Ask Literacy Bridge Founder About Charity, Education, and the "Talking Book" 61
Literacy Bridge is a public charity working towards the goal of creating tools for knowledge sharing and literacy learning. More specifically, they have been working on producing a $5 "talking book" device that can both help improve literacy and provide a steady flow of important information while the education is taking place. Unlike many in the "wouldn't-it-be-nice" category, Literacy Bridge already has working silicon, shaped plastic, and actual presence in their target country, Ghana. Literacy Bridge has no paid employees, but several who volunteer their time to make this idea a reality. Cliff Schmidt, founder and executive director of Literacy Bridge, would like to answer any questions you have about the charity, the mission, or the technology. Prior to Literacy Bridge, 'Cliff ran a successful open source software consulting business for clients throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North America, specializing in intellectual property issues, nonprofit governance, privacy policies, and community development. He also served many nonprofit organizations, such as The Apache Software Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation, the OpenSEA Alliance, and the Free Software Foundation' in addition to working as a industry standards rep for Microsoft. Click through to see the Google TechTalk given by Cliff earlier this year. The usual Slashdot interview rules apply — so ask all the questions you'd like, but please confine yourself to one per post.
Still dependent on technology. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have plans to prevent this and encourage actual literacy instead of pseudo-literacy?
Technology as an Aide, not a Crutch. (Score:3, Insightful)
Technology helps people who want to learn. People who don't want to learn
No, Literacy is a Tool (Score:2)
I can think of nothing more cruel than a group that would enjoy playing Superman or God, and prematurely introduce tools th
Literacy is NOT a gun. (Score:3, Insightful)
Although history is written by the winners - it is safe to say that literacy is probably going to kill less people than, say
Your argument that
they need to develop at their own pace without those with good-intentions paving the way.
would be v
How do you stop Brain Drain? (Score:2)
Yes, literacy is a tool. But since language, reading and the written word have been influential throughout history, and the vast proliferation of literacy and knowledge (gutenberg, anyone?) was in part responsible for the development of civilization as we know it ...
then literacy is probably more of a good thing than a bad thing.
This is your first point, and from there you make conclusions in your post based upon this assumption. But your assumption is false, which explains why your conclusions are also false. I will explain: (as this isn't a personal attack on you)
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Literacy is not a prime mover of civilization, Freedom is.
Economic Freedom? Freedom to move around? Freedom of Ideas? Free as in beer?
Your assumption that reading and literacy will enhance the effects of tyranny is odd.
You say that freedom grows society. We agree, mostly - except you don't state what generates freedom. Literacy encourages freedom.
# When you try to add literacy and education into a developing countries, where there is no Freedom, then you don't get progress, you get a Brain Drain. [virtualave.net]
So, the people are FREE to leave, and that creates the brain drain. Since freedom is present for brain drain to occur, you can't state that a lack of freedom causes brain drain. (You need one for the other).
Literacy
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I can't find any situation where people being able to read would suddenly throw their country into chaos. How does literacy cause bad things to happen?
And I just read that article and it's about the government paying these men to attack rebelio
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I have taught students (at the upper end of the schooling system) who couldn't read. Yes, we were making efforts to teach them to read, but at the same time, they were interested in a lot of things, and _wanted to know and learn_ stuff. They just couldn't access it. If something like this acts as a bridge for these sorts of kids to stay engaged at school, then that's just brilliant.
A Talking Book? (Score:1, Insightful)
A talking book is somehow supposed to help improve literacy?
How about a book that forces you to learn to read if you want to know it's contents?
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Erm, who do they ask exactly?
The whole point of the talking book is that there are not enough teachers around to ask.
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There has to be a person in the loop somewhere.
French isn't that hard to pronounce (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's something like English or French, then it will take you months (or years) to learn to read, or else you get the "Owe that eye mite bee that be" phenomenon.
French spelling might not look very phonetic, but it is actually far more so than English is. Once you learn the common vowel combinations, which might take a few days at most, you can pretty much sound out French words without any trouble. On the other hand, trying to spell words that you hear can be very difficult.
