Designers on quest to build $12 computer (based on NES)

[paws]

I don't understand how that in any way, shape, or form constitutes an argument against getting computers to kids everywhere?

[porter]

I don't understand how that in any way, shape, or form constitutes an argument against getting computers to kids everywhere?

So if kids use computers at an early age will they

(a) all become Nobel prize winners at extreme cleverness and solving the worlds problems in peace and harmony

(b) become spoonfed dummies with poor social skills who are incapable of critical or original thinking and have no idea on what research actually is.

Computers in schools is just anther big sink for tax payers money and another way of dumbing down kids while pretending to be doing them some kind of favour.

[QuadSix50]

UPDATE: The MIT design team referred to in this post is basing its design not on the Apple II, but on the Nintendo Entertainment System, which used the same processor chip. We regret our error, which was originally reported by The Boston Herald article to whcih our post was linked. Thanks to David Zeiler at The Baltimore Sun for the clarification.

http://cultofmac.com/mit-designers-resu ... india/2474

I had a feeling that reporter knew sweet FA about computers.

I did notice that this evening. Shame, as it would have been really cool had they actually based it off the Apple II. Ah well, still cool enough.

[paws]

So if kids use computers at an early age will they

(a) all become Nobel prize winners at extreme cleverness and solving the worlds problems in peace and harmony

(b) become spoonfed dummies with poor social skills who are incapable of critical or original thinking and have no idea on what research actually is.

Depends on the kid. Some kids will do marvellous things with computers, some won't.

[II2II]

Times change, and the skills that people need to survive change with those time.

Consider some of the skills currently taught in school: we spend an inordinate amount of time teaching them how to read, how to do mathematics problems, understanding world history, and so forth. We spend next to no time teaching them skills like how to hunt or fish or grow food. Kids these days truly have no understanding of what it means to survive. They are helpless if there isn't a grocery store on the next block.

Yes, I'm being somewhat sarcastic here. But I do run into a lot of back-to-the-basics arguments, because it is proven to work. Really, that's why the majority of people dropped out of school before grade 6 a century ago and out of school before graduating high school less than half a century ago. They like to say that traditional methods promote understanding. Really. Knowing long division has as much bearing on understanding the concept of division as using a calculator or a computer. (Ever see a kid who knows long division, but doesn't even understand the idea that you are dividing something into equal parts?) Then the reall BS starts flying, things like they would be helpless without calculators or computers. Really. Well if the world went to hell in a handbasket and calculators and computers ceased being ubiquitous you would probably find that your grocery store would have gone the way of the do-do bird too. At that point, basic survival skills (the stuff not taught in school) will probably be more important than the academic stuff.

I do agree that our use of computers in schools is both inadequate and misdirected, but that has more to do with teachers who think that computers are word processors than with computers themselves.

[Bunsen]

^--Indeed. Read "Mindstorms" by Seymour Papert for a cogent critique of everything that is wrong with computer education as it stood in the 1970s and still stands today, and a vision of how it can be (and in some places is)

But really, all this bitching and whinging has bugger all to do with the project at hand. Blah blah blah the world suxxors, things were better in my day, get off my lawn.

Now. Can we get back to some intelligent, constructive discussion, please?

[porter]

Now. Can we get back to some intelligent, constructive discussion, please?

You should be able to do a ZX81 for $12, and solar handheld calculators for about $2.

[chris]

II2II, porter, in a minor way paws:
Chill. It is not that important. For those of you who think it's stupid, it won't sell if it's stupid, and it'll die out. For those of you who think it's brilliant, it'll sell well if it is, and help people out.

Either it helps people or it dies out. There's no third option. Sure, someone could buy it then find out it's useless, but this would be fairly minor since 1. It's $12, not a huge investment even for subsistence farmers, and 2. They'll spread the word of it being useless and keep the total harm down close to zero.


Personally, I think that it's a great idea, but for kids in developed countries (note: I am NOT saying it should be barred to people in developing countries.) A modern, cheap Apple II would get lots of parents to buy them for their kids, and the kids would grow up not just learning about computers, but also having at least a basic understanding of how to program the computers (pardon the pun.) Kids now are growing up with the computers being just a glorified cell phone or game system, with none of the experience of actual creation that programming, even in BASIC, brings.

EDIT: Augh, somehow missed the "Not an Apple II" thing. Wish it was.

[Bunsen]

On the subject of constructive discussion, I'd suggest that anyone who is interested should have a look at the real project website and make up their minds from there, ignoring all the inaccurate, lazy reporting in the previously linked media.

