Self organising systems for mass computer literacy: Findings from the ‘hole in the wall’ experiments

Earlier work often referred to as the ‘hole in the wall’ experiments has shown that groups of children can leam to use public computers on their own. This paper presents the method and results of an experiment conducted to investigate whether such unsupervised group learning in shared public spaces is universal. The experiment was conducted with ‘hole in the wall’ (minimally invasive education, or MIE) kiosks in 23 locations in rural India. Focus groups in each location were tested for computer literacy for 9 months. Results, which are discussed in the paper, show that groups of children can leam to use computers and the Internet on their own, irrespective of who or where they are. The paper also discusses the engineering considerations for building such ‘hole in the wall’ computers in public spaces.