Touchscreen Teacher Revolutionises Mexican Classrooms
Children these days get all the cool stuff. When I was a boy, I was lucky if I'd have a small piece of corned beef to entertain myself with during the cold winter nights; almost six million lucky chiddles in Mexico are currently receiving all their education using enormous touch-sensitive flatscreen displays called Enciclomedia.
Costing a disturbingly reasonable $5,000 for screen and computer, the system currently contains the text of 14 full books, tailored to fulfil the demands of the 5th and 6th grade curriculum. Videos of human anatomy, historical scenes, animated language interactions and more can be shown, and in some cases children are able to touch the screen to answer questions and further explore the topic.
"During a biology lesson we watch as pupil after pupil comes to the screen to piece together the human body... electronically.
One boy taps his finger on the screen and brings up the human heart. He then slides his finger across the screen, taking the heart with him and places it where he thinks it belongs on the body located on the other side of the screen."Ping!" goes the sound of the screen when he places the organ correctly in the middle of the chest."Beep, beep," goes the screen when another child fails to put the lungs in the right place. This brings howls of laughter from his classmates." BBC News
Funded currently by the Mexican government, 165,000 classrooms in the country have the system, and it is being considered for US, China and India.