[IAEP] Sugata Mitra at TED 2013

[Caryl Bigenho]

Hi, 
I would like to respond to the very critical article Bert shared about Sugata Mitra's work. The author, Audrey Watters, evidently hasn't watched all of Mitra's TED talks, nor did she pay close attention to this one. 


For example, the videos in this talk clearly show the active participation of girls in the "Hole In The Wall" experiment. Another example is the use of the "Grannie Cloud." In an earlier talk, Mitra deals with his in depth experiments with this. 


The volunteers were not all retired teachers. Many were just older English women with the time to volunteer. They were used in conjunction with the regular classroom. Students went at least once a week (I don't recall exactly how often), in small groups (usually 4) to a computer "room" in their school where they met with their "Grannie" to discuss what they were doing in their classes. The role of the Grannie was to get them to verbalize their learnings and to be excited about what they told her.


The beautiful thing about Mitra's work is that it is collaborative, often project based, and the children are taking responsibility for their own learning. These are all good things, that, I believe, most of us favor. 


So what is the role of the teacher in this? It is actually huge! The learning environment and tasks must be carefully planned and prepared so that the children will discover the target information in the course of their group projects. This is not unlike a good science teacher preparing a lab exercise where students will discover something in the course of doing the work and remember it far longer than they would if they had merely read it in a book and regurgitated it on a test.


When I was teaching I had a saying usually attributed to Confucius (carefully hand drawn in calligraphy… no computers available to print it then) and hung above the chalkboard (old technology). It was my motto for teaching: 
"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."

It may have been first said 2500 years ago, but I believe it is still valid today. That is why I do what I do!


Caryl (Grannie B…. bring on the "cloud!")
> From: bert at freudenbergs.de
> Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2013 16:36:33 +0100
> To: iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org
> Subject: Re: [IAEP] Sugata Mitra at TED 2013
> 
> 
> On 09.03.2013, at 06:45, Caryl Bigenho <cbigenho at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Hi Folks,
> > 
> > Sugata Mitra has done it again! Watch his great new TED 2013 talk, from a month ago, where he introduces a new approach to collaborative learning… not one laptop per child, but 4 children per laptop (or desktop) in a "Self-Organized Learning Environment (SOLE)" You can catch the video of his talk here:
> > 
> > http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.html
> > 
> > He has also teamed with TED and the Huffington Post to organize a contest where teachers, parents, and other youth leaders can experiment with his SOLE model with children ages 8-12 then share their experiences. Instructions for the contest are in a guide. you can download here:
> > 
> > http://www.ted.com/pages/sole_challenge#download
> > 
> > The best thing about the guide is that it actually has generalized, customizable Lesson Plans and hints for making cooperative/collaborative learning work! Even if you can't do the contest (it ends in April) you can save the guide for future reference.
> > 
> > Unfortunately, I don't have any children 8-12 to work with, but I know many of you do. Others of you will find the lesson plans great for using in a teacher training situation… have them go through the same process the kids do and the teachers will learn by doing! 
> > 
> > Caryl
> 
> It's a great talk, as always. But read this, too, for a larger context:
> 
> http://hackeducation.com/2013/03/03/hacking-your-education-stephens-hole-in-the-wall-mitra/
> 
> (via Mark Guzdial)
> 
> - Bert -
> 
> 
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