Blog Post: Hole in the
Wall TED Talk
Wow!
In my Emerging Web and Mobile Technologies class, I was required to watch Sugata
Mitra’s 30 minute Tedtalk on “The Future of Education,” which won the Ted Award
for 2013. This conference lecture was so captivating and inspiring I went further
and watched the follow up “CUE 2015” lecture on the same subject, and additionally,
included the development of Professor Mitra’s “School in the Cloud” program
which was financed by his award from Ted Talk. Sugata Mitra is Professor of
Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication, and Language
Sciences at Newcastle University, UK.
The
lecture began with his explanation of a study he called “Hole in the Wall.”
Basically he installed a computer in a wall in one of the poorest hamlets in
southern India, three feet off the ground. The height was important because it
is the height of a child. Within days, the children who did not speak any
English were surfing the web. The children worked together unsupervised in
groups. In time, they asked for a more powerful processor and a better mouse.
This eventually spurred Professor Mitra to look for ways to assist the children
but not formally teach them. Thus began the Granny Cloud. Asking for
volunteers, one hour a week, he received hundreds of volunteers. He jokes, “I
know more English Grandmas than anyone on the planet.” Using only
encouragement, as a grandmother would, these retired educators and health care
workers and others interacted with the children doing things like answering
questions and reading poetry but not teaching. The results were amazing.
Children learned to speak English in a year. One was a young girl, who he
played a video discussing her aspirations to become a lawyer, in English. One
young man came up to him at the CUE convention and said he was a “Hole in the
Wall” child who now was on a full scholarship to Yale doing research on
Environmental Biology. Professor Mitra calls this SOLE (Self Organized Learning
Environment). He believes what is necessary for this success is broadband
access, collaboration, and encouragement. He now has expanded on this, using
the Ted Talk prize, to include five schools he titled, Schools in the Cloud.
During his lecture, he also addressed the ban of technology in assessment
tests. Noting that this is the one time children are not connected to technology,
he suggests the questions should be reworked. Instead of “How tall is the
Eiffel Tower,?” a question easily answered with a Google search within seconds,
a higher level question should be asked such as, “Why was the Eiffel Tower
built?”
The implications to the
current and future classrooms are in how we enable children to learn; how to
facilitate the collaboration efforts that made these studies such a success.
The use of encouragement in the grandmother mode and the availability of
broadband connectivity for all students are part of the essentials for the
future of learning.
I was, as I stated, captivated and inspired by these lectures. I hope my brief summary does justice to Professor Mitra’s efforts. I encourage all educators to view these lectures.
I was, as I stated, captivated and inspired by these lectures. I hope my brief summary does justice to Professor Mitra’s efforts. I encourage all educators to view these lectures.
I enjoyed reading your perspective on Mitra's Hole in the Wall / School in the Cloud work. I am always energized and inspired by watching his talks. However, there has been quite a bit of controversy and debate around his notions. I would encourage you to do a bit of digging to read a different perspective on Mitra's work. Here's one place to start: https://www.tes.com/news/blog/tom-bennett-sugata-mitra-and-hole-research. I look forward to future findings from Mitra, and I expect that you will follow his work with anticipation as well.
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