Putting a Computer for Children in a Hole in The Wall

By helloresonate on June 12, 2017 in Children, Education, Poverty

A slum has a computer fitted into a hole in a wall, and children are able to start teaching themselves.

Sugar Mitra had an office in New Delhi, that bordered a slum separated by a wall. A hole was cut into the wall, and a PC was inserted with a touch pad, high speed internet, and an internet explorer. Curious children would use the computer and ended up teaching each other how to use it.

In the second location of Shivpuri, India, the first person to use the computer was a 13 year old school dropout. He quickly realized that when he moved his finger on the touch pad, something moved on the screen. After 2 minutes he realized he was controlling ’the TV’. After 8 minutes he was browsing, changing pages on the internet.

He then started to call the neighborhood children. By that evening 70 children had been browsing.

“Children in groups can self instruct themselves to use a computer and the internet” – Sugar Mitra

Another computer was set up in a rural village. This time with CDs since no internet was available. Sugar came back 3 months later, and the children asked for a computer with a faster processor and a better mouse to better handle the games they had installed by themselves.

Language is not a barrier. “The first thing that these children did was to find a website to teach themselves the English alphabet. “

“If they access to that computer they will teach themselves. But it had to be in groups”

What they could learn to do: