What would you look like if you were given a foreign piece of technology, in an entirely different language, and then left alone to explore it. Would you even try? When would you give up? Well, for a group of students in a 3rd world slum in India, this same thing happened, only, the end results are quite surprising.
Sugata Mitra and his team decided to expose Indian children to a standard computer with standard windows software, in English. The team placed the computer inside of a whole in one of the walls bordering the slum. They left it there along with a hidden camera to videotape the children's interactions both with the new technology and each other. It turns out that every time Mitra and his teammates went back to watch the children use the new technology, they improved exponentially. Mitra and his team studied the speed at which they learned certain tasks and also the language used by the children.
This study fascinated me and slightly reminded me of myself the first time my coworkers and I attempted to use a Smartboard haha At first, we all had no idea how to go about using it, but through our suggestions and own innovative ideas, we were able to slowly but surely become more comfortable with the new technology, similar to the Indian children.
Below is a link to the full story. you can also find the video on tis website that show the children interacting with the computer. Pretty awesome stuff!
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india/thestory.html
We would call you a digital immigrant! Wow - great analogy. Can't believe I have never heard it used before.
ReplyDeleteGetting comfortable with technology takes time. All to often, we rush people to use the technology without giving them any precursors about how to use them or how they even turn on!
Using the tech. first, having days of professional development devoted to these techs. can make them useful and less foreign to us all.
Sam:
ReplyDeleteI love this story. How inspirational! And while slightly different than exposing ourselves and our own children to technology, I think it holds the same premise. We are curious about what potential these technologies have. So, we play and experiment and (when we don’t get too frustrated), we usually learn a lot! By giving our own students access to technology, we open up a world of possibilities for them. What a great, motivational story!
Great post!
Kate
Sammi,
ReplyDeleteWow! What an amazing story you found. Thanks for sharing it. I've been thinking a lot about India in relation to the McLeod video on US schools becoming irrelevant if we don't change. My sense is that there is something about the culture of India that does not create resistance to change as we have in our country. This experiment in the slum is even more dramatic. In a situation of complete poverty and lack of learning resources, we find out in dramatic terms what the human/machine relationship really is. Also, your posting is another reminder of how important it is to get learning tools into the hands of ALL children in the coming decade.
Samantha,
ReplyDeleteThis story was so interesting! Thank you so much for sharing it! I feel that if I were one of these Indian children, I would not perform as well as they had in this task. I probably would have given up after a few minutes of frustration. It was so interesting to see the results of this study and the students' resilience and patience. I would love to show this video and experiment to my future students so that they can understand these two factors.
Thanks again!