Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education

Summary

The speaker recounts his journey in education, starting with an experiment in New Delhi where children in a slum taught themselves to use the internet. He explores how children worldwide can learn with minimal guidance, changing accents to match technology and teaching complex subjects like biotechnology. The 'hole-in-the-wall' experiment led to the concept of self-organized learning environments (SOLEs) and the 'granny cloud,' where online mediators assist students. The narrative suggests education is a self-organizing system with learning as an emergent phenomenon, proposing a scalable model for educational transformation.

Takeaways

• 🌐 The speaker began his work in 1999 with an experiment in New Delhi, highlighting the global issue of good teachers being absent in areas where they are needed the most.
• 💡 He embedded a computer in a slum wall in New Delhi to see if children could learn to use it and the internet without formal instruction.
• 👨‍🎓 Children showed an innate ability to learn and use technology for educational purposes, even with limited prior exposure to computers or the internet.
• 🗣️ In Hyderabad, children with strong accents were able to modify their speech to match a speech-to-text interface, demonstrating adaptability and learning through interaction.
• 🌟 The speaker's experiments expanded across India and other parts of the world, consistently showing that groups of children can achieve educational objectives through self-organized learning.
• 📈 In South Africa and Cambodia, the introduction of technology led to improvements in English and arithmetic skills, indicating the potential for technology to enhance learning outcomes.
• 🧠 The speaker hypothesizes that education is a self-organizing system where learning emerges naturally, suggesting a new paradigm for educational theory and practice.
• 👵 The 'granny cloud' concept was introduced, where volunteers provide remote assistance and mentoring to children, showcasing the potential of community involvement in education.
• 🏫 The Souls (self-organized learning environments) initiative was created to provide an infrastructure that supports group learning and access to broad educational resources.
• 🌟 The speaker's work suggests that with the right tools and environment, children can achieve remarkable educational milestones, challenging traditional educational methods and structures.

Q & A

What problem did the speaker identify at the beginning of the experiment?

The speaker identified that good teachers are often unwilling to go to areas where they are needed the most, particularly in places that are considered troubled or underdeveloped.

What was the 'Hole in the Wall' experiment initiated in New Delhi?

The 'Hole in the Wall' experiment involved embedding a computer into the wall of a slum in New Delhi, allowing children who had no prior experience with computers or the internet to use it without instruction. The experiment demonstrated that children can teach themselves how to use technology on their own.

What was the conclusion drawn from the experiment regarding children's learning abilities?

The speaker concluded that children can learn to use computers and the internet on their own, without formal instruction, as long as they have the interest and opportunity to explore.

How did the children in the South Indian village respond to the speech-to-text interface?

The children initially found that the computer did not understand their accents. However, after two months, they had adapted their speech to resemble a neutral British accent that the computer could understand, demonstrating their ability to teach themselves how to communicate with the technology.

What were Arthur C. Clarke's two significant observations mentioned in the script?

Arthur C. Clarke stated that 'A teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be,' and that 'If children have interest, then education happens.' These observations supported the speaker’s belief in the power of self-directed learning.

What notable achievement did the children in the South Indian village accomplish regarding biotechnology?

The children, who spoke only Tamil, were able to teach themselves the basics of biotechnology in English. One girl even grasped that 'improper replication of the DNA molecule causes genetic diseases,' which amazed the speaker.

What was the 'Granny Cloud' initiative, and how did it work?

The 'Granny Cloud' initiative involved British grandmothers who volunteered to give children in remote areas an hour of broadband time weekly via Skype. They acted as mediators, encouraging and praising the children as they explored topics on their own.

What did the speaker observe during the experiment with 10-year-olds in Turin, Italy?

The speaker gave the children English questions, even though they only spoke Italian. Using Google Translate, the children quickly translated the questions, researched answers, and even corrected the speaker’s spelling of 'Pythagoras,' demonstrating self-organized learning in a language they didn’t speak.

What is the concept of a 'self-organizing system' as it relates to education?

A self-organizing system is one where structure and learning emerge without explicit instruction. In education, this means that with access to the right resources, children can learn on their own, driven by interest and curiosity, without needing constant external guidance.

