
Given Tablets but No Teachers, Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves - ColinWright
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506466/given-tablets-but-no-teachers-ethiopian-children-teach-themselves/
======
droithomme
They don't cite it, but their experiment was clearly inspired by the successes
of the Hole in the Wall project in India which has been successful for many
years.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_t...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html)

<http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/Beginnings.html>

[http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_educa...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html)

[http://www.edutopia.org/blog/self-organized-learning-
sugata-...](http://www.edutopia.org/blog/self-organized-learning-sugata-mitra)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimally_invasive_education>

~~~
tomjen3
Go watch his speech. It is amazing.

------
tow21
Personal background: my wife works in development and has organized education
projects in Ethiopia. The development community know all about this and are
scathing of it.

What the article doesn't mention is that:

a) these tablets are vastly more expensive than just hiring teachers locally -
by orders of magnitude. This is not a remotely scalable scheme, and frankly
research budgets would be much better put to use working out how to distribute
cheap teaching materials through existing education networks.

b) More perniciously, the tablets educate in English or Amharic: not in the
local language of the population in question, which these children would
otherwise speak; their parents are often not fluent in either.

The Ethiopian government (a dictatorship) loves this project, because it is
actively trying to exterminate local languages and culture. This provides for
them a route to do so.

~~~
cjbprime
Hi,

Personal background: I work on this project, but only as a software engineer
-- I didn't travel to Ethiopia, and don't have a development background (other
than the last 6+ years at One Laptop Per Child). I'm not speaking for OLPC
right now.

> The development community know all about this and are scathing of it.

People taking Approach A often think that the people taking Approach B are
foolish and misguided (else they'd work on it themselves); it's not a point
that carries normative weight by itself. We have to actually look at the
arguments.

> a) these tablets are vastly more expensive than just hiring teachers locally
> - by orders of magnitude.

Well, steady. The two villages we chose are entirely illiterate -- they have
no literate adults, and no-one there has ever been to school. One of the
villages has potential access to one school that's 10 miles away and 3000 feet
lower, which is not a plausible trip.

So now you've signed up to build two schools, and then find literate teachers
who want to live in or spend all of their working time teaching in a remote
illiterate village. And you realize that Oromo is highly dialectal, such that
the two villages in this case speak dialects that aren't comprehensible to
each other; your teacher probably doesn't know their dialect already. Is it
still orders of magnitude cheaper than tablets?

> b) More perniciously, the tablets educate in English or Amharic: not in the
> local language of the population in question, which these children would
> otherwise speak; their parents are often not fluent in either.

There are no Oromo applications of any kind for Android, so in effect you're
saying that this experiment should simply not happen, and these kids should
not get to use technology. I don't agree with that.

Even if it's successfully argued that teachers are a better solution for
Ethiopia -- I certainly agree that a small class size and a brilliant teacher
is a wonderful thing when it's available -- there are a hundred million kids
in the world with no access to a school. That seems worth researching a
potential amelioration for, right?

