As with anything, a bunch of things have to be either happening together, or close enough to make something work. Mongolia needed mobile Internet, MIT needed to put out course ware, someone needed to make the kids aware of it, and tools (phones) and such needed to be available to take advantage of it. Now instead of a 'Yeah right, like that could happen' kind of thing it is becoming 'I know a kid from here that did that' kind of thing and that will inspire a couple more, Etc. Assuming it doesn't get shut down, and/or overloaded, if kids who took advantage of this are successful and bring that success back to their peers then it begins a logarithmic climb out of obscurity.
Enkhmunkh, the principal, was also the main driver behind bringing the OLPC project to a few of the schools in Mongolia. He also pretty much singlehandedly did the localization for the largest project on it, eToys. He's definitely contributed heavily to bringing higher IT education to Mongolia.
both are needed for this kind of outcome. also, kudos it sounds to Mongolia education and development departments (?) - leapfrogging into the 21st century by investing in modern infrastructure - trust me, in many parts of rural NZ 3 MB download is a fantasy!
Just returned from Mongolia a few days ago...
In most rural areas in Mongolia 3MB downstream is not existent too. Actually I would say it is only available in the capital Ulaan Baatar. 3G and Wimax is available with a little luck in the populated areas of the country, but the connections are not very reliable. I experienced outages on a daily basis.
Personally I would say that educational resources in different forms are available to those who are willing to search for it AND know the english language (which is only the case for a very small fraction of the Mongolian population).
I'm not so sure if the (extremely corrupt) Mongolian government is investing wisely in modern infrastructures (streets in Mongolia are usually dangerously terrible)... it's more that the population is very interested in shiny smartphones and having a working network is a prerequisite to make them work. In such a huge country, a wireless network is probably the fastest way, to get people connected. But if the outcome of this is that a few brilliant people are taking their chances to get into higher education, then the government probably made correct decisions by accident.
When I was working there 5ish years ago the government claimed the whole country had fiber connections, but in reality they had just terminated the fiber connection at each village post office and left actually connecting the last mile up to private companies or cities. Which meant it wasn't available outside the densely populated center of the capital.
