Eleven-year-old Abraham Yanes didn't know much about India until he got to experience what life was like in a rural Indian village through a new friend— his "iPal."

Abraham and his sixth-grade class at Thomas Starr King Middle School in Los Feliz participated this year in The Together Project—a collaboration among nonprofits, universities, software experts and students in the continued development of the iSlate: an inexpensive tablet designed for children in parts of the world without access to technology or educational support.

The L.A. and Indian students with The Together Project didn’t work with actual iSlates, but they did test what it would be like if they could communicate regularly with one another.

"It was cool because it was my first time doing that with someone else from around the world," said Abraham who emailed letters to his iPal, Vijay Kumar, and contributed to a 40-minute web video that his class sent the Indian students. 

"I had a lot of fun because we were sending stories to each other- like what we eat and what we do in our daily life," Abraham said.

The differences in their daily lives intrigued the kids, especially seeing how they didn’t share the same accessibility to food, electricity or education.

"The thing that surprised me about my iPal was how they use electricity only one hour a day… And for us, we use it every day," said Abraham. "We had to say what we could do to use less electricity in our houses- like if your phone is charged, you can just unplug it or turn off the lights when they're not in use."

And after viewing the 12-minute web video the Indian students made, Abraham was surprised by another one of Vijay’s answers. When asked to share his favorite thing to do, Vijay’s response was immediate and simple: “To go to school.”

"It makes me appreciate having an education, a good education and being [at a magnet school]. I didn't think I was going to be able to go, but then they accepted me. This is my chance to go to college and it starts with a good education," Abraham said.

While the project left a strong impression on Abraham and his education goals, Vijay’s education may be on the precipice of a transformation.

The Role Of The iSlate

Dirt paths lead the way to the Muhammad Hussianpally farming village where electricity comes on at sporadic times of the day with little warning for about one or two hours.

When it's on, they hurry to use it for their necessities, like bringing water to the farming fields.  The children rarely attend school, and when they do, sometimes there isn’t anyone there to teach them.

"India doesn't have the same capacity as here.  We have never said we wanted to replace a person, but sometimes these kids don't have teachers and that's where the iSlate could be helpful," said Henrik Andersson, a UCLA graduate student and the project leader for Seso Media Group, the L.A.-based design team that volunteered to develop the iSlate and travel to the Muhammad Hussianpally Village in India.

"The parents aren't educated as well and can't help with homework, so wouldn't be awesome if they could log on and get help and lessons? It's a tool to advance and get those opportunities," said Andersson.

In addition to Seso’s work on the iSlate, the tablet was also developed by hardware and software experts at Rice University, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the Indian nonprofit Villages for Development and Learning Foundation.

The iSlate has been in the works since 2008 with two years of lab-to-school testing in India. Krishna Palem, the iSlate creator and a professor at Rice University and NTU, stressed that the iSlate differs from an iPad or other tablets in that its sole purpose is for “education in a low-resource environment.”

The Together Project was especially helpful for Seso and the other organizations in exploring how the iSlate could make education unrestricted by geography, creating a global network of educators.

"When you're developing something you have all these ideas…We wanted to take the opportunity to test this before we design it.  It creates the framework for how it can work in this environment," said Andersson.

The iSlate also has some interactive features to appeal to students. For instance, a colorful cartoon character in the corner of the iSlate monitors the child’s actions. The character’s “happiness” shifts based on the students’ grades.

The cost of the iSlate is expected to be about $45, and the goal is to provide 10 percent of the 500,000 students in the Indian district of Mahabubnagar (including the Muhammad Hussianpally Village) with iSlates over the next three years. 

A new chip is also being developed that would require half the amount of electricity to power the iSlate and also allow it to run on solar power.

Living Out Their Learning

In considering how limited resources are for the children of the Muhammad Hussianpally village, students in both countries reflected on their use (or misuse) of electricity as one of the writing assignments.

Abraham Yanes could see how saving electricity would have an impact on the earth's resources and on his own future.

"You want your children to have children to be able to use electricity and I want that. If I have kids, I want them to have electricity when they're older," he said.

He wasn't the only one surprised to learn how limited the resources were for the Indian village; or how the Indian children placed a higher value on seemingly ordinary parts of life.

"A lot of them said they wouldn't use electricity right after school because it would be a really good chance to go home, run around, play outside, spend more time with their family… that was the big revelation,” said Marisa Urrutia Gedney from 826 LA, the nonprofit whose volunteers helped the L.A. students with their letters. 

“It was this huge thing to see that not using electricity couldn't just change their approach to electricity but how they interact with their families.”

The discussion evolved into the Los Angeles students, tutors, and teachers thinking up solutions for how to conserve better.

"It was very touching," said Valorie Milio, one of the sixth grade teachers. "In India- there's such simplicity and they appreciated that simplicity. The tutors [from 826LA] also were sharing how they waste electricity too and it became a conversation about how we can just flip the switch but we flip it too often."

After receiving the responses from the kids in India, the L.A. students’ answers began to shift as they decided to place value on things other than their video games.

“Our students were saying, 'I value my education a lot, too,’ because those were the answers the students in India were giving, and we realized: Wow, we've got it good here,” said Milio.

Better Writers With A Deeper Appreciation

In communicating with another culture, the students in L.A. also realized they had to work a little harder when describing things they typically gave little thought to.

"[The students in India] wanted to know simple stuff— like what pizza was— and in the writing process that's a cool thing because all of a sudden you have to think differently. It's investigating your own world around you— learning about yourself in L.A. helps you express yourself to other people," said Andersson.

Abraham said he could see an improvement in his writing by the end of the eight weeks.

"The tutors really helped me. Before I would write just one paragraph and now I write three paragraphs," he said.

The teachers noticed improvement as well.

"I saw the confidence in their writing- thanks to 826LA and all the volunteers who came. We have a huge class size. There are about 32 students now to one teacher and it's hard to give that immediate ongoing feedback, but when we had those volunteers the ratio was about one adult to two to four students," said Milio.

In addition to seeing her writing skills improve, Sandy Bello- another sixth grader in the class- discovered a deeper appreciation for what she had after getting to know her iPal, Krishinath.

"I think it's important because they can see in what way we communicate with other people and how we're different and how it sometimes shows us that we think we have little but we have so much compared to what they have," she said.

She was especially surprised when some of the iPals from India said their favorite food was rice and how fruit was considered a luxury. 

Abraham was struck by how small the Indian village's school was. An avid football player, Abraham especially couldn't believe the size of the play yard.

"Our yard is a huge P.E. yard and over there it's a little place to hang out. And their school is small, they barely have teachers…They don't have books and for us, we use books like we don't care," he said. 

The letters from the two groups of students will be published as a book and Milio said they plan to make a celebration out of it, serving some of the Indian foods they have heard so much about.

But for the kids in India, Andersson senses that receiving the book will be a celebration in itself.

"To be given an empty notebook is something large," he said.  "Imagine something with their work in it."

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Reach Managing Editor Paige Brettingen here.