When I first saw this story I was truly amazed by these kids and it showed the natural knowledge humans posses but probably don't use most of the time. The story goes something like this. There was a project called One Laptop Per Child. They basically gave Motorola Zoom tablet PCs to Ethiopian kids. These kids have no education and are illiterate. To make things a little strange they delivered the Zooms in taped up boxes without any writing on them at all. No person to explain these boxes either. Within four minutes they opened the boxes. Okay, I can give them the curiosity angle. But get this, within five days they not only were using the devices but using nearly 50 applications each day per tablet. Wow! Now that sounds crazy considering these kids cannot read, write or speak English. (The tablets displayed in the English language.) Next the kids were singing the ABC song in English within two weeks. If that doesn't amaze you enough, here's the absolute tastiest icing on the cake. By month 5 of using the tablets, they had hacked the tablets sufficiently enough to enable the built-in cameras that were disabled by administrators. If that's not impressive to you then nothing is.
Here in the United States we have a growing education problem, drop out rate, and disregard of learning in general. But these kids not only succeeded in learning a language many Americans can't seem to master but taught it to themselves in a matter of months while at the same time digging into the insides of a unknown technology which is something that Ethiopia has zero of. Moral of the story? Us Americans have our work cut out for us if we plan to continue being a super power in the world.
Sources: [
Hacker News] [
Dvice]
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