(or titled “part 2 of the “hole in the wall” India literacy experiment post!”)
Google announced yesterday that it’s launching the Google Literacy project to help spread literacy and provide resources and lots of other stuff for teachers, parents, mentors, students, and just regular people (with internet access) to help do so.
While promoting literacy worldwide via the internet is not a new thing (just do a google search. basically every self-respecting university, and a number of big organizations also are working to create a more literate world), I think google’s visibility, their philosophies, and their resources can add a lot to this.
Google’s literacy project basically acts as a portal to some of its services, like book search, google scholar, and other things, all acting as a kind funnel and pointing to things related to literacy. It draws attention to literacy, education, and pro-actively does something about it in the google-way of doing things… by organizing information and making it more accessible.
That’s way more powerful than you’d initially think, really. Honestly. Because most people in “literacy initiatives” or projects try to open schools, try to gather volunteer support, write and publish, or they manually collect links to resources and re-post them. But google uses it’s own technologies to sort and find these resources for you, so there’s no manual lists of resources to sort and maintain, and all the results are current, relevant, etc.
Plus, making this kind of portal (rather than yet another technology/news/omg-cool-stuff! portal) shows what kinds of values Google celebrates and wants to promote.
So… India. The googleblog announcement talks about India, and how it has 1/3 of the worlds “literacy problem”. And just yesterday, I blogged about the hole-in-the-wall experiment from India, which showed that there was some exciting and active research going on involving literacy, technology, and accessibility to this education.
Coincidence? maybe. Awesome? yes.
Gotta read more.
But first, must go back to work.
FlyingGuy | 06-Oct-06 at 10:12 pm | Permalink
Emily,
While I applaud any effort by anyone to increase literacy anywhere, I have to stop and wonder about the literacy rate in our own back yard.
There are massively underserved area’s in the USA, but they never seem to get any press, nor do they seem to get any support.
Thoughts?
emily | 07-Oct-06 at 9:45 am | Permalink
absolutely true. Google’s efforts are definitely NOT just targeting india or something.
The researcher I referred to was in India, and not in the USA, so he was effectively researching things in -his- own back yard.
this isn’t an either-or situation at all. I think google’s efforts will benefit all over.
and… actually, “literacy” issues in the US do get press. educational issues, no child left behind, debates about English-only or bilingual education, immigration policies and changes and controversy… all of those things are “literacy” issues.
you can’t just isolate the “literacy problem” and act like it’s a new or separate or underserved issue… you have to think of it in terms of all the factors that lead to it and then you realize that it does get a lot of press. it’s just not called a “literacy problem” anymore (thank god. Let me rant about that for a while later.)
FlyingGuy | 10-Oct-06 at 5:39 pm | Permalink
I agree with your assertion, if not your conclusion. Now having said that, I would enjoy seeing a “Northern Exposure” style of getting better teachers & doctors in some of our countries most underserved areas.
In the right wing rush to “privatize everything” they have lsot sight of the fact that governemnt has a roll in bringing these things to the mass of underserved populations in this country.
I see nothing wrong from any POV with making the deal with people going to school to be doctors, lawyers, teachers, what haev you. Pay ALL their tuition and then they owe us their labor.
In the fictional portrayal of the doctor in that program, “joel” as he was called bemoaned the fact that he was forced to practice medicine in some backwater.
The current problem is that no one wants to practice “anything” in those backwaters, because there is no economic incentive. The right wing way simply wont work, I am sure you will agree.
So while we are busy out there saving the world, perhaps we should be busy saving ourselves as well.
- B
emily | 10-Oct-06 at 5:57 pm | Permalink
It still sounds like you are under the presumption that the study was conducted by someone in the US “going abroad” to try and solve a problem in a “backwater” area.
I’ve never seen northern exposure, so i don’t know if I’ve misunderstood your comment.
The original study was conducted by someone from India, and studied India’s literacy situation.
I also wouldn’t exactly call India a “backwater”.
And, yes, I think it’s unfortunate that a lot of educated people feel that they do their work for the sake of money only, rather than for the betterment of the community or some other group of people.
CS | 12-Oct-06 at 4:33 pm | Permalink
re: money and educated people’s ambitions, I don’t think it’s purely a matter of Kia Station Wagon vs. Porsche SUV. There’s the two-body problem, how much you value raising your child in a stable/conventional environment, proximity to relatives, and the kind of social environment you want to live in.
There’s the depressive factor - for example, in choosing a place to live, a teacher would conceivably be making a choice between teaching enthusiastic, well-prepared kids and teaching apathetic ones who don’t have enough background at a school where the lack of supplies and support makes you feel even more ineffective. It’d take a hell of a lot of character for someone to stick with the latter, even with other incentives.
Then there’s inertia - simply put, it’s 10 times easier and less stressful for me to take a job at Materia, Inc, than to take the same job in China or even Milwaukee, where I know there are a lot more unknowns, and I have to completely reestablish my household and life.
I’m not saying that particular excuse is any better than “I want more money”, but my point is that I think many highly educated people DO have souls and DO have aspirations of giving back to the community. It’s just easier and less scary for them to serve the community in urban Los Angeles than to serve the one in Appalachia. I think we’d have to consider the carrot for this particular problem more carefully.
emily | 16-Oct-06 at 12:16 am | Permalink
Yeah, I think a lot of people are very very conscious of the less “visible” difficulties involved in getting educated. not all communities are the same, and there aren’t a lot of self-sacrificing teachers with the kind of stamina required (like we see in the movies a lot).
It’s unfortunate, AND it’s unavoidable.
That’s one reason the educational system needs to look into ways of making education more affordable all around so that teacher sallaries can increase, and the kind of work they do can be valued more.
CS | 23-Oct-06 at 1:25 pm | Permalink
I read this story in the LA Times the other day, about a librarian in a Mississippi county where they have really high illiteracy rates. It’s pretty heartbreaking, but interesting, and probably worth reading since you have an interest in literacy:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-librarian23sep23,1,6958660.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage