Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Education

I want my kids to be hackers

By 11 Comments

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I have just stumbled upon a nice article on how kids don’t really understand how computers work.

As the author writes in his conclusion, “I want the people who will help shape our society in the future to understand the technology that will help shape out society in the future. If this is going to happen, then we need to reverse the trend that is seeing digital illiteracy exponentially increase. We need to act together, as parents, as teachers, as policy makers. Lets build a generation of hackers. Who’s with me?”

His point is that, while kids are becoming fantastic users of computers (i.e. they can do Facebook using the left hand while playing Angry Birds with the right), only few of them actually understand computers. And this is going to be detrimental in the future when (i) the kids will be adults making decisions and (ii) computers will be everywhere.

There is an element of truth in that. I want my kids to be hackers. Like I was at their age!

Hurray! We are, once again, below average!

By 12 Comments

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Rejoice fellow Mauritians!

Once again, we’re below average in something important: the speed of Internet in our beloved country.

According to the latest quarterly report by Akamai which is summarised in this post, the average global (i.e. worldwide) download speed is now 2.9Mbps.

Most Mauritians I know still subscribe to Mauritius Telecom’s MyT service at 1Mbps (I do…) which costs around Rs 1099 per month. Only few of us can afford the 2Mbps and 4/Mbps (available at around Rs 1649 and Rs 2649 per month!).

This means that, for a majority of Mauritians, we have only one third of the average global (i.e. worldwide) download speed others are having. This is abysmal in our age of reliance on the Internet for everything we do: learning, working and entertainment.

Hurray!

Mothers’ day or Sellers’ day?

By 5 Comments

First of all, I would like to wish a very happy Mother’s day to all Mothers.

I’ve noticed that, little by little, Mother’s day is becoming Seller’s day. Listening to the radio or reading newspapers, it looks like someone can only be a good son or daughter if he/she buys expensive gifts for his/her mother. Interestingly, a lot of ads now are for electronic gadgets like smartphones, tablets and laptops. Times are changing.

What about those who just want to give their mother a few flowers? Or invite her for a nice family lunch? Or taking coloured chalk and writing a nice message on the floor like Anya and Kyan did for Christina?

After all, the point of Mother’s day is to express one’s love for his/her mother.

What do you think?