They Have Never Seen an Hour Glass

Dr. Mitra likes the way in which Indian children reinvent computer terms and icons in their own language. “They don’t call a cursor a cursor, they call it a sui, which is Hindi for needle. And they don’t call the hourglass symbol the hourglass because they’ve never seen an hourglass before. They call it the damru, which is Shiva’s drum, and it does look a bit like that.”

This is an old story – more than 5 years old. But it showed up in a forum, I watch called TeachAndLearnOnline group. Bill Kerr relates the India hole in the wall effort about 5 years ago to support the reason why empowering kids with computers (like OLPC) may work.

Here is the original Hole in the Wall link. Here is the digital vocabulary the kids made up when they started using the computer without being taught. Here is a link to the  eight minute video posted by James Neil.