The system is on the market now, being sold into homes as a game/BASIC system, much like the C64 and other home computers of the 80s. The MIT team merely want to extend the education options available for it.

[II2II]

Kids are treating computers like cell phones and game systems. That has nothing to do with the computers themselves. Rather it has to do with society's attitudes towards computers.

After all, anyone can stick a simple programming language like Logo, SmallTalk, BASIC, or Python on their machine. All of these have free variants that are downloadable off of the Internet.

I think the stimulating part about computers in the olden days were that a lot of them did not have much software. The software that did exist was expensive and, in some cases, could be developed by an ambitious individual. There was a lot of talk about programming in the popular computer press, even going as far as programming books for kids. Some of those books were collections of games, others showed you how to program games. I even remember one piece of children's fiction that had a lead character solve problems by programming in Pascal, with the source code to those programs in the back.

If you think that a $12 computer is going to recreate that "golden age" of technophilia, I would assert that your idea is naive. Some of the problems out there don't call for technological solutions. They call for social solutions. Alas, creating social solutions is much harder.

[Unknown_K]

I learned to program in the 80's because my 1st machine (A timex 2068) was orphaned a year after I got it and had few apps.

Kids in the 90's could be creative even with games because there were map editors out to design your own levels (quake, etc). Others did hacking, programming, artowrk, music etc.

My issues with computers in school are not in the machines, but with the software and how the machines are used. If you ever programmed you know that given a task there are a number of ways of doing it. Schools seems to teach the one "good" way to do something, and all others are inferior. When a kid comes up with a novel way of doing something and a student tells him it is the wrong way you kill creativity. I also don't like the memorization followed by multiple choice tests, they just get kids to memorize and puke the answer up on command when they see it.

[II2II]

If you ever programmed you know that given a task there are a number of ways of doing it. Schools seems to teach the one "good" way to do something, and all others are inferior. When a kid comes up with a novel way of doing something and a student tells him it is the wrong way you kill creativity. I also don't like the memorization followed by multiple choice tests, they just get kids to memorize and puke the answer up on command when they see it.

Teachers are in of a bit of a fickle here. The current pedagogical fad is based a lot on constructivism. Constructivism is one means of coming up with novel ways of doing something, because the student is expected to construct their own knowledge. Usually they are given the tools to figure something out, then any rational solution is considered valid. There are other ways of going about it, but constructivism seems to be the main way to use the different skills that students have. (There are teachers who will teach the content then assess solutions based on their validity rather than what they are taught, but the general outcome is that most students are working things out the same way because their understanding is based upon the instruction.)

Here's the hitch though: teachers are forced to teach to the curriculum, which rarely leaves time for the students to figure things out. The government then monitors how well teachers and schools are teaching to the curriculum through standardized testing (e.g. EQAO in Ontario). Some jurisdictions even use financial incentives and disincentives to force teachers to teach to the curriculum (e.g. No Child Left Behind in the U.S.). Of course I shouldn't blame just the government for that. Some teachers agree with this approach whole-heartedly, and some parents demand it for their child. After all, it is easier to guage knowledge than understanding.

Flipping back to software: there are a few constructivist tools out there (some may say constructionist here, but I'm not clear on the boundary). Some will be familiar to the Mac world through their creators, like Alan Kay's association with Squeak (a SmallTalk environment) and Bill Atkinson's association with HyperCard (HyperStudio is a variant on the theme, and still very much alive). Others stray away from programming, but still take on the same philosophy. These include products like Geometer's Sketchpad and Fathom.

But here's the hitch. When I've seen GSP and Fathom in use, students were always given explicit instructions on how to use it. So rather than using a constructivist approach, you are simply offering a variant on direct instruction. Part of the reason is time and those bloody curriculum expectations. Part of the reason is that students rarely know how to use this software and don't want to figure it out. But part of the reason is because the teacher's approach is all wrong too. By having all of the students use the software at the same time and for the same problems, you are basically reducing the software to an instructional tool rather than a learning tool.

As I've said before, most of the teacher's I've met simply don't understand computers. Ah well.

[Bunsen]

If you think that a $12 computer is going to recreate that "golden age" of technophilia, I would assert that your idea is naive.

I don't think any such thing. Of course the circumstances are not the same, nor do I believe in recreating anything. I think this is interesting, and the street will find its own use for things, as always, and no doubt already is. The 21st century Bombay street, that is, not the 1970s upper-middle class Western suburban cul-de-sac. The well-meaning MIT team may or may not have some impact.

Some of the problems out there don't call for technological solutions.

