One laptop per child give Ethiopian kids tablets, they learn to hack the tablets in 5 months without - Polidicks

[quote] With 100 million first-grade-aged children worldwide having no access to schooling, the One Laptop Per Child organization is trying something new in two remote Ethiopian villages—simply dropping off tablet computers with preloaded programs and seeing what happens. The goal: to see if illiterate kids with no previous exposure to written words can learn how to read all by themselves, by experimenting with the tablet and its preloaded alphabet-training games, e-books, movies, cartoons, paintings, and other programs. Early observations are encouraging, said Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC’s founder, at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference last week. The devices involved are Motorola Xoom tablets—used together with a solar charging system, which Ethiopian technicians had taught adults in the village to use. Once a week, a technician visits the villages and swaps out memory cards so that researchers can study how the machines were actually used. After several months, the kids in both villages were still heavily engaged in using and recharging the machines, and had been observed reciting the “alphabet song,” and even spelling words. One boy, exposed to literacy games with animal pictures, opened up a paint program and wrote the word “Lion.” The experiment is being done in two isolated rural villages with about 20 first-grade-aged children each, about 50 miles from Addis Ababa. One village is called Wonchi, on the rim of a volcanic crater at 11,000 feet; the other is called Wolonchete, in the Great Rift Valley. Children there had never previously seen printed materials, road signs, or even packaging that had words on them, Negroponte said. 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.” Elaborating later on Negroponte’s hacking comment, Ed McNierney, OLPC’s chief technology officer, said that the kids had gotten around OLPC’s effort to freeze desktop settings. “The kids had completely customized the desktop—so every kids’ tablet looked different. We had installed software to prevent them from doing that,” McNierney said. “And the fact they worked around it was clearly the kind of creativity, the kind of inquiry, the kind of discovery that we think is essential to learning.” “If they can learn to read, then they can read to learn,” Negroponte said (see “Emtech Preview: Another Way to Think About Learning”). 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.” The idea of dropping off tablets outside of the context of schools is a new paradigm for OLPC. Through the late 2000s, the company was focused on delivering a custom miniaturized and ruggedized laptop, the XO, of which about 3 million have been distributed to kids in 40 countries. Deployments went to schools including ones in Peru (see “Una Laptop por Nino”). Giving computers directly to poor kids without any instruction is even more ambitious than OLPC’s earlier pushes. “What can we do for these 100 million kids around the world who don’t go to school?” McNierney said. “Can we give them tool to read and learn—without having to provide schools and teachers and textbooks and all that?”[/quote] [url]http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506466/given-tablets-but-no-teachers-ethiopian-children-teach-themselves/[/url] Wow shit they're better than the average IT guy

From illiterate to computer hacker in five months. Impressive.

I wonder how long it will be before we're outsourcing our IT departments to remote Ethiopian villages

This sounds very much like a scifi novel.

Well, shit. This is pretty impressive.

So we'll be switching from having Indians working in the IT department to Ethiopian children working in the IT department?

These Ethiopian kids are learning computer tech quite well. Maybe this could result in a generation in Africa that possesses a large amount of tech savvy? Could be handy for the infrastructure and tech level of those countries. The continuation of this project will certainly benefit third-world countries by injecting tech-savvy into the younger generations.

[QUOTE=aznz888;38264445]This sounds very much like a scifi novel.[/QUOTE] Didn't they do this as an experiment, because they liked the idea from a SciFi novel?

Does this mean they can finally download barbecues to put an end to world hunger?

I think them learning how to use them and care for them, then learning to read and write is much more interesting than them learning to "hack" them [QUOTE] had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]. “The kids had completely customized the desktop—so every kids’ tablet looked different. We had installed software to prevent them from doing that,” [/QUOTE] enabling a camera or getting around parental control software is barely hacking

Oh why the hell did they give them compputers, why didnt they give them food and education? You cant hunt game with a laptop. Unless you install Deer Hunter, of course.

No, but circumventing desktop setup locking software is.

