This lunchtime's keynote was from Professor Sugata Mitra, streamed live on a link from Calcutta. Professor Mitra is most famous for his Hole in the Wall experiment when in 1999 he took a computer and embedded it in a wall in a slum in Delhi so children could reach it.
Despite the fact that the street children had never seen one before, and all interfaces were in English, 6 hours later they were browsing and teaching each other.
He repeated the experiment in other locations with reproducible results.
The experiments showed that groups of children left unsupervised with a computer learn to use the Internet. Over 9 months they reached the same level of proficiency as an office secretary in the west.
Didn't happen as effectively if an adult or teacher was there.
Rather than read me writing about it, you can watch his prize winning TED talk about it. Fascinating subject.
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