Slum children in New Delhi taught themselves basic computer skills,
and even managed to do some surfing on the Internet, after they were
given access to a computer without any instructions or even a teacher.

This experiment using a "minimally invasive" approach to education
brought in "both strange and wonderful" results. Its findings were
recently reported in a technical journal by two educationists of the
Cognitive Engineering Research Centre of a prominent Indian
computer-education firm, NIIT.

The term "minimally-invasive" is incidentally borrowed from surgery!
Under this experiment, a computer was kept next to a Delhi slum
colony. It was housed in an outdoor kiosk, constructed in a way that
it could be accessed both from the NIIT office as well as from the
adjoining slum colony.

Like in any Indian slum, this one too contained a large number of
children of all ages, from 0-18. Most do not go to school. None of
them are particularly familiar with the English language.

Inspite of this, the slum kids took to the computer like a fish to
water. They began experimenting with various applications, and
switching from one website to another. Children invented their own
vocabulary to describe some aspects of the working of the computer.
They also formed impromptu classes to teach one another.

Surprised researchers reported back: "Children (who are mostly
unlettered) learnt basic operations of the computer for browsing and
drawing within a few days...."

They also said that within a month of interaction, children were able
to discover and use features such as new-folder creation, cutting and
pasting, shortcuts, moving/resizing windows and using MS Word to
create short messages even without a keyboard."

Initially, the slumdwellers did not have a clue as to what was the
purpose of the computer-kiosk, built into the wall of the NIIT. "I
don't think they quite understood what we wanted to do. As long as it
did not take up their space, they did not really care," commented the
researchers, Sugata Mitra and Vivek Rana.

There was quite a lot of enthusiasm. They wanted to know what it
was,why it was being put up there. "Most of the kids thought it was a
video game being put up for free," reported the researchers. Some
questions they asked included: "Is it a video game? What is a
computer? How will we be benefited? But we don't know how to operate
the computer!!!"

Elders wanted to know who would take care of the computer.

None of the questions were answered with any instructional sentence.
"We gave general answers such as, 'It is a fun machine,'" reported the
researchers.

Initially, the computer, which had access to the Internet through a
dedicated 2 Mbps connection, was linked to the Altavista
(www.altavista.com) site on the internet. At the start, keyboard
access was not given. No instructions were given either; the only
exception being the final testing of the system with the 'touch pad',
or the pointing device provided. This instruction too was not given
deliberately.

Early users were the little boys from the slum colony, in the 6- 12
age group. They just fiddled around with the touch pad, and found it
interesting.

Next, they perhaps accidentally learnt how to click from the touch pad
itself. After that, they found they could relate to the concept of
'channels'. From a video camera spying down on the experiment from a
nearby tree, it was found that they children were prompting one
another: "Go to channels... there must be TV".

In a few hours, they learnt to manipulate and click the mouse.

Enthusiasm stayed high, and in the next two or three days, the kids
were trying to open the 'Start Menu', opening new windows, opening the
'My Computer' from the desktop, opening other applications. From a
distance, through the video camera, the educationists kept a close
watch on what the children were doing. This project was launched in
earlier this year.

Barely a week after launching the experiment in end-January 1999, the
slum kids found a teacher of their own! Sanjay Chowdhary is a second
year Bachelor of Arts student, who has done a basic course in computer
from India's open university, IGNOU.

Reported the researchers: "Since he is the only one who knows
computers in the colony, all kids give him great respect. He has been
found teaching them how to operate the touch pad (the pointing
device). It must be realised that the 'intervention' here is
situational. The children found the best resource they could."

Within ten days, the mostly-unlettered kids learnt to shut down the
computer. In a fortnight's time, the researchers found themselves
removing hundreds of 'shortcuts' from the desktop. "This shows that
someone is really finding it interesting to create these shortcuts,"
said Mitra and Rana, reporting their findings in the journal of the
Computer Society of India, a professional body.

