Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Given Tablets but No Teachers, Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

You need to be a bit sceptical reading a site like Technology Review (or any of the popular reviews) but the headline was intriguing, and it seemed to replicate Sugata Mitra's experience. Proponent Nicholas Negroponte describes it: "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. What's most interesting is this: "The idea of dropping off tablets outside of the context of schools is a new paradigm for OLPC." Maybe what we need is to get the idea that education using computers is different.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: Dec 25, 2024 08:09 a.m.

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