TED - Can kids teach themselves?
Sugata Mitra's talk made at the Lift Conference held in Geneva in 2007 has just been posted on the TED site.
In his talk he poses the question 'Can kids teach themselves?'. He uses his 20 minutes to explain his view: In 1999, Sugata Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other.
In the following years they replicated the experiment in other parts of India, urban and rural, with similar results, challenging some of the key assumptions of formal education. The "Hole in the Wall" project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mitra, who's now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University (UK), calls it "minimally invasive education."
The most interesting thing about what he reports is that children adopt peer learning styles automatically. And that the learning took place in groups ... that was an essential factor. He also comments that the children seemed to learn by watching rather than doing. I feel sure that our institutional, individualised education systems may have something to learn from this. Worth leaving it to the kids.
Have you ever had to teach a child how to use a mobile phone?
posted by Doug @ 15:08
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Thanks Doug I think this is a really interesting point "He also comments that the children seemed to learn by watching rather than doing." In classrooms we are often lead to see students who apparently sit back and watch as disengaged. Some may be mind you. I have been exploring learning as action and process, in my research project. What I have found interesting is is how what we often percieve as "passive" or "non engagement" can be evidenced by tracking a process as whole as a meaningful learning act.
Sometimes it is just great to have someone show you something. You know I learned something new today, when Billy did.. I didn't realise you could do..
I wonder if it is less a view that kids can teach themselves, than a change in perspective that sees how productive a learner is, as less about the outcomes they produce, than how they are helped to and contribute to social and cultural works they engage in or stimulate.
I watched this film a few days ago and it really stayed with me. I've been thinking about how, in nursery education, people are very comfortable with children teaching themselves and each other. And (picking up on your point two whizzy) I imagine most people would agree babies and young children learn by watching others. Do these things stop as part of some developmental milestone? Or do we interfere with them due to the formal education set-up? I'm thinking Sugata Mitra's experiments may point to the latter?
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