What future goals did the speaker outline for the Self-Organized Learning Environment (SOLE) system?

The speaker outlined a goal of reaching 1 billion children with 100 million mediators and 10 million SOLEs (Self-Organized Learning Environments) over the next decade, with a projected cost of $180 billion, aiming to fundamentally change global education.

Outlines

00:00

🌐 The Hole-in-the-Wall Experiment

The speaker begins by discussing the irony that good teachers are often unwilling to work in areas where they are needed the most, such as developing countries. To address this, the speaker initiated an experiment in New Delhi in 1999, embedding a computer in a slum wall with internet access. The children, who had limited exposure to education and technology, were able to learn and use the computer on their own. This experiment was then replicated across India and other parts of the world, demonstrating that children can teach themselves with computers and the internet, regardless of their background. The speaker also experimented with a speech-to-text interface, where children with heavy accents managed to modify their speech to match the accent of the software, showing their ability to adapt and learn.

05:07

🎓 Self-Learning and Educational Objectives

The speaker continued to explore the potential of self-learning with computers. In Hyderabad, children with strong accents were given a speech-to-text interface and were able to adapt their speech to match the software's understanding. The speaker then took the experiment to South Africa, where a 15-year-old boy used the internet for games, animals, and music, and also sent emails. The speaker observed that children in rural Cambodia and India began using the internet for educational purposes, such as searching for homework help, leading to improvements in their English language skills. The speaker set an ambitious goal to see if children could teach themselves biotechnology in English, which they achieved to a significant extent, even without formal teaching.

10:08

🏫 Experimenting with Group Learning

The speaker moved to Newcastle and conducted an experiment with 32 children in Gateshead, fine-tuning the self-learning method. The children were organized into groups of four, each with access to one computer. They were encouraged to collaborate and use various online resources to solve problems. The speaker provided GCSE questions, and the children were able to solve them effectively using online tools. After two months, the children's performance on a paper test without computers was as high as their performance with computers, indicating that they had internalized the information. The speaker also introduced the concept of the 'granny cloud,' where British grandmothers volunteered to provide online instruction, demonstrating the potential for community involvement in education.

15:09

🌟 The Power of Self-Organizing Learning Systems

The speaker concluded with an experiment in Turin, where 10-year-old students with no English language skills were able to use Google Translate to understand and answer questions posed in English. This demonstrated the power of self-organizing learning systems, where structure and knowledge emerge without explicit instruction. The speaker suggests that education is a self-organizing system where learning is an emergent phenomenon. He proposes a vision where 1 billion children could be reached through 100 million mediators, such as the 'granny cloud,' with the potential to revolutionize education with 10 million self-organized learning environments (SOLEs) over 10 years.

Keywords

💡Developing Countries

Developing countries are nations with lower levels of economic development compared to developed countries. They often face challenges such as poverty, lack of infrastructure, and limited access to education. In the video, the speaker starts by discussing the educational challenges in developing countries, particularly the lack of good teachers in remote or troubled areas, which is a significant issue that the speaker's experiments aim to address.

💡Hole-in-the-Wall Experiment

The 'hole-in-the-wall' experiment refers to a project where a computer was embedded into a wall in a slum in New Delhi, allowing children to interact with it freely. This experiment was designed to test whether children could learn to use computers and the internet without formal instruction. The video discusses how this experiment led to the discovery that children can teach themselves and learn collaboratively.

💡Self-Learning

Self-learning is the process of acquiring knowledge or skills without direct instruction from a teacher. The video emphasizes this concept by showing how children in various parts of the world were able to learn to use computers and the internet on their own, highlighting the potential for self-directed education.

💡Educational Objectives

Educational objectives are the goals or desired outcomes of an educational process. In the context of the video, the speaker discusses how children were able to achieve educational objectives on their own by navigating the internet, which suggests a shift in the traditional approach to education where objectives are typically achieved through formal instruction.

💡Speech-to-Text Interface

A speech-to-text interface is a technology that converts spoken language into written text. The video describes an experiment where children with heavy accents used such an interface to improve their pronunciation, showing how technology can facilitate language learning.

