What happens when you give Kindles to kids in Ghana? Results:

courtenaybird:

• Kids learned to use e-readers quickly even though 43 percent of them had never used a computer before. Also, not surprisingly, they were quick to discover “the multimedia aspects of the e-reader, such as music and Internet features.”
• Near-zero theft. Only two e-readers (out of 600) were lost in the whole study, partly because “community involvement was encouraged through e-reader pledges, community outreach programs, and support from community leaders.”
• Kids got access to way more books. Before the study, primary-school students had access to an average of 3.6 books at home. Junior-high students had access to an average of 8.6 books at home and high-school students access to an average of 11 books. With the e-reader program, kids had access to an average of 107 book.
• Primary school students’ test scores improved, but effects on older kids were less clear. The reading scores of primary-school students who received e-readers increased from 12.9 percent to 15.7 percent. But results for older kids were mixed.
• Students sought out access to international news. “Amazon data revealed that students were downloading The New York Times, USA Today, and El País etc., demonstrating that students want to access a wide range of reading materials that were previously inaccessible.”
• Kindles break too easily. Worldreader had not predicted how many Kindles would break: 243 out of 600, or 40.5 percent. 
• The program appears cost-effective. Worldreader estimates that “for the years 2014-2018, using a calculation focused strictly on the provisioning of textbooks, the e-reader system would cost only $8.93-$11.40 more per student over a 4 year period [$0.19 to $0.24 per month] than the traditional paper book system.”

(via emergentfutures)

KOSMIC WAR: For those who believe in magic, death is power, and so is love.

kosmicwar:

You can fashion a sword from righteousness, or a fortress from suffering. Tears will make a strong potion, as long as their source is true enough. The world bends to the emotions. They can light a city or burn one down. They are why the stars move. They are what the kosmos is made of. That which…

KOSMIC WAR: The ancients of classical antiquity understood the principles of the universe.

kosmicwar:

Among these principles was the inevitable rebalancing force of justice. When a man takes more than his fairly allotted portion, justice rebalances, and he will lose something dear to him. When offences are committed against the order of the world, justice always finds its way to the offender. All…

Stem cells help night-blind, bald, heartbroken mice

Susan Young, technologyreview.com

Nature News reports today on three dif­fer­ent stud­ies that suc­cess­ful­ly used stem cell ther­a­pies to sprout new hair on bald mice, restore some vision to night-blind mice, and improve the heart func­tion of mice with a car­diac…

(Source: futuramb, via emergentfutures)

KOSMIC WAR: 1947

untitledgame:

KOSMIC WAR IS LIVE

kosmicwar:

This is what they’ve been hiding from you. The UFO they downed over Roswell was piloted by a dark-skinned woman who wore the sign of the scarab and spoke in ancient hieroglyphics. She came from somewhere beyond our prison, this earth, and it was her mission to free us. But why did she go to the…