What happens if you drop off a thousand Motorola Xoom tablet PCs in a village with kids who have never even seen a printed word? Within five months, they’ll have taught themselves to customize the software, reactivate disabled features and, perhaps, start down the path of learning to read.
Even this first paragraph by the author. These kids clearly already know how to fucking read, there’s written words in the background of the photos, including stuff that looks written by a child.
Yeah, the whole framing is just so white-saviour/noble savage esque…
E: and before I get a “well how are they supposed to frame it??!1” - “kids given tablets for the first time easily learn not only how to use them, but personalise them too”. Simple.
The first bolded part, that’s just lol. But for the second, the youth literacy rate there is 55%. It’s low enough that it might not be that horrible of an assumption. But combined with the first part, yeah…
https://www.fastcompany.com/2681011/ethiopian-kids-hacked-their-donated-tablets-in-just-five-months
Jfc, the racism oozing from that statement… 🤢
Even this first paragraph by the author. These kids clearly already know how to fucking read, there’s written words in the background of the photos, including stuff that looks written by a child.
Yeah, the whole framing is just so white-saviour/noble savage esque…
E: and before I get a “well how are they supposed to frame it??!1” - “kids given tablets for the first time easily learn not only how to use them, but personalise them too”. Simple.
The first bolded part, that’s just lol. But for the second, the youth literacy rate there is 55%. It’s low enough that it might not be that horrible of an assumption. But combined with the first part, yeah…
I think it was about the kids never having seen computers, so the tablets would be meaningless to them.
And boxes are fun
My cat likes to play with boxes.
But she likes to play on the keyboard too… 🤔