💡Granny Cloud

The 'granny cloud' is a concept introduced in the video where elderly volunteers provide educational support remotely via the internet. This innovative approach leverages the wisdom and experience of older individuals to aid in the education of children, demonstrating a novel method of connecting generations for learning.

💡Self-Organizing Learning Environments (SOULS)

SOULS refers to a type of learning environment described in the video where children can work in groups with access to large screens and the internet. The design encourages collaboration and self-directed learning, which is a departure from traditional classroom setups. The video suggests that such environments can enhance learning outcomes.

💡Mediator

In the video, a mediator is someone who facilitates learning without being a formal teacher. They help guide students towards resources and support their learning journey. The speaker's experiments show that mediators can play a crucial role in enabling children to achieve educational objectives on their own.

💡Emergence

Emergence in the video refers to the phenomenon where a system begins to exhibit behaviors or properties that were not originally programmed or intended. The speaker suggests that education might be a self-organizing system where learning emerges naturally, indicating a potential new understanding of how education can be structured.

💡Biotechnology Education

Biotechnology education is the focus of one of the experiments described in the video, where children were given materials to learn about biotechnology on their own. This experiment was used to test the limits of self-organized learning and to see if complex subjects could be mastered without traditional teaching methods.

💡Deep Learning

Deep learning, while often associated with artificial intelligence, is used in the video to describe a form of learning where students engage deeply with material and retain information effectively. The speaker notes that when children work in groups and discuss concepts, they exhibit photographic recall, suggesting a deep learning process.

Highlights

Good teachers are often unwilling to work in the areas where they are needed the most.

An experiment in New Delhi embedded a computer in a slum wall, showing children's ability to learn with minimal guidance.

Children taught each other and engaged with technology within four hours of first exposure.

Groups of children can learn to use computers and the internet independently, regardless of their location.

Children in rural India adapted their accents to match a speech-to-text interface, demonstrating self-learning capabilities.

Children can achieve educational objectives through self-organized learning with the aid of technology.

The 'hole-in-the-wall' experiment showed that children can teach themselves complex subjects like biotechnology.

A local accountant, using the 'method of the grandmother', helped children improve their understanding of biotechnology.

In Newcastle, a self-organized learning experiment with children resulted in high educational outcomes.

The 'granny cloud' concept involves elderly volunteers providing educational support over the internet.

Children can quickly grasp complex concepts with the right motivation and resources, as seen in a Hinduism lesson.

The Souls project aims to create self-organized learning environments with group learning and mediator support.

Self-organizing systems in education can lead to emergent phenomena, such as unanticipated learning outcomes.

The potential exists to scale this method to impact a billion children with the help of millions of mediators.

A vision for the future involves 10 million Souls, a significant investment, and a decade to revolutionize education.

The speaker concludes with a call to action to embrace this self-organizing approach to education.