The kids started shifting to sites like disneyblast.com and MTVonline.
They tried out applications like the calculator, paint and even chat.
They could not do much with chat though, since they had not been
provided the keyboard.

When the researchers asked the people for their comments on the new
addition in the form of the computer, the women were skeptical. "Yeh
daal-roti dega kya? (Will this give us food?)" they asked. Attempts to
persuade the women to use the computer came up against a wall.

Within a fortnight, the researchers found clock.exe (the clock)
running on the desktop. Many new folders were found created on the
desktop. "This could be the handywork of a school student, or a group
of them,who have learned to create a new folder, and are enjoying it,"
commented the researchers.

Someone changed the start-up screen for the WinNT computer. In under a
month of playing around with the computer, someone actually learnt
maximising and minimising windows. They soon figured out how to change
the wallpaper sitting, and that one can change the wallpaper to any
Internet picture.

One site of a North Indian Hindi newspaper, www.naidunia.com, evoked
some interest as the 10-12 year old children wanted to see their
horoscope for the day. But some others were more keen on using the
Paint application.

Lessons learnt from this experiment are interesting. It shows that it
is not just middle-class children from urban areas of the Third World
who are able to self-instruct and obtain help from the environment
when required. So, it might be incorrect for just urban Indian parents
to marvel at the speed with which their children are able to master
the computer, once given access.

"Once available, the computer-kiosk was used immediately by children,
aged about 5 to 16 years old. These children had a very limited
understanding of the English alphabet and could not speak the
language," noted Mitra and Rana.

These children also 'invented' their own vocabulary to define terms on
the computer. For example, they used terms like 'sui' (needle) for the
cursor, 'channels' for websites and 'kaam kar raha hai (it's working)
for the hourglass or busy symbol.

Soon, the slum kids were strongly opposed to the idea of removing the
kiosk. Parents felt that while they could not learn the operation of
the kiosk, or did not see its need, they felt it was very good for the
children.

"It is imperative to repeat such experiments in other locations before
one can generalise from these observations or come to any conclusion
regarding the educational benefits of such a non- invasive method,"
the researchers cautioned.

Steps would be needed to also design PC kiosks that can operate
outdoors in tropical countries. Wireless connectivity to the Internet
would need to be devised for kiosks in areas not physically close to
organisations with Internet access.

But they used this experiment to suggest that it might be possible to
question the apprehensions from academicians and others "that the
ability to access and the quality of training provided will hinder the
use of the Internet in the (Indian) subcontinent".

"We have found people (on the subcontinent) questioning the utility of
the schemes that rely on the Internet. (On the grounds that) there are
too few people in the region who have access," they point out. In
their view, this may not be a good argument.

To stress their point, the researchers point to the widespread impact
of films, in a region where most people don't have sufficient
resources for their daily meals. Yet they patronise cinema in a big
way. India produces the largest number of films in the world.

Mitra and Rana point out that the cost of acquiring a personal
computer and an Internet connection at home is around Rs 70,000 (US$
1600). Recurring yearly phone bills would come to Rs 10,000 (US$235) a
year. "In a country where the average annual income is about Rs 6000,
these amounts are not small," they point out.

Other experiments in South Asia have also been reported on. One
experiment was carried out in unsupervised learning of computers.

In the village of Udang of West Bengal, Mamar Mukhopadhyay and his
team placed a few computers in a rural school. Children were allowed
to use them after minimal instructions. Word processing, spreadsheets
and database management systems were readily learnt by both teachers
and students, who then went on to create a rural resources and
healthcare database.

They conceded that several more experiments would be needed in
different areas to "investigate whether self-learning will occur
uniformly among disadvantaged children" before wider conclusions can
be reached. But, they said, it was shown to be possible to design
PC-kiosks that can operate outdoors in tropical climates. Such kiosks
would need to be protected against heat, temperature, dust, humidity
and possible vandalism, of course.



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