[waldojim]

I haven't seen a PCW article on this, so I thought I would share:
http://dvice.com/arc...iopian-kids.php

Quote

Here's how it went down, as related by OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte at MIT Technology Review's EmTech conference last week:

"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 using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android."

I think it is awesome to see that this really has an impact! It is also interesting to see how quickly people can learn without structure, without limitations, or a system holding them back. This is what learning is really about, and I am very happy to see these people getting the tools they need!