Transcripts

well that's kind of an obvious statement

up there I started with that sentence

about 12 years ago and I started in the

context of developing countries but

you're sitting here from every corner of

the world so if you think of a map of

your country I think you realize that up

for every country on earth you could

draw little circles to say these are

places where good teachers won't go on

top of that those are the places from

where trouble comes so we have an ironic

problem good teachers don't want to go

to just those places where they're

needed the most

I started in 1999 to try and address

this problem with an experiment which

was a very simple experiment in New

Delhi

I basically embedded a computer into a

wall of a slum in New Delhi the children

barely went to school they didn't know

any English that never seen a computer

before and they didn't know what the

internet was I connected high-speed

Internet to it it's about three feet off

the ground turned it on and left it

there

after this we noticed a couple of

interesting things which you'll see but

I repeated this all over India and then

through a large part of the world and

notice that children will learn to do

what they want to learn to do this is

the first experiment that we did eight

year old boy on your right teaching his

student the six-year-old girl and he was

teaching her how to browse this boy here

in the middle of Central India

this is in a rajasthan village where the

children recorded their own music and

then played it back to each other and in

the process they enjoyed themselves

thoroughly they did all of this in four

hours after seeing the computer for the

first time in another South Indian

village these boys here had assembled a

video camera and

to take the photograph of a bumblebee

they downloaded it from disney.com or

one of these websites 14 days after

putting the computer in their village so

at the end of it we concluded that

groups of children can learn to use

computers and the internet on their own

irrespective of who or where they were

at that point I became a little more

ambitious and decided to see what else

could children do with a computer we

started off with a experiment in

Hyderabad India where I gave a group of

children they spoke English with a very

strong Telugu accent I gave them a

computer with a speech-to-text interface

which you now get free with Windows and

asked them to speak into it so when they

spoke into it the computer typed out

giver ish so they said well it doesn't

understand anything of what we are

saying so I said yeah I'll leave it here

for 2 months make yourself understood to

the computer so the children said how do

we do that and I said I don't know

actually and I and I left 2 months later

and this is now documented in the

information technology for International

Development Journal their accents had

changed and were remarkably close to the

neutral British accent in which I had

trained the speech-to-text synthesizer

in other words they were all speaking

like James Tooley so you can they could

do that on their own after that I

started to experiment with various other

things that they might learn to do on

their own I got an interesting phone

call once from Colombo from the late

arthur c clarke who said i want to see

what's going on and he couldn't travel

so i went over there he said two

interesting things a teacher that can be

replaced by a machine should be

the second thing is that was that if

children have interest then education

happens and I was doing that in the

field so every time I would watch it and

think of possible and definitely help

people because children could navigate

the web and findings which interests

them and when you've got interest then

you have education

I took the experiment to South Africa

this is a 15 year old boy she is my

channel I play games animals and music

and I asked him do you send emails and

he said yes and they hop across the

ocean this is in Cambodia rural Cambodia

very silly arithmetic game which no

child would play inside the classroom or

at home they would you know throw it

back at you that say this is very boring

if you leave it on the pavement and if

all the adults go away then they will

show off with each other about what they

can do which is what these children are

doing they trying to multiply I think

and all over India at the end of about

two years children were beginning to

Google their homework as a result the

teachers reported tremendous

improvements in their English rapid

improvement and all sorts of things I

said there they've become really deep

thinkers and so on and so forth and and

indeed they had I mean if there's stuff

on Google why would you need to stuff it

into your head so at the end of the next

four years I decided that groups of

children can navigate the internet to

achieve educational objectives on their

own at that time a large amount of money

had come in to Newcastle University to

improve schooling in India so Newcastle

gave me a call I said I'll do it from

Delhi they said there's no way you're

going to handle the million pounds worth

of

University money sitting in Delhi so in

2006 I bought myself a heavy overcoat

and moved to Newcastle I wanted to test

the limits of this system the first

experiment I did out of Newcastle was

actually done in India and I set myself

an impossible target can tamil-speaking

twelve-year-old children in a South

Indian village teach themselves

biotechnology in English on their own

and I thought I'll test them they will

get a zero

I'll give them material I'll come back

and test them they'll get another zero

I'll go back and say yes we need

teachers for certain things I called in

26 children they all came in there I

told them that there's some really

difficult stuff on this computer I

wouldn't be surprised if you didn't

understand anything it's all in English

and I'm going left them with it I came

back after 2 months and the 26 children

marched in looking very very quiet I

said well did you look at any of the

steps as he as we did did you understand

anything no nothing so I said well how

long did you practice on it before you

