Kenyan School Tries E-Slates

A great many schools in North America and Europe are justly proud of their computer labs. However, unless the children are using handheld computers to do their lessons, they are technologically behind students at the Mbita Point Primary School in western Kenya. A pilot project there run by EduVision may make textbooks obsolete and has already made this rural community better able to educate its kids.

The computer revolution is making information cheaper. The Kensington Review is a labor of love, but it certainly would demand a great deal more love to foot the bill for thrice weekly printing. Electronic distribution is the ideal way to publish, but no one has figured out an effective way to make money on e-publishing of books. And in that, the world has been looking at the wrong question. E-publishing won't really make money, but it can disseminate information that enhances human capital. It's an investment tool.

The EduVision project provides each child with a E-Slate, which connects to a base station at the school just like the wireless laptops at the local Starbucks do. Essentially, the lessons come down from a satellite to the base station, and that gets sent to the handhelds. There are some 15 million books in the public domain. The British Museum and the Library of Congress are not accessible to these children, but with their E-Slates, they can get at a lot of it. There is even talk of using solar energy to reach places that don't have electricity mains, which Mbita Point does enjoy.

In American social studies class rooms, there are texts on American history that wonder how the Vietnam will end and whether man really will walk on the moon before the 1960s end. The reason is not because there aren't books out there that are more recent, but they are expensive when one thinks about buying a few hundred at a time. What America can't afford, Kenya probably can't either. The handheld, though, levels the knowledge playing field. Add in audio-video content, and the e-slate may be every child's future.

Technological advance has always benefited the poor more than the rich. Louis XIV could afford all the candles he wanted, but the incandescent bulb brought light to everyone. Coach and horses would get the aristocracy around Europe during their grand tour, but it took planes and trains for backpackers to see the Continent. And thanks to the heartless computers that the granola and Birkenstock crowd warned against, kids in Kenya have access to the same information that kids in London and Los Angeles have. Progress does exist.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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