Exceeding our Expectations

While In Kenya, I met a very inspiring boy named Allan Niongira Minani (below, red shirt).

He told about how he once heard a traveling professor talking about solar panels. Afterwords, he went on the internet and researched how to build a solar battery. And then he immediately started to build one.... as senior in high school, without any additional instruction or support.

I don't know how this strikes you, but as a junior physics major in college, this stunned me. I've never done anything like that before... especially not on my own.... and until I met Allan, it wasn't something I had even considered as being within my realm of skill or ability.





Let me share another story with you.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/26/tech/richard-turere-lion-lights/index.html

This one's about an 11-year-old boy (also from Kenya) who, realizing that lions stay away from his cows when someone walks around with a flash light, built a flickering LED device with a solar panel, LED lightbulbs, and a car battery. The boy, Richard Turere, designed, built, and installed the entire apparatus on his own, "without ever receiving any training in electronics or engineering" (CNN). Since he installed his "lion lights", his family hasn't lost any livestock to lion attacks.


As access to the internet has spread and technology has continued to advance, there has been a lot of talk about alternative means of education (anyone heard of MOOCs, lately? If not, Google it. Right now). My professor, Mark Orrs, has been emphasizing that one of the best things we could do with our resource center is to provide online educational opportunities for the youth, as an alternative to the struggling (and often ineffective) educational system that currently exists in Kenya.

Leading up to the trip, I was skeptical that technology could replace a physical teacher or that a student who had never seen a computer could make an online education work. I'm skeptical no longer. The youth we met in Kenya constantly impressed us with their affinity for technology and their powerfully desire to learn.

Every time we encountered a group of children (which happened a lot), they would rush at us, eager to figure out how to use our cell phones. These two boys I met ----->  (Dennis [9] and Joseph [6]) had never used an iPad before, but were using ours and taking pictures of themselves within minutes. They have the drive and they've got the skills. Imagine what they could do with the resources.    



This is a TED talk I watched a long time ago, about a "hole in the wall" experiment where a researcher, Sugata Mitra, put computers in rural villages (where children had never seen computers) and watches as they  teach themselves how to use them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks8D3WE-PbM. The list of impressive children doing impressive things with little to no guidance goes on and on.

It seems to me that children of the third-world aren't "uneducated" because they are less capable. In fact, it's likely the opposite. At least in my experiences, these kids are some of the most driven, capable people I've met, and it looks like one of the best things we could do for already driven kids is to give them the resources and learning opportunities they need, so that they can go ahead and exceed everyone's expectations.

I mean... unless you think a 13-year-old bad-ass lion-fighting engineer with no resources has a lack of potential...