21st Century Learning and Teaching

Sugata Mitra is named the TED Prize winner at TED2013. He shares his wish—for a school in the cloud that encourages self-learning.

Mitra has a history of research to back up this wish. In 1999, he began what he calls his “hole in the wall” experiment. He carved a hole in a wall in a Delhi slum — about three feet high — and placed a computer in it. Kids had gathered around within a matter of hours and asked Mitra questions about what this thing was. He responded “I don’t know,” and walked away.

===> Soon the kids were surfing the internet — and teaching each other how to do it more effectively. <===

Mitra repeated the experiment 300 miles away, where computers even less familiar. He installed a mysterious computer on the side of a road. A few months later, he returned and found kids playing games on it.

Remembers Mitra, “They said, ‘We want a faster processor and a better mouse.’”

Another thing these kids said that was music to his ears:

“You’ve given us a machine that works only in English, so we had to teach ourselves English.”

Mitra says, “It was the first time I heard the words ===> ‘teach ourselves’ <===  said so casually.”