[wordup] Grannies to read fairytales to 'slumdog' kids via Skype

[Adam Shand]

My interest isn't so much Skype but rather what it is that VOIP is  
proving to be used for.  Kids bedtime stories, let alone Indian kids  
being read fairytails by Brittish women, probably weren't high on the  
list of expectations when the technologists were designing it. :-)

Adam.

Source: http://share.skype.com/sites/us/2009/03/grannies_to_read_fairytales_to.html

Grannies to read fairytales to 'slumdog' kids via Skype
By Howard Wolinsky on March 15, 2009 in In the news.

Here's another fairytale story from Mumbai involving Skype.

AR Rahman, composer of music from "Slumdog Millionaire," used Skype to  
write an English language version of his Academy Award-winning song,  
"Jai Ho" (Hindi for "Be Victorious")

Now a professor, whose work inspired the movie, is looking for  
grannies to tell fairytales to the kids in the Mumbai slums over  
Skype. The idea is to help the children learn English and to improve  
their pronunciation.

The Sun in the UK headlined this as "Slumdog Prof Has Gran Idea."

Sugata Mitra, an educational tech prof at Newcastle University, wants  
to bring teachers into remote schools in India using Skype.

http://www.youtube.com/v/YYfZx6pctQg&hl=en&fs=1

He wants British grannies to use Skype to read fairytales to kids in  
the Indian slums.
Prof. Mitra said: "When I last visited India, I asked the children  
what they would like to use Skype for most, and surprisingly they said  
they wanted British grandmothers to read them fairy tales. They even  
worked out that between them they could afford to pay £1 a week out of  
their own money."

The Sun said he has already recruited a British woman to spend a few  
hours a week reading to the children and set up webcams so that a life- 
size image of the storyteller is projected on to a wall in India.

Mitra has recruited 100 women as storytellers, but he wants to find  
more. He can be contacted at sugata.mitra at newcastle.ac.uk