Comments | glamazonwarrior: article: Ethiopian kids hack tablet PCs in 5 months, without instruction

glamazonwarrior

article: Ethiopian kids hack tablet PCs in 5 months, without instruction

Nov 01, 2012 20:49

About a new experiment by One Laptop Per Child:

"We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He'd never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were ( Read more... )

Comments 6

azaz_al November 2 2012, 13:31:27 UTC

Children's brains are made to learn.

My kid has done some really weird shit with computer programs that I never would have thought of.

glamazonwarrior November 2 2012, 17:18:16 UTC

It's possible to retain some plasticity into adulthood, but yeah, kids are amazing at it.

neadods November 3 2012, 02:17:50 UTC

That is freakin' cool!

glamazonwarrior November 3 2012, 03:08:07 UTC

Kids are incredible, given the opportunity.

voxsjournal November 3 2012, 18:03:55 UTC

Whoa! That is too cool! I'm kind of blown away by that, actually. I'd never have predicted such a thing, especially given the language barrier.

glamazonwarrior November 4 2012, 23:41:46 UTC

According to the CIA World factbook, English is one of Ethiopia's official languages (as the major foreign language taught in schools). The other official languages are Amarigna (Amharic) and Arabic.

Of course, Ethiopia has *a lot* of languages, and the article doesn't give what town these were dropped in, so it's hard to know how familiar the people there were with English.