Learning through a hole in the wall

A common topic in the education world is how pedagogical methods should evolve based on changes over the past century. Knowledge rates in the United States are very poor given the amount of money we spend on education. At the same time, many disadvantaged children in developing countries have limited, if any, options to attend school. There are many suggestions to address these topics, and Sugata Mitra has proposed one of them.

In Mitra’s TED talk, he describes his explorations with rural Indian children and computers. He provided some Tamil-only speaking children with a computer built into a wall in a village. Without any directions, he left them with the English based device for a couple months. When he returned, they asked for a faster processor and better mouse.

He brought the experiment further and tested the children’s knowledge on biotechnology (0%). He downloaded some relevant documents and left them to the computer again for a couple months. The children’s knowledge level increased to 30%. He then brought in a ‘grandmother’ type role where someone would encourage the students and ask basic questions. A couple months later, the children had mastered 50% of the biotechnology material and taught themselves English.

Building off of these discoveries, Mitra continued to experiment and now promotes self-organized learning environments (SOLE). He would like to build a school in the cloud where children self-educate with the encouragement of virtual ‘grandmothers’.

Between SOLE and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) movement, it seems that there are great possibilities for education around the world. However, I question the scale to which this method can be successful. Will it work for all students or only the ones who are inherently motivated? Will some students need more structure than Mitra’s method?

Regardless, information is powerful and vast information can be provided via computers. Both SOLE and OLPC are strong examples of social innovators in education and it’s hard to imagine surpassing their accomplishments. Communities and institutions should support their endeavors, but also monitor their success. Perhaps there are other solvable gaps that have not been addressed. As we watch OLPC and SOLE grow, we must also watch for the areas that continue to lack improvement. Probably, we need a cumulative effort of initiatives to meet all the needs of education.