Ethiopian kids hack OLPCs in 5 months with zero instruction | DVICE
AWESOME!
"If this all reminds you of a certain science fiction book by a certain well-known author, it's not a coincidence: Nell's Primer in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age was a direct inspiration for much of the OLPC teaching software, which itself is named Nell."
OLPC = One Laptop Per Child.
Sweet:
What happens if you give a thousand Motorola Zoom tablet PCs to Ethiopian kids who have never even seen a printed word? Within five months, they'll start teaching themselves English while circumventing the security on your OS to customize settings and activate disabled hardware.
Seriously, this is awesome.
Maybe every kid in the world should get a machine as soon as possible...
I'm putting it on my MUST READ list.
So you believe we should give kids tablets as soon as they're able to hold them?
Indeed, it is a must read. Vivek Wadwha touts a $39/tab produced in India. That's an order of magnitude cheaper than some of the other folks. Wow.
$39 tablets are available in India now? Or coming soon?
Now. He references at about 26 minutes in: http://pandawhale.com/convo/8370/larry-summers-and-peter-thiel-debate-higher-education-bubble
Also, he references a $99 device that can analyze your brain patterns to read emotions as you are experiencing them. He suggests that software will take advantage of this as student's learn; it will *know* when they are frustrated or not understanding something and help move them to problems where they can achieve success.
Vivek Wadha, I think, *gets* the future of education more than most people I've listened to.
This article inspired me. I did a factory reset on my old HTC Evo and gave it to my two year old daughter.
Henry, that's awesome.
I wonder if there are any good Android apps to download for her?
I put some kids puzzle apps, angry birds and a direct link to her favorite video "Gangnam Style" - she props the phone up clicks and does the dance - it is quite funny.
Next is teaching her how to access dropbox photos/videos I share with her account.