And yet, some do. Let the end user decide.

Kids are treating computers like cell phones and game systems. / anyone can stick a simple programming language / downloadable off of the Internet.

It's all very Western centric, really, isn't it.

Put it this way: I spent some time in a basti (settlement) of several hundred people in the center of Dehli.

Clean water, food, electricity, TVs, most families had at least one job-holder, and the kids were at school. But we're talking a family of eight in an eight by ten room, with another one or two built on top, a maze of two foot laneways in between.

Computers? There were four crappy old 486/P1 machines in the after-school drop-in center, and two of them were broken. Internet? Not since their last IT sponsor lost interest.

This is the market these $10 computers are going into - and no-one is shoving them down anyone's throat - people are buying them themselves.

IMHO we could all do with a break from pontificating about what the "third" world needs, and respect their intelligence enough to let them work it out for themselves.

[II2II]

If you're talking about India, well, they have the brain power to figure out the solutions themselves. It's not as though designing a decent computer is rocket science after all. A modern microcontroller offer more speed as well as internal flash memory and RAM. The I/O pins are a much more flexible data bus (for analog or digital) than a typical microprocessor. They also use a heck of a lot less power. If you do a bit of shopping, you can also find microcontrollers with internal RF communications modules. A network protocol like ZigBee is supposed to support several thousand nodes without external infrastructure. Everything is there, and (from what I've heard) the people in India and other developing nations can be bloody creative at using tools that we shun as primitive.

So why are we talking about a $12 computer designed in the west? Why not talk about what they're doing?

[Bunsen]

Constructivism

Hmm.

Our high school bought a bunch of BBCs and manuals, stuck them in a room and let us access them on breaks and after school. For at least a year, nothing much else was done with them, apart from purchasing a few more, and making a LAN with them.

We ended up with a room full of students throwing manuals back and forth at each other, calling out "Hey what's the xxx to do yyy?" and someone else calling the answer back over their shoulder in between madly trying to finish and save their port of Spacewar before the 15 minute recess was up. It was a hothouse of creativity in which we all learnt from the ground up, because we wanted to, and no-one got in out way.

I always assumed that it was simple ignorance and policy vacuum that created that situation, but now I wonder. It was a very conservative school, with a couple of very radical (and sneaky) teachers - one of whom set up the Beeb lab ...

there are a few constructivist tools out there / like Alan Kay's association with Squeak (a SmallTalk environment) and Bill Atkinson's association with HyperCard (HyperStudio is a variant on the theme, and still very much alive).

Seymour Papert:
constructivism -> LOGO -> SmallTalk -> Squeak
->"Mindstorms" (book)
->Lego Mindstorms
->OLPC

But here's the hitch. When I've seen GSP and Fathom in use, students were always given explicit instructions on how to use it. So rather than using a constructivist approach, you are simply offering a variant on direct instruction.

Adopting the tool, but completely failing to grasp the idea.

As I've said before, most of the teacher's I've met simply don't understand computers. Ah well.

Most of the teachers I've met don't understand learning. They may understand teaching, but that's not the same thing at all.

[Unknown_K]

I would think 486/P1 machines would be of more use then some nintendo clone, and already exist.

India itself is part 21st century and part 12th century depending on where you go, same with China.

[Bunsen]

So why are we talking about a $12 computer designed in the west?

We're.Not.
{grinds teeth}

have a look at the real project website / ignoring all the inaccurate, lazy reporting

By the way II2II, I agree with you about the potential for µc-based systems. I've discussed this with my OLPC chums, and tossed around names like "One Micro Per Child" and the "$5 laptop". I could well see someone tossing together a system with an AVR or PIC, and junked cellphone displays and keyboards.

In fact, Contiki potentially would be a good starting point, as it has been ported to quite a few micros, as well as 8 bit compys.

The problem being that it's hard to get into developing for these systems without a working "real" computer. A $10 computer with its own dev system onboard (even BASIC) has some real potential.

[II2II]

Sorry, missed the follow up articles.

Most of the teachers I've met don't understand learning. They may understand teaching, but that's not the same thing at all.

I'm going to hold my tongue to avoid commenting on many of the teachers that I've met, but I think it's fairly safe to say that noone really understands learning. All that I know is how we do it feels wrong. We like to say that we are there to help the child, but more often than not we are really just covering the curriculum.

I would think 486/P1 machines would be of more use then some nintendo clone, and already exist.

I'm not sure if a 486/P1 will be appropriate for them, but the design philosophy of a computer is more adaptable to their needs.

