Believing in our children

Tonight I watched a fascinