centreforelearning

Do you struggle to remember the periodic table of elements, but have no trouble recalling all of the Pokemon? Can’t find that French vocabulary word you crammed on the airplane to Paris, but still remember all the words to “We Didn’t Start the Fire?” The reason we struggle with remembering some things and have trouble forgetting others, some experts say, might not be simply because some things are fun and others are boring. It could be because, paradoxically, we learn better when we’re not concentrating.

Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. “I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch … powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android,” Negroponte said. “Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.”

Children there had never previously seen printed materials, road signs, or even packaging that had words on them, Negroponte said.

“If they can learn to read, then they can read to learn.”

The main reason why HTML5 is not the obvious choice for developers now is the above mentioned lockout when it comes to hardware. An iOS device does not allow different browser engines and does not allow HTML5 to access the camera, the address book, vibration, the phone or text messaging. In other words, everything that makes a mobile device interesting for developers and very necessary functionality for Apps,” Heilmann wrote.