We ask ourselves what a laptop would do to a child. Why the government would spent billions of Kenyan shillings in buying laptops for standard one kids? How can we objectively answer these concerns? Are there experiments which can help us?
Many people have ridiculed the idea of spending billions to buy laptops to standard one kids. They say that there are still several schools around the country without enough infrastructure. That the government should spend the money on the latter. Sure physical infrastructure is key but so are computing devices.
It has been established that laptops enhance self-directed learning. There are many places without schools and there are many good teachers who do not like to teach. Hence leaving majority of pupils to self-directed learning. Those of us who grew up and attended schools in the rural areas or slums can attest to this fact. The advantages of the laptop as learning tool are already obvious. You have a laptop and you have whole libraries of books on your laps. With internet availability, the possibilities for a kid are limitless.
Eighteen years ago, precisely in 1999, Sugata Mitra, an Indian physicist got interested in education. He attempted numerous experiments which ultimately proved that kids can learn almost anything on their own. While working at NIIT Technologies as the head of research, he designed a simple experiment. He cut a hole in a tall wall that separated his posh office and an urban slum that bordered them. In this wall he installed a computer and a track pad, with the screen facing into the slum. He did it in such a way that theft was not a problem, then connected the computer to the Internet, added a web browser, and walked away.
The kids who lived in the slums could not speak English, did not know how to use a computer, and had no knowledge of the Internet, but they were curious. Within minutes, they’d figured out how to point and click. By the end of the first day, they were surfing the web and—even more importantly—teaching one another how to surf the web. These results raised more questions than they answered. Were they real? This led Mitra to an ever-expanding series of experiments about what else kids could learn on their own. The results are well documented. Given time and a laptop, a kid can learn anything.
I have on numerous times noticed how my primary school nieces and nephews lit up whenever they see me work on my laptop anytime I visit “ushagu” with it.
Self-organized learning environments (SOLES) are the way to go especially in locations where teachers are a rarity. SOLES are bottom up learning process. This in direct opposite to the customary top-down instruction process where pupils have to wait to be instructed. Experience has shown that self-learning is the most effective and satisfying form of learning. And self-learning can be collaborative as pupils can discuss and debate their findings. This kind of education doesn’t require teachers. We have to invent new solutions and one way is giving each standard one kid a laptop and perhaps connect them to the internet.
One of the first people to recognize the educational potential of computers was Seymour Papert. Originally trained as a mathematician, Papert spent many years working with famed child psychologist Jean Piaget before moving to MIT, where he and Marvin Minsky cofounded the Artificial Intelligence Lab. From that perch, in 1970 Papert delivered a now-famous paper, “Teaching Children Thinking,” in which he argued that the best way for children to learn was not through “instruction,” but rather through “construction”—that is, learning through doing, especially when that doing involved a computer. In 2005 he started working on a solution, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), an initiative aimed at providing every child on the planet with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop. OLPC has delivered laptops to three million children around the world so far. Shouldn’t we support the government when it makes investments towards the same goals?
It is common knowledge that our current education system was formed as a result of the industrial revolution, two centuries ago. This influenced what subjects were taught and how they were taught. Standardization is the rule, conformity the desired outcome. Students of the same age are presented with the same material and assessed against the same scales of achievement. Schools are organized like factories: the day is broken into evenly marked periods, bells signaling the beginning and the end of each period. Even teaching, as Sir Ken Robinson puts it in his excellent book Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative, was subject to the division of labor: “Like an assembly line, students progressed from room to room to be taught by different teachers specializing in separate disciplines.”
It is not strange to be taught subjects in high-school which will never help you in your career forever. Why would, for example, a future electrical engineer need to know about the anatomy of a grass hopper? Or why would a future journalist need to know about the Einstein’s” photo-electric effect equation. And be tested on these, with the one caveat that if you fail, you are done. One thing is clear though, the emphasis on the rote memorization of facts, is no longer necessary. Google does that now.
Not every student is the same. Digitally delivered content means that it’s no longer one size fits all. Students are now able to learn what they want, how they want, and when they want.
Teachers are still very important. Students perform better when coached by someone who cares about their progress but where teachers are in short supply, we have to invent equally potent solutions.
With the convergence of low-cost laptops, limitless computing and ubiquitous internet coverage, we can provide a nearly free and personalized education to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
Another side effect of these projects is the creation of jobs locally and technological knowledge transfer. There is now an assembly plant for tablets at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology.
We can also ask ourselves, what we are doing as individuals to introduce computing technologies to kids & young people. Organizations and individuals can donate computers. Technology practitioners and enthusiasts can volunteer their time.
Come together, form or join initiatives galvanizing support towards improving computer literacy .
On another note though, computers can’t replace the role of a teacher when when it comes to teaching social and thinking skills. Quoting Michael Bloomberg ,as he says in his new updated autobiography:
Receiving fewer benefits from computers than promised is not a phenomenon particular to Wall Street. Every parent wants his or her child to be computer literate. People tend to think that those without laptops and tablets in elementary school are doomed to a life of poverty and illiteracy, so we spend millions to equip classrooms with Internet access and state-of-the-art computers. The results have been underwhelming. Too often, technology is used as an excuse not to teach how to think and how to work with others. Dollars are limited and fungible. Sending them to Silicon Valley means less for teacher compensation (worse instruction) and school construction (larger class sizes).
I’ve never believed that we need computers in every classroom in the early grades. We should focus on teaching the basic skills of reading, writing, arithmetic, logic, concentration, cooperation, hard work, and leadership. Interaction with a sympathetic, understanding teacher can’t be automated, nor can their teaching of the “three Rs.” For young children, it’s still the best way to teach the basics. It’s also the only way to teach the social skills needed to survive in society.
Today, too many of our young people are not learning these basic essentials. About 40 percent of teenagers do not enter college immediately after high school. Some of them graduate from high school. Others don’t make it that far. But whether or not they graduate, we haven’t given them the skills and training they need to begin a career, and they pay for that for the rest of their lives, in limited opportunities and lost earnings.