Anyway, now to read that article that I missed.

[porter]

I would think 486/P1 machines would be of more use then some nintendo clone, and already exist.

Yes I'm a bigger fan of shipping existing 386 upwards machines rather than having them in the landfill and mass producing something else that isn't really needed.

Most probably the problem is less opportunity for various palms to be greased along the way.

[II2II]

Yes I'm a bigger fan of shipping existing 386 upwards machines rather than having them in the landfill and mass producing something else that isn't really needed.

The question is though: is that what they really need?

I've heard horror stories relating to traditional computers in tropical climates. These range from over-heating (ask our friends in the southern US for a mild example of that), to various critters and molds growing in them. Clearly this isn't going to be the case in every under developed part of the world, but it could be.

I did read about half of that wiki Bunsen pointed to. It sounds like they are trying to develop a new computer, albeit on principles developed by local markets (the so-called NES clones). There may be a good reason for this. One being compatability between systems, in the case that they aren't true NES clones. After all, it sounds like the purpose of the project is content.

Content appears to be one of the objectives, as well as developing means of transmitting that content (writable media and communications systems). They claim that one of the reasons for this is that the profit motive may sell the systems, but they have failed to fully develop the market. Perhaps for good reason: it's probably hard to sell accessories or higher cost systems (my speculation). As such they are suggesting some sort of commercial/non-profit hybrid.

Back to why our rejects won't help: most computers outside of the 8 and 16-bit era don't actually use televisions as displays. One of the reasons for the popularity of these $10-$15 computers is because they work with TVs. Oddly enough, that probably parallels the early adoption of personal computers in developed nations. Even donating a monitor may not help. The target market used in this example only uses the TV for a couple of hours per day, because they are run off of car batteries. (Wow, car batteries have that much juice!) These 8-bit computers probably don't do much to lower the battery life, but a full computer and monitor will. Particularly since my recollection of CRT monitors is that they do use more power than CRT TVs. Then you have a power hungry computer on top of that. Of course not all markets are power constrained like that, but not all markets are like North America with cheap and plentiful electricity.

So no, discards probably won't work.

[Unknown_K]

I never said discards from the US, there are plenty of machines in India that could be reused.

[Bunsen]

And believe me, they are, until they crumble into dust.

[Bunsen]

Here's the first piece of reasonably accurate reporting I've managed to track down. Judging by the comment thread below it though, people are still failing to grasp that they are not designing a new computer, but looking to use an existing one.

So if kids use computers at an early age will they

(a) all become Nobel prize winners /

(b) become spoonfed dummies /

Neither. Nor is the rest of the world outside the US, EU, Japan and Australia

(a) New Jersey
(b) Somalia
(c) waiting helplessly for the US to save them
(d) really all that interested in what we think

I don't think anybody in the US has a clue what a 3rd world nation needs for education / Did somebody have a marketing meeting on what markets were left to exploit / some 3rd world kids dying from hunger and have no electricity!

a country with no jobs. / teach them how to grow food and sanitize water / If you want a job / you need to be an advanced user. Just knowing how to use a mouse and windows / does not help you to get a job

It's your own ignorance and arrogance that's on display here, and repeatedly

As Lomas told the Herald, “If you just know how to type, that can be the difference between earning $1 an hour instead of $1 a day.”

Team:
1. Jesse Austin-Breneman: ACCA, Cusco, Peru
2. Miguel Chaves dos Santos: Engenheiros Sem Fronteiras – Brasil, Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo.
3. Rev. George Fuachie: Kintampo North District, Ghana.
4. Derek Lomas: University of California, San Diego.
5. William McIver, Jr.: National Research Council of Canada and Faculty of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick.
6. Anuj Nanavati: NVIDIA Corporation, Santa Clara, California.

Yes, just another bunch of ignorant, greedy American capitalists looking to grease their palms

[II2II]

Uh, since when did Canada get on the list of developing nations?

And since when was NRC relevant? Or the University of New Brunswick?

[luddite]

Team:
1. Jesse Austin-Breneman: ACCA, Cusco, Peru
2. Miguel Chaves dos Santos: Engenheiros Sem Fronteiras – Brasil, Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo.
3. Rev. George Fuachie: Kintampo North District, Ghana.
4. Derek Lomas: University of California, San Diego.
5. William McIver, Jr.: National Research Council of Canada and Faculty of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick.
6. Anuj Nanavati: NVIDIA Corporation, Santa Clara, California.

Yes, just another bunch of ignorant, greedy American capitalists looking to grease their palms

Well 5 out of 6 are American at least.