Maybe you're missing that this is a pilot-stage experiment that only involved
40 children? It's not being proposed as country-wide policy.

~~~
teyc
Both A and B have valid viewpoints.

The OLPC is a bold experiment. After all, it is bringing a piece of technology
that is ahead of the prevailing infrastructure or markets. We don't really
know what this will lead to.

These kids can't turn work in PC repairs when people don't have electricity.

These kids can't compete with children from India or China who have formal
education.

There are no consumers, no customers, no investors in the village.

However, there is a chance OLPC team might have created something emergent.
That when the opportunity arises, these skills will be repurposed. I look
forward to what happens next.

------
tokenadult
A friend shared this story (from a different link posted by Mashable) on
Facebook, and I asked then how we really know how well the students are
picking up what knowledge of what topic through this means. I see, going back
to that link (the same text appears in your link),

"In an interview after his talk, Negroponte said that while the early results
are promising, reaching conclusions about whether children could learn to read
this way would require more time. 'If it gets funded, it would need to
continue for another a year and a half to two years to come to a conclusion
that the scientific community would accept,' Negroponte said. 'We’d have to
start with a new village and make a clean start.'"

I also noted in the Facebook discussion thread that National Public Radio in
the United States recently broadcast a report about One Laptop Per Child in
remote villages in Peru, where ensuring access to the Internet or even
electricity was a difficult problem for the schoolchildren attempting to use
the laptops. I think further research is needed before we can be really sure
that dropping off the laptops next to groups of children in the Third World
will genuinely result in learning gains for the children in the usual school
subjects.

AFTER EDIT: An astute top-level comment below asks,

 _Nobody's actually there, so who knows what's going on?_

And, indeed, I should have mentioned that to properly evaluate this project,
you would not only need people in-country, seeing the children face to face,
but you would have to make sure that the evaluators are familiar with the
local language, as foreigners who visit another country without knowing the
local language often miss many important details in their interactions with
local people.

------
aw3c2
multilevel aggregator spam for
[http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506466/given-tablets-
bu...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506466/given-tablets-but-no-
teachers-ethiopian-children-teach-themselves/)

edit: submission url updated, thanks

------
yanokwa
Instead of the "promising results" maybe we can focus on the actual results of
the randomized control trial that focused on educational outcomes of OLPC?

That RCT conducted in 320 schools in Peru found:

1\. The program dramatically increased access to computers

2\. No evidence that the program increased learning in math or language

3\. Some benefits on cognitive skills

Source:
[http://blogs.iadb.org/desarrolloefectivo_en/2012/03/06/and-t...](http://blogs.iadb.org/desarrolloefectivo_en/2012/03/06/and-
the-jury-is-back-one-laptop-per-child-is-not-enough).

~~~
jagbolanos
There is a difference in the sense that in Peru the laptops didn't have math
or language software and in this case it did

~~~
vidarh
There's also another difference in that adding a laptop for a kid that is
already in school without doing anything to take advantage of the laptop in
the teaching is very different from making tablet available for a kid that is
not only without access to school, but in a village where everyone is
illiterate.

------
rickdale
Check out the Amazon home page and you will see this related story:

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_365909982...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_365909982_2?ie=UTF8&docId=1000843091&nav_sdd=aps&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-B1&pf_rd_r=0EVQ1S1GVHFFY4R17AVZ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1409802742&pf_rd_i=507846)

------
Dove

        “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. 
    

I know we're not supposed to be snarky on this site and all, but I just can't
help myself . . .

Compromised by illiterate children. _That's_ a secure OS!

~~~
esrauch
I know you are just being snarky for fun, but it sounds like the kids set the
desktop background when they thought they had disabled the option in settings.
I doubt they did anything more than find a different option that lets you set
the background through the browser or something.

~~~
politician
Illiterate children from an illiterate village with no technology or anything
remotely analogous not only figure out how to use a laptop, but customize it
to their personal preferences.

Let's give credit where credit is due. This is pretty amazing.

------
InclinedPlane
This is the future of education at the "bottom" in the 21st century. In
several years (perhaps a few decades) solar powered tablet computers will be
mass produced and so ubiquitous and inexpensive that they will flood the
world. And one of their key uses will be education.

------
kirian
Anybody else reminded of The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated
Primer by Neal Stephenson?

~~~
geori
I was reminded of that as well. And when I read through the comments, one of
the experiments confirmed that yes, the Diamond Age actually gave them
inspiration:

>> Richard Smith >> Exactly. See <http://cananian.livejournal.com/tag/nell>
The Diamond Age was an inspiration for some of the software we developed for
the tablet.

------
skybrian
Nobody's actually there, so who knows what's going on? Perhaps they learn by
asking nearby adults to show them how? Even so, providing motivation is great.

~~~
mayneack
I would imagine a way to address this is to snap a picture every time it gets
turned on (or some other period) to see who's using it when they're doing each
thing.

~~~
Evbn
Interesting, that got an IT person in legal trouble for trying that in a US
school.

------
netcan
Looking at things from my comfortable vantage point a million miles away, I've
always had a somewhat skeptical view of OLPC & similar efforts.

(a) They built in the high risk, high capital cost aspect of developing pretty
complicated devices. Big things like inventing their own laptop for radically
different conditions & making a radical flavor of Linux when none of the
existing flavors have had much success with nontechnical users. (b) They
planned to go through Governments, the UN & other giant organizations.

