A little while ago I wrote about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative and detailed some of the opportunities and challenges inherent in their vision. In case you haven’t read that yet (or might not), here’s my main take away: OLPC’s biggest challenge is convincing people that their attempt to bring the illiterate and impoverished into the digital age makes sense.
I can give you one very good reason why it makes all the sense in the world: Even very young children (whom we could classify as illiterate) learn technology simply by being exposed to it. All you have to do to see this for yourself is watch a four year old.
OLPC certainly has other challenges to overcome. But I expect that someone, someday will make progress on the distribution front if only because places like Africa and Indonesia (with well over a billion potential consumers) are too big to ignore forever. Heck, marketers are already referring to these people as “The Next Billion.”
With that in mind, how about this: let’s bring together the best educators and media producers from around the globe and package a ‘human basics’ learning program: an auto-teacher utility for k-12 children that will instruct them in math, science and language basics.
The program would ideally be regionalized to enhance important cultural basics, and while it would not supersede a traditional classroom based formal education, this kind of application could be ideal for children who otherwise would have little chance of becoming literate.
Besides, we could also time capsule the application for posterity and/or shoot it into space as a beacon from the human race. How’s that for far out thinking?
AfriGadget
Kiva