I thought I might see what Wikipedia had to say about this, and here it is:
French spelling, like English spelling, tends to preserve obsolete pronunciation rules. This is mainly due to extreme phonetic changes since the Old French period, without a corresponding change in spelling. Moreover, some conscious changes were made to restore Latin orthography... As a result, it is difficult to predict the spelling on the basis of the sound alone... On the other hand, a given spelling will almost always lead to a predictable sound... In particular, a given vowel combination or diacritic predictably leads to one phoneme.
I'll vouch for the accuracy of those statements, too, since I've studied the history of the French language.
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a book that forces you to learn to read if you want to know it's contents?
I believe that's called a "book".
diamond age! (Score:1)
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Wow, I've never seen a reference to that book on Slashdot.
Hmm I have a hardcover of that somewhere. Now I gotta read it again. Thanks!
Tooooo Mannnny Worrrrds... (Score:1, Funny)
Can not make it past large giant block of text... Must go tweet.
Sounds familiar.. (Score:1, Troll)
Education in Ghana; the Liberian Refugee Camps (Score:5, Insightful)
At the UNHCR camp in Ghana, the last I heard, tuition for a year in grades 3-8 was about $10/term.
So my question is, given the choice between a term of schooling for one child and two Talking Books (or half a term and one Talking Book), if you had only ten dollars to spend on your children's education, which would you get and why?
The $5 iPod (Score:3, Informative)
One of the advertised features is Device-to-Device copy (which my multihundred dollar iPod can't do) is sure to run into legal problems, thus raising the target price even higher. To be fair, he did admit they cost more than $5 during his presentation.
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Literacy (Score:5, Interesting)
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Intended use / Actual use (Score:5, Insightful)
One of my greatest concerns is that devices like these will be used as propaganda spewers rather than learning tools. How do you plan or protect for that circumstance? Was it a concern when you actually put these devices in their intended use? Now that they're out of your immediate reach, is there anything you can do to prevent their use for propaganda?
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Books also get used to spew propaganda. Big woop.
even less incentive for Johnny to read (Score:2)
Contributions... (Score:3, Interesting)
Copyright issues (Score:4, Interesting)
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According to the video of the presentation, the local users and local charities will create the content. The Literacy Bridge folks won't be creating any of it.
Question 7 (Score:1)
Y Kant Tori Read?
I await the results -- does it help them? (Score:2)
Reading the headline and the homepage, "Our mission is to empower children and adults with affordable tools for knowledge sharing and literacy learning,...", I'd say that what they were trying to say is:
"We seek to teach children and adults to read and communicate."
I am very interested to see if their products work. Once they have tried them out, will they update their mission statement to reflect their newfound skills?
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Hmm... I'd simplify that:
We will provide students with affordable tools for education.
Of course I haven't read the article to see what you elided, and as we all know, "Reading is Fundamental."
The Applications here... (Score:1)
I could see them pulling it off for less than $5 (Score:2)
It doesn't need to
Reasons behind some decisions (Score:4, Insightful)
I have reviewed your website and I believe that I understand your objectives and how you intend for this device to be used. To aid literacy, it takes the place of a literate person reading the book to the learner.
I know that cost is an issue and that affordability in the target area is a major concern, but I am curious as to why there is no display, not even a simple LED/LCD display similar to that on several toys, such as the "Speak-and-Spell"?
My concern here is that if the physical book is lost, your device essentially becomes an inexpensive music player and its purpose fails.
More background (Score:3, Informative)
There's lots of good material on Literacy Bridge's own site, and elsewhere. But a little plug: I had a change to speak with Cliff for about an hour and a half when I was reporting from OSCon. He was an interesting guy with a really good project. I wrote up my impressions of the conversation at: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/davidmertz?entry=project_leaders [ibm.com]
illiteracy and computers (Score:2)
As a former Literacy Volunteer/Instructor, I'm curious how an eBook will help a learner read the instructions on a medicine bottle, help their kids with homework, or fill out a job application?
Low tech device (Score:1)
My wife is a kindergarten/first grade teacher and she likes to use a technique to help some of her struggling kids. They are given a bit of PVC pipe shaped like a phone that allows them to hear themselves sound out words. For some reason, this helps many struggling kids to connect what the word sounds like and what the word looks like. Is your device similar to this technique?
Also, for kids with a teacher, does your "talking book" device give them any added value? Is it just to replace a teacher and i
Why Technology (Score:1)
teach English (Score:1)