One Voice Recorder per Child

When half your population can't read, the spoken word becomes crucial. The Literacy Bridge project is designing a portable voice recorder that third-world populations can use to share news, history, and educational texts. In addition to recording and playing back audio, the Talking Book Device (hardware specs PDF) has buttons for basic interactivity — think quizzes and branching. Furthermore, two devices can be connected via USB, allowing peer-to-peer or kiosk-based file transfer.

I was fascinated by the stories of what happened during the first field tests. In the target areas, for example, D-cell batteries are the most common power source, so the device is far bigger than the thumb-size voice recorder I have in my pocket. Yet, as you can see in the photo, even 3-year-olds could handle it. More impressive, amazingly few compromises were made to approach the $5 target price.

And what's on these “5pods”?

Health and agriculture information was among the most requested types of audio content. Also in the top three requests was information on starting a small business. [A school teacher demonstrated] how he might use the device to record a lesson during class and then make that lesson available to all the children who had devices, so that they could practice after class.

Although nearly all the government field offices will have access to a computer that could run our audio authoring software, we also want to make it possible to record a simple message into the device directly, [enabling] any listener to also be a creator of content for others to hear. This could allow a farmer to share an agricultural practice, but it could also allow people in villages to capture and share stories passed down from their ancestors.

This is the kind of project I like to see: using technology to enhance communication rather than build ever shinier geek jewelry.

(Thanks, Phil!)