You are Never Alone

Speaking at LIFT 2007, Sugata Mitra talks about his Hole in the Wall project. Young kids in this project figured out how to use a PC on their own — and then taught other kids. He asks, what else can children teach themselves?

Sugata Mitra, begins with some discussion about concepts of remoteness and the quality of education being delivered. He defines remoteness both in terms of distance/location and in terms of socio-economic barriers. He says that many remote schools in India do not have good enough teachers, and have difficulties in retaining those they do have. Teachers in remote areas often are focussed on how soon they can go to a “better” location. The second issue with the “remoteness” problem is that the infrastructure is often not nearly good enough, and what they have is difficult to maintain.

In addition to this, he believes that educational technology is often trialled first in urban schools, where it already has a chance of success, but will probably make minimal difference. It needs to be trialled or piloted with underpriveleged schools, where the impact may in fact be much more significant.

In the video below he also talks about the Hole in the Wall project which he says shows how primary education can be a self-organising system.

For me it raises questions of whether we in fact try to make our student’s learning too stream-lined, too efficient. Whether in fact we need to focus more on the just in time learning, learning because you need to know, rather than always having a defined curriculum which defines the student’s needs.

The video is just over 20 mins. Read more about Sugata Mitra and his projects here.
It is also available as high res (mp4) video here (285 MB)