Sugata Mitra, professor of educational technology at Newcastle University, was awarded the $1m TED Prize in 2013 in recognition of his work on School in the Cloud, a creative online space where children from all over the world can gather to share knowledge and get help and guidance from online educators.
Much of his current research builds on the ‘hole in the wall’ experiment, which Sugata instigated in 1999 to give children free access to a computer embedded within a wall between his office and an Indian slum in Delhi. This has demonstrated that widely varying groups of children can learn to use computers and the internet on their own, with informal support.
The self-organised learning (SOL) environment helps students to take responsibility for their own and peers’ learning. It can have a major impact on closing the gaps and enabling disadvantaged children to catch up with their peers. Sugata Mitra discussed how this works, its implications and some practical examples with surprising results at SSAT’s national conference last year.
A self-organised learning environment, he explained, ‘basically consists of computers, broadband, collaboration, and encouragement.’ He reckons tens of thousands of teachers, across a wide range of countries, are using it, ‘and many of them blog about SOL.’
A Mexican school reported going from the bottom of the heap to the top of the league tables using self-organised learning, within one year.
Self-organised learning in both urban and remote areas
With his TED prize winnings prof Mitra created seven experimental facilities – five in India (ranging from remote areas to middle class suburbs), and two in north-eastern England – to see what might be the effects in a diverse socioeconomic spectrum.
Two students from one of the schools in England spoke to the SSAT audience. James, from George Stevenson High School, described how their SOL room is designed for maximum group work, with six computers for the class of some 25 children.
The room also has an X-Box, which is used for learning. The students can write up their work, observations and discussions on the cloud, and on the classroom walls.
A Mexican school reported going from the bottom of the heap to the top of the league tables using self-organised learning, within one year.
The room’s appearance is also unusual: it looks more like an airport lounge. James’ classmate Johnny added: ‘the layout is colourful, so students feel that it’s a nice place to learn. The best point of the SOL room is the group work ability. It’s a great skill to have in today’s job sectors. Also, students learn a lot more while in that complex.’
This facility is used for a wide range of subjects, including history, general science, art, and design and technology. ‘I think SOL works really well with all subjects,’ said James, ‘except perhaps maths, because there’s always one answer in maths, whereas SOL is all about separate answers.’
Group work avoids wrong conclusions
The SOL rooms typically have computers with large screens, which everybody can see; and glass walls, so that everybody in the vicinity knows what’s going on.
The ratio of one computer to four or five children is very important, Mitra said, ‘because all my work with the hole in the wall experiment showed that children will make much faster progress when they’re in groups.’
Groups are also better able to avoid students coming to the wrong conclusions from what they find out on the internet, he added.
To find out what happens within the SOL environment, he called up two more students, from Greenfields School in Newton Aycliffe.
Jas explained: ‘it’s a bit like the teacher swapping roles with the child, and the child is free to teach themselves from the resources that they have in the room. It’s an amazing way of learning, because it’s individual – you’re learning for yourself, but in a group.’
Her classmate Millie focused on the importance of questioning: a good question develops more answers and more questions, she said. ‘This morning we did a SOL session to the teachers, and we gave them the question: why are there so many different planets if nobody lives there?
‘They started off with science, and then they went to religion and RE, and it sprouted so many different questions.’
Not answers, but questions
Mitra agreed: ‘the basic tenet of a SOL session is, you drive the system not with answers, but with questions. So, the first change in the job of a teacher is to take the curriculum material that you have, and convert it into what many of them describe as a big question.
‘In the seven schools in the cloud, we’ve tried similar questions right across, through from the remotest of the areas that we have, to Greenfields and George Stevenson. And so far, to my great surprise, we’ve got similar answers. I don’t know how.’
In another example students in a school in New Jersey, USA, and a school in Ghana answered the same question about blue veins. They came up with virtually identical answers, said Sugata Mitra, although he conceded that the standard of English was markedly different. ‘I’ll never forget that SOL.’
Closing the gaps is a key theme of the SSAT National Conference 2015: Quality & Equity and for the very first time secondary SSAT members receive one complimentary delegate place per school.
Sugata Mitra’s School in the Cloud NC14 presentation in full
Follow SSAT on Twitter: @SSAT
Follow Sugata Mitra on Twitter: @Sugatam
Visit the School in the Cloud website.
