Solve for X: Nicholas Negroponte on learning by themselves

Solve for X is a forum to encourage and amplify technology-based moonshot thinking and teamwork. http://www.wesolveforx.com http://goo.gl/T3qQo

Few people question that education is the most critical problem for the world to solve - both in the developed and in the developing worlds. The temptation is to see this as purely as a policy question and not as a technology challenge. What if you just asserted it was possible for a device to be smart enough, cheap enough, rugged enough, and connected enough that it could be dropped into any village square and could not only teach children how to read, but teach them how to learn and inspire them that learning was fun. What would that take?

Nicholas Negroponte founded the MIT Media Lab (1980), WiReD Magazine (1990), and One Laptop per Child. Nicholas has recently launched a reading experiment to learn whether poor and remote kids (5-10 years old) can learn to read on their own with a solar powered, Android tablet suitably loaded with immersive and constructionist material.