decided that you understood nothing I

said we look at it every day

so I said for 2 months you were looking

at stuff you didn't understand so a

twelve-year-old girl raises her hand and

says literally apart from the fact that

improper replication of the DNA molecule

causes genetic disease we've understood

nothing else

took me three years to publish that it's

just been published in the British

Journal of educational technology one of

the referees who have read the paper

said it's too good to be true which was

not very nice well one of the girls had

taught herself to become the teacher

and that's her over there remember they

don't study English I've edited out the

last bit well she said when I asked

where is the new Don and she says neuron

the new Don and then she looked at this

whatever expression was not very nice so

so their scores had gone up from zero to

thirty percent which is an educational

impossibility under the circumstances

but thirty percent is not a pass so I I

found that they had a friend a local

accountant a young girl and they played

football with her I asked that girl

would you teach them enough

biotechnology to pass and she said how

would I do that I don't know the subject

I said no use the method of the

grandmother she said what's that I said

well what you've got to do is stand

behind them and admire them all the time

just say to them that's cool that's

fantastic what is that can you do that

again can you show me some more she did

that for two months the scores went up

to fifty which is what the posh schools

of New Delhi with a trained

biotechnology teacher were getting so I

came back to Newcastle with these

results and decided that there was

something happening here that definitely

was getting very serious

so having experimented in all sorts of

remote places I came to the most remote

place that I could think of

across the river tyne 5,000 miles from

the reef is the little town of gate set

in gate said I took 32 children and I

started to fine-tune the method I made

them into groups of four I said you make

your own groups of four each group of

four can use one computer and not four

computers remember from the hole in the

wall you can exchange groups you can

walk across to another group if you

don't like your group etc you can go to

another group peer over their shoulders

see what they're doing come back to your

own group and claim it as your own work

and I explained to them that you know a

lot of scientific research is done using

that method

the children enthusiastically got after

me so now what do you want us to do as I

gave them six GCSE questions the first

group the best one solved everything in

20 minutes

the worst in 45 they used everything

that the new news groups Google

Wikipedia Ask Jeeves etc the teacher

said is this deep learning I said well

let's try it I'll come back after two

months

we'll give them a paper test no

computers no talking to each other etc

the average score when I'd done it with

the computers and the group's was 76%

when I did the experiment when I did the

test after two months the score was 76%

there was photographic recall inside the

children I suspect because they're

discussing with each other a single

child in front of a single computer will

not do that I have further results which

are almost unbelievable of scores which

go up with time because their teachers

say that after the session is over the

children continue to Google further here

in Britain I put out a call for British

grandmothers after my coop um experiment

well there's you know with the very

vigorous people British grandmothers 200

of them volunteered immediately the the

deal was that they would give me one

hour of broadband time sitting at their

homes one day in a week so they did that

and over the last two years over 600

hours of instruction has happened over

Skype using what my students call the

granny cloud granny cloud sits over

there I can beam them to whichever

school I want to

you can't gate said a

ten-year-old girl gets into the heart of

Hinduism in 15 minutes

you know stuff which i don't know

anything about to children watch a TED

talk they wanted to be footballers

before after watching a TED talks he

wants to become Leonardo da Vinci it's

it's pretty simple stuff this is what

I'm building now they're called Souls

self-organized learning environments the

furniture is designed so that children

can sit in front of big powerful screens

big broadband connections but in groups

if they want they can call the granny

cloud this is the soul in Newcastle the

mediator is from Pune India so how far

can we go one last little bit and I'll

stop I went to Turin in May I sent all

the teachers away from a group of 10

year old students I speak only English

they speak on the Italian so we had no

way to communicate I started writing

English questions on the blackboard the

children looked at it and said what I

said well do it they typed it into

Google translated it into Italian went

back into Italian Google fifteen minutes

later

next question

where is Calcutta this one they took

only 10 minutes I tried a really hard

one then who was Pythagoras and what did

he do

there was silence for a while then they

said you've spelt it wrong it's Pete

Agora and then in 20 minutes the right

angle triangles began to appear on the

screens it was sent shivers up my spine

these are 10 year olds

so you know what's happened I think

we've just stumbled across a

self-organizing system a self-organizing

system is one where a structure appears

without explicit intervention from the

outside self-organizing systems also

always show emergence which is that the

system starts to do things which it was

never designed for which is why you

react the way you do because it looks

impossible I think I can make a guess

now education is a self-organizing

system where learning is an emergent

phenomenon it will take a few years to

prove it experimentally but I'm going to

try but in the meanwhile there is a

method available 1 billion children we

need 100 million mediators there are

many more than that on the planet 10

million souls 180 billion dollars and 10

years we could change everything thanks

you