Using eBooks to educate underprivileged kids

[fjtorres]

You're welcome.
We try.

[piperclassique]

Ikea give away a fair bit of useful stuff. Solar powered lamps spring to mind.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

I'm not sure if you realised that the OP is talking about disadvantaged kids in rural India?

Same thing still applies. If the kids don't see the value and entertainment of reading, they're not going to be interested in learning.

[piperclassique]

Same thing still applies. If the kids don't see the value and entertainment of reading, they're not going to be interested in learning.

not knocking your opinions, but how many schools have you visited in third world countries? I visited a school twinned with one in UK (in Kenya) and found the children very aware that their route out of poverty was education. No electricity, not many textbooks, large attentive classes, and most of the children walking considerable distances to attend. Oh, and they had a good knowledge of the history of their own country as well as that of Europe and the USA. How many teenagers in the UK or USA can point out Kenya on a map? This lot could draw the map of the USA and name most of the states. teaching was in three languages. Tribal, Swahili, and English.

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by teh603

Same thing still applies. If the kids don't see the value and entertainment of reading, they're not going to be interested in learning.

I see the issue as about access and equity to resources -educational and other.

[piperclassique]

I see the issue as about access and equity to resources -educational and other.

+1.

Originally Posted by regstuff

I help out occasionally at an NGO that runs schools for rural kids in India. They focus on getting kids english-medium, computer-friendly education.

I read about http://www.worldreader.org/ somewhere on the forums and figured getting ebooks into the hands of these kids would be a cheap way to get them started with reading, english etc. Of course, kindles don't come cheap for an NGO running on donations, but thankfully the schools already have a few computers that the kids work on during their computer lab every week.

So I figured why not setup a free amazon account which comes with a cloud reader, and keep an eye on all the free ebooks (mostly focusing on child friendly categories) that go free every day on the kindle store.

The only problem is, most of these computers are off the net & though cloud reader has an offline feature, you kind of still have to login online first, before the offline mode starts to work. So I'm struggling with that rite now, and what's more, most of these books are DRMed, which makes even transfering to a "netless" system a real pain.

I've taken a few of the children's books available for free on Gutenberg & here too. But I was wondering if there are any other ideas, which makes free eBooks available.

Here's the website just in case http://www.ishavidhya.org/

Hey Isha
You are doing a great job dear.
Since most of the time you are offline, try downloading PDF files of eBooks. You will find lot of books in PDF format. Check freekidsbooks.org or make google search for "free kids eBooks".

[teh603]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

I see the issue as about access and equity to resources -educational and other.

Ebooks might help if you can get the right textbooks and anthologies. Kinda unlikely, though, given how greedy the textbook companies are.

Most of the time when people say "educational resources," they're about to try selling you a bill of useless technology. Its like, "Ok, so we're going to mount this giant projector screen, which doubles as a drawing tablet, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BLACKBOARD where it'll block most of it. Oh, and while you technically can use board markers on it.... we'll fire you if you do. And we're going to give you a huge box full of these little clickers; you have to use them for checking student comprehension and give less classwork. And to make all that work, here's a Win7 laptop which we expect you to take home and use in place of your home computer. No games allowed, though. We'll fire you if you install them, unlike the students who we really don't care if they're playing games or not. And did we mention the principal has a cell snooper that he uses to listen in on your phone's data packets...?"

[ebusinesstutor]

Offline is definitely the way to go. You can use Calibre to convert files to formats that work.

Have you looked into India's $20 tablet? Then you could use standard Android reader apps like Aldiko.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by ebusinesstutor

Offline is definitely the way to go. You can use Calibre to convert files to formats that work.

Have you looked into India's $20 tablet? Then you could use standard Android reader apps like Aldiko.

There's a little bit of a scandal around these tablets: apparently they cost $60 and were actually manufactured in china. They also don't have access to the normal android market, but only to a proprietary market called something like "getjar".

[ebusinesstutor]

Ah, thanks Andrew. Perhaps the new one laptop per child tablet then? I don;'t know if they are more affordable.