EDUCATION - Kids, Self Learning

"Given Internet access, can kids really learn anything by themselves?" PBS NewsHour 11/12/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  It started with a hole in the wall. Sugata Mitra, working for a software company in Delhi, cut a gap between his firm and the slum next door, putting out an Internet-connected computer for kids in the community to use.  That simple experiment has turned into a radical idea that children can teach themselves in self-organized learning environments.  Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports.

STUDENT:  Why do dogs chase cats?

PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour):  I have absolutely no idea.

A public elementary school in Harlem, New York, is adopting a radical idea that threatens the education industry as we know it, SOLEs, Self-Organized Learning Environments.

STUDENT:  How do you make a computer?

STUDENT:  How come father seahorses have babies, but the females don’t?

PAUL SOLMAN:  The students come up with the questions, and then choose one to answer.  The man behind the idea, Sugata Mitra, visiting from England.

SUGATA MITRA, Newcastle University:  OK, so now here’s what’s going to happen.  Listen carefully.  You’re going to work with these six computers; the question is, why do dogs chase cats?  And, of course, you can talk as much as you like, you can walk around, you can move, you can look at other people’s work.  You can do whatever you like.

PAUL SOLMAN:  A crowd of onlookers in a nearby room, waiting to know if, given six computers and just 20 minutes, these kids can really self-organize and learn the answer on their own.

SUGATA MITRA:  Do you have any idea?  I have never actually thought about it.  Of course, everyone knows that dogs chase cats.

PAUL SOLMAN:  No.  My guess is cats are a symbol of something they could eat, but don’t eat?  I don’t know.  That’s my best shot.

Mitra’s first experiment in self-organized learning took place years ago and far away, at the turn of the 21st century here in Delhi, where he worked for a huge Indian software firm.

Worried about information poverty and the digital divide between those who can afford computers and those who can’t, Mitra simply cut a hole in the boundary wall between his firm and the fetid slum next door and put in a computer, connected to the Internet, and watched.