[QUOTE=latin_geek;38264533]I think them learning how to use them and care for them, then learning to read and write is much more interesting than them learning to "hack" them enabling a camera or getting around parental control software is barely hacking[/QUOTE] I couldn't do it on my own (probably; haven't tried) so props to them. Then again I'm probably one of the few people on facepunch that suffers from debilitating computer illiteracy.

[QUOTE=Alcoholocaust;38264588]Oh why the hell did they give them compputers, [B]why didnt they give them[/B] food and[B] education[/B]? You cant hunt game with a laptop. Unless you install Deer Hunter, of course.[/QUOTE] what do you think the tablets are for

[QUOTE=Alcoholocaust;38264588]Oh why the hell did they give them compputers, why didnt they give them food and education? You cant hunt game with a laptop. Unless you install Deer Hunter, of course.[/QUOTE]They've got food already there. This is very relevant to education. If you can make a self-sustainable teaching method where you just have to drop off a tablet per kid it's a lot more cost effective than building a school there and hiring teachers.

[QUOTE=koeniginator;38264442]I wonder how long it will be before we're outsourcing our IT departments to remote Ethiopian villages[/QUOTE] Well atleast they seem actually competent, compared to the usual IT-support hotline.

[QUOTE=Alcoholocaust;38264588]Oh why the hell did they give them compputers, why didnt they give them food and education? You cant hunt game with a laptop. Unless you install Deer Hunter, of course.[/QUOTE] not every single kid in africa is starving, some have plenty of food and other resources but lack education, specially in current technology You need that if you want your village/country to go forward

I think it's amazing if we can have kids learn things their own way. The current education system is undeniably shit. Learning itself needs to be something everybody can do. I know for a fact that everybody reading this thread doesn't understand why people type questions in to Google instead of keywords. One thing I'd hate to see is if they locked it down. If the children are able to do this, this should be their victory. That and the one laptop per child program is amazing. Especially technology wise. They have the whole meaning of social computing done. Computers that connect together p2p rather than Wi-Fi, interactivity, etc. It's awesome.

And in 6 months, they will learn how to develop apps directly on those tablets and distribute them.

i bet they'll hack freerice.com to give them shitloads of food.

Soon [URL="http://saintsrow.wikia.com/wiki/Deckers"]http://saintsrow.wikia.com/wiki/Deckers[/URL]

[QUOTE=garychencool;38264807]And in 6 months, they will learn how to develop apps directly on those tablets and distribute them.[/QUOTE] Well there [B]IS [/B]already apps for developing apps directly on a android device. They should've included that + e-books on java, C++ and google's code syntax for Android development.

[QUOTE=latin_geek;38264533]I think them learning how to use them and care for them, then learning to read and write is much more interesting than them learning to "hack" them enabling a camera or getting around parental control software is barely hacking[/QUOTE] to be fair, these kids could barely read. them being able to get around the camera and getting around the software is amazing.

This is either really scary or really cool, I can't decide yet.

I think you guys might be giving these kids more credit then deserved. "Hacking" used loosely can mean many things. They might have just found out how to use live wallpapers or something. Nevertheless, when it comes to figuring out electronics, this is truly awesome and makes some Americans look retarded.

[QUOTE=latin_geek;38264533]I think them learning how to use them and care for them, then learning to read and write is much more interesting than them learning to "hack" them enabling a camera or getting around parental control software is barely hacking[/QUOTE] It's all relative. Some kid in the United States doing that and no-one would give a shit. But a kid with like no/little education in a third world country that couldn't even read beforehand is pretty cool.

next thing you know they'll be [I]hacking[/I] eachother's facebook implying eachother all like penis in/around their mouths they must be stopped

I think you guys are underestimating the intelligence of human beings. The reason we've survived for so long and developed such a complicated society is because of our ingenuity and ability to adapt to situations. Just because these kids are in Africa, and have had next-to-no education doesn't mean they don't have the same level of intelligence.

Well shit it took me 6 months just to figure how to Hack my Ipod!

Wow, they're better than the average XDA-Developers Member!