The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

African kids learn to read, hack Android on OLPC fondleslab

Why your next sysadmin could be Ethiopian

Cloud based data management

One Laptop Per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte has said children are not only teaching themselves to read without teachers by using fondleslabs he provided, but they are learning how to hack Android as well.

In an experiment, the OLPC dropped off Motorola Xoom tablets with solar chargers in two Ethiopian villages and trained the local adult population how to charge them up. Children were also given sealed boxes containing fondleslabs that were preloaded with educational software and a memory card that tracks how the kids got on with the new technology.

"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," Negroponte told MIT Review. "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."

Learning to read by computer is nothing new. Professor Sugata Mitra's research into machine teaching in Indian slums has shown illiteracy is no bar to using computers, and the same proved to be true here, with children weeks later learning their alphabet and how to spell the names of some animals.

But what shocked the OLPC team was just how good the kids proved at understanding and changing the tablet's operating system.

"The kids had completely customized the desktop - so every kid's tablet looked different. We had installed software to prevent them from doing that," said Ed McNierney, OLPC's CTO. "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."

It wasn't just the desktop that the children learned to subvert. The cameras on the tablet had been disabled by an OLPC worker, but the children managed to get around that and turn them back on again with no instruction.

Last year Negroponte told The Register about plans to use fondleslabs for teaching children to read without human intervention, and the first phase of the project appears to have worked better than expected. ®

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

3 Lessons

1 - Technological tools are wonderful and can be used for noble purposes, like education.

2 - Some kids are still kids (not miniature of adults), even though their tools are different nowadays.

3 - We can improve the lives of everyone in this planet with some good will, technology and guidance.

Of course politicians are not interested in any of this. Anywhere.

6
0

Re: They can Open Boxes? Whatever Next?

Not necessarily (or even probably) racist. Haven't you ever been bemused by how a simple box can entertain yound kids? Who implied anything about that not being universal across the human race?

5
0

Clearly, nobody told the kids they were not supposed to be able to hack the machines, so they just went ahead and did it.

4
0

More from The Register

Samsung Galaxy Note 8: Proof the pen is mightier?
Sammy’s iPad Mini killer has a stylus to stab other rivals too
Microsoft lures buy-curious vixens, corduroys with a cheap fondle
Surface slab sales latest: Will no one rid Ballmer of these turbulent tabs?
First look: iOS 7 for iPad
No, Apple hasn't released it yet, but that doesn't stop intrepid devs
 breaking news
Curtain drops on Apple Store ahead of WWDC: What lies behind?
Steve Jobs watching from on high. No pressure, lads
 breaking news
Cold, dead hands of Steve Jobs slip from iPhones: The Cult of Ive is upon us
Billionaire biz baron's death clears way for uber-shiny iOS 7
Airbus imagines suitcases that find themselves
Point your mobe at your smalls to track their every move
Surprise! Intel smartphone trounces ARM in power trials
Tests show equal performance while sipping significantly less juice
Samsung plans LTE Advanced version of Galaxy S4
1Gbps download capability could stiffen drooping S4 sales forecasts
Ex-HTC execs launch UK-based smartphone maker Kazam
Startup threatens to 'disrupt status quo' this year