Simple & revolutionary technology coming about this way always seemed
unlikely.

This on the other hand is interesting. It may seem almost cruel, giving away
scores of tablets at a price that could have built and staffed a school. OTOH,
it's still not a huge amount of money (in the context of the OLPC budget), you
can do it right now and it might work.

If it works, then they can find ways to make it cheaper, cooperative with
schools. etc.

------
mtgx
Another similar story with Samsung's solar-powered mobile school:

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57542623-1/samsung-
solar...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57542623-1/samsung-solar-
powered-school-shines-in-rural-south-africa/)

------
thedrbrian
That's one way of shifting all those unsold xooms

~~~
no_more_death
The Xoom is really solid, now that they've upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich. I
often tell people wanting a new laptop to just buy a Xoom. You can't get
better bang for your buck. I have a Xoom and I totally love it to death. I
love it as a tablet. It also makes an excellent desktop when you connect it to
a monitor and bluetooth mouse / keyboard.

------
gmoore
Just curious - is this actually 'hacking'? Seems that kids are just figure out
how to used the installed software on their own....

~~~
MichaelGG
> “The kids had completely customized the desktop—so every kids’ tablet looked
> different. We had installed software to prevent them from doing that,”

For instance, they could have had one of those "lock" apps that requires a
code for certain apps like system settings or app installation, and the kids
killed the lock app via a task manager.

------
HBKN2o1MhO
Something irks me about whether or not they consulted any ethics guidelines
for this project.

------
namank
Same in India. They left a village with a computer. Within 30 days, the
previously illiterate students through it. It's important to note that they
didn't master the computer but used it as a tool to master educational
content.

------
conroe64
Teachers with an ego trip, step back. Technology is taking over your job, too.

~~~
polymatter
good teachers are worth their weight in unobtainium. poor teachers can be a
huge negative to student learning.

------
Dove
This is a particular area of interest for me, as well. I've experimented with
an Android app designed to help my toddler learn to count
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cdarrow.co...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cdarrow.countingrobot)),
and it _really_ seems to work. In fact, I think the app can give him better
feedback than I can because it doesn't get bored.

I really do think a lot of things can be taught through games and unsupervised
computer experiences. It's an area I'd like to explore further.

------
joelhooks
We use an autodidactic approach for our kids' home education. Working out
really well so far with one at high school age on down to our 4th that is
kindergarten aged.

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lrobb
“Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera,
and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.”

Sounds like a great guy to work for. #sarcasm.

------
b0rsuk
Given Tablets and One Person with an Internet Connection, Children Discover
Porn... or MMOs. Absence of teacher is no substitute for a teacher.

------
aufreak3
The hole in the wall project and this are certainly interesting. I can't help
wonder what would happen if such tablets happened to be dropped in kids' hands
in an urban literate area. Would they end up stuck playing angry birds and
loitering on facebook?

------
mavhc
the software is the interesting part,
<http://cananian.livejournal.com/tag/nell>

<http://nell-balloons.github.cscott.net/> to play

------
derleth
Reminds me of Nicaraguan Sign Language:

> Nicaraguan Sign Language (ISN; Spanish: Idioma de Señas de Nicaragua) is a
> sign language largely spontaneously developed by deaf children in a number
> of schools in western Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language>

Similar story, in some ways: In Nicaragua, the kids were taught a wholly
deficient sign language that wasn't sufficient to the needs of actually using
it as your mother tongue. They improved upon it by inventing grammar (not just
words, but actual _rules_ ) and generally bringing it up to the standards
required of a real language. Same kind of independent discovery and invention.

In a linguistic sense, there appears to be a minimum complexity a language
must have before it's worthwhile, and humans will spontaneously invent
complexity that is missing. This also completely debunks the idea that grammar
is dying: Humans can't exist without grammar. They can, however, exist without
_your preferred grammatical and stylistic conventions._ (Grammar is observed,
as part of a science; style is dictated, as part of fashion.)

In a broader sense, _humans desire a certain minimum level of complexity in
their lives and will get bored and invent complexity if it is lacking._ We
aren't cattle.

~~~
rmc
I think most sign languages started to take a turn for complexity when
children started using them from when they were young,

