That language is wonderfully simple, slow enough to watch the
execution happen almost in realtime, and tolerant enough that for the longest
time, I didn't know what the "End" token did, and my programs would crash
after a while, infinitely recursing into If blocks because I simply didn't
know any better. Good times!

After a while, I figured out that all the best games were written in this
mystical "Assembly" stuff, which ran a lot faster and could, with some
wizardry, do _greyscale_! I taught myself z80 programming without ever
stopping to think that it might be difficult. Later, I realized this is a
Junior level college course in a great many degree programs. Who knew? For me,
it was just another step on the path to making games instead of doing my math
homework.

~~~
rbanffy
The kind of BASIC that did fit on 8-bit computers is a non-intimidating low-
level programming language. All variables are global, you have jumps and
subroutines, but no named (multi-line) functions and conditionals most of the
time end in jumps that go over a segment of code.

Conceptually, it's incredibly simple and I think this is its most important
contribution.

------
GnarfGnarf
I have an OLPC XO, and they are an amazing machine for children in under-
developed countries:

\- Built-in camera & microphone

\- Oscilloscope app

\- Special O/S that goes dormant and uses minimum power when idle, to maximize
battery life

\- Can be charged with primitive generators and manual labour

\- Networked

Brilliant design. Too bad too many governments never understood this and
thought a PC or Apple laptop were the same thing.

~~~
digi_owl
You also had a concerted effort from Microsoft et al to muddy the water in a
massive way.

~~~
icebraining
I'd say it was Intel more than Microsoft; the Classmate PC was a shitty clone
that they marketed like crazy to target the OLPC, which ran an AMD chipset.
Running full-blown Windows, no screen visible in sunlight, no easy mesh
networking, etc.

My brother got one of them as part of a subsidized program, and man, it
sucked. Slow, barely any free disk space, it was a waste of money even at 50€.

~~~
digi_owl
I seem to recall that MS managed to "convince" whoever was in charge to offer
a OLPC variant with Windows on it, effectively watering down the core concept.

------
kokey
I'm glad to see the OLPC actually being used somewhere and researched. I think
part of the reason the project never got that far was because when it was
introduced the developing world were convinced 'computers' were synonymous
with desktops and laptops running Microsoft operating systems and software.
Now with smartphones, tablets, chromebooks etc. that perception has shifted
somewhat. Hopefully with this along with the studies into the successes and
failures of the millions of OLPCs that were deployed there will be another
revival of these efforts. I really like the idea of a kind of standard, open,
cheap laptop designed for children around the world.

~~~
zamazingo
A lot of lobbying money is spent by the likes of Intel, Apple, Microsoft, etc
to create that impression abroad, just like it is here.

(Doesn't matter where "here" is.)

------
df5t0rw
I used to help for the OLPC project. They even gave my an XO laptop (the one
pictured in the article). It feel good to see it in use. I didn't keep myself
updated about the progression of the project. Good thing it isnt dead :)

------
tdeck
"We examined logs that showed which applications the children had used on
their laptops during the previous 12 months; we analysed what they’d produced
– for instance, recorded files."

I'm curious whether users knew that everything they'd be doing was logged and
would be examined later.

~~~
hrktb
OLPC was marketed as a dev ready machine where every log is visible, source
code or every running app can be read at the press of a button.

It was not a “consumer” machine from the start, researchers looking at logs is
just a side effect of the basic stance.

------
Rafuino
It's interesting that the article didn't mention anything about connectivity
in Madagascar/Nosy Komba. I understand from another comment that these OLPC
laptops have built-in mesh networking, but how do they update content on the
laptops when new lessons are created? How do the kids get the music the
article mentions onto their laptops? I briefly worked in this space and
connectivity/updates to content, beyond price, was the main concern schools
had when considering purchasing laptops for classroom use.

------
skybrian
They didn't talk about learning programming at all. I assume that's rare, but
I'm wondering if there are any kids who learned programming on these machines?

------
kwoff
Yet another HN article leading to an evening of reading wikipedia articles,
etc. I see a lot of "developing country" comments. Trying to reconcile
Madagascar with Iceland, another island nation. Iceland has 300K people in
100K sq km. Madagascar is 25M in 600K sq km. Nobody thinks of Iceland as a
low-income country. How do you explain it? Madagascar seems to boil down to a
dictatorship supported by France and the IMF supported by the USA? Basically
the world needs to figure out how to stop these nations from destroying
others, then we don't need these so-called "lessons".

~~~
kerbalspacepro
You're basically asking the world to figure out developmental economics, and
it's a hot field to get into. Nobody has a sufficient answer.

------
herrgigglung
Jesus how the hell can they do anything on those tiny screens! Would it really
have been that difficult to get a decent sized screen!

~~~
rraghur
You make do with what you have :).... However, instead of teaching word
processing and such (office s/w)... how about teaching kids that it's just a
machine and you can make it do your bidding..

I remember starting with GW BASIC when I was 10 or so and the first 'graphic'
program was an analog clock on a 80x40 CRT console, felt like I could build
anything with it..

~~~
icebraining
The authors agree! Sugar (the environment of these laptops) comes with an
easy-to-learn multimedia programming environment (Scratch), a simple Python
IDE (Pippy), a graphical editor for acustic and electric circuits (TamTam
SynthLab) and an authoring tool with programmable behaviours (EToys).

[http://laptop.org/en/laptop/software/activities.shtml](http://laptop.org/en/laptop/software/activities.shtml)

~~~
teaman2000
I got my start with Logo (which I think is a direct ancestor of Scratch) from
MIT

