Aid organization provides African schools with Kindles and ebooks

[khalleron]

http://english.aljazeera.net/video/a...020874118.html

http://www.worldreader.org/

[Quexos]

They probably provided one school for the purpose of getting publicity on it.
I don't believe in human benevolence

[khalleron]

Originally Posted by Quexos

They probably provided one school for the purpose of getting publicity on it.
I don't believe in human benevolence

Then you are a sad little man or woman.

I'm glad I'm not you.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by Quexos

They probably provided one school for the purpose of getting publicity on it.
I don't believe in human benevolence

World Reader, the organisation behind it, is specifically working to get e-readers and e-books to developing countries. The first paragraph of their about page says:

Worldreader.org’s mission is to make digital books available to all in the developing world, enabling millions of people to improve their lives. We identify schools, train teachers, work with communities, and partner with publishers to bring millions of books to underserved children and families in the developing world.

[carpetmojo]

I simply can't see how these devices are going to stand up to the presumably harsher conditions, and rougher treatment - you have only to see any Forum to see how fragile they are in our pampered surroundings, and with expensive covers too.
And we can, mostly, I suggest, better afford to replace ours once we've found them essential equipment.

Unless, that is, the technology has suddenly become more robust - or should we say, can be more robust........
Too much to hope we also see it, if so ?

(Oh, and the production costs can be trimmed - or more probably "cross subsidised".)

[RainingLemur]

I applaud the organizations efforts. I was surprised at the list of their partners.

Originally Posted by carpetmojo

I simply can't see how these devices are going to stand up to the presumably harsher conditions, and rougher treatment

Looks like M-Edge (one of their partners) provides lights and cases to help keep them a little safer in the more treacherous environments.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

That's friggin' awesome. Yes.

The Kindles look to come with a shell case of some kind, with an extra padded layer on one side that the screen would be cushioned by. I'm sure there will be screen casualties eventually, but I don't think it'll be an enormous issue.

1. These kids have *nothing.* Having an ereader is like being given a box of gold. I bet they treat it a lot better than Western kids do.

2. Even with the occasional broken screen, it's probably still cheaper and has a broader reach to more kids than a physical library would.

[xg4bx]

i hate to be such a negative nancy but i'm sure some warlord will enjoy the fat stack of ereaders coming his way.

just being a realist. *shrug*

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by SmokeAndMirrors

That's friggin' awesome. Yes.

The Kindles look to come with a shell case of some kind, with an extra padded layer on one side that the screen would be cushioned by. I'm sure there will be screen casualties eventually, but I don't think it'll be an enormous issue.

1. These kids have *nothing.* Having an ereader is like being given a box of gold. I bet they treat it a lot better than Western kids do.

2. Even with the occasional broken screen, it's probably still cheaper and has a broader reach to more kids than a physical library would.

All of this is true. And the cost of shipping paper books to an isolated village in the middle of Congo is a *lot* higher than the cost of shipping paperbooks to my local B&N.

[HappyMartin]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

i hate to be such a negative nancy but i'm sure some warlord will enjoy the fat stack of ereaders coming his way.

just being a realist. *shrug*

You are not being a realist. You are being ignorant. A lot of Africa is poor by it is a big place and is not overrun with warlords.

I have ridden a bicycle from Israel to South Africa and never encountered a single warlord

[khalleron]

I just LOVE the way cynics and pessimists always describe themselves as realists, as though only bad things are true.

I'd laugh if it weren't so sad.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Originally Posted by khalleron

I just LOVE the way cynics and pessimists always describe themselves as realists, as though only bad things are true.

I'd laugh if it weren't so sad.

What's really funny about it is that they assume the problem is all Africa and everyone over there is totally evil. We (and by that I mean the West) are actually the biggest part of why Africa is still so poor and war-torn. And I don't just mean colonization of by-gone days. I mean NOW.

We gave a lot of countries in Africa some of the worst, most scammish loans in the history of loans. The interest is positively explosive. These countries are trying - valiantly - to pay their debt. For the size of their economies, they're actually phenomenal at being good for their payments. But the interest is so high that they'll never be able to pay them off.

In addition to that, we did the loans under the condition that they have to live under an "austerity budget." They are not allowed, under the terms of the loans, to expand their government and do things like build schools.

So not only can they never pay off their loans, but they can also never develop their countries.

There is no doubt there is a plethora of corruption in Africa. But if you want to know the root of most of it, look at your own government, not theirs.

Their governments are actually relatively good at distributing goods they're given - better than some American charities are. There's cases of fraud, and major ones, but they're not the rule.

This applies, contrary to most people's beliefs, to food aid as well. African governments that receive food aid usually DO distribute it, and they do it at the prices they're told to. So what's the problem?

The subsidized food we sell them is so cheap that whenever there's an influx of it, it puts African farmers out of business. So between shipments, there's no farmers, and everyone starves.

Once again, look to your own government, not theirs.

[Serpentine]

While this is lovely and all the rest of it, I often have to deal with supporting things like this as a service for friends' NGO and living in SA.

Kindles are most likely the worst devices to hand out, specifically K3's - they are pretty damn fragile compared to most phones and such. They are a closed platform in almost every regards above replacing a battery. There is no software that is reasonably easy for syncing documents (i.e lesson plans) - let along authoring them - for educators (and getting them using Calibre/kindlegen - good luck!). Prepackaged and free books are fantastic, but at some point you leave the bounds of English setwork and there's very little other practical use outside of reading the supplied free novels (which are likely in a second or third language).

A complete lack of app support outside of America and no native, trivial note taking (or other functional case) seems questionable. Library support - wishful. Amazon aftermarket support? if you need a replacement, however I doubt these would qualify, even in SA we're only able to use the Amazon International Services items, which is about 5% of the Amazon marketplace, book prices and limits are rather draconian.

All of this often leaves some pretty decent hardware taking damage extremely quickly without anyone to really do something about it; or not understood gifts being sold/traded as soon as the teacher/church/someone isn't looking (just look at the culture of smoking ARV's).

At some rather low point $40? * x students is most likely far better spent on employing actual teachers or working on a more open reader for this outreach (even if that excludes amazon).

[OtterBooks]

I wonder how many of the Kindles were eaten.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by SmokeAndMirrors

The subsidized food we sell them is so cheap that whenever there's an influx of it, it puts African farmers out of business. So between shipments, there's no farmers, and everyone starves.

But isn't that one of the points of capitalism, to put as many of your competitors out of business as efficiently as possible? If the African farmers can't produce food cheaply enough, then they deserve to be driven out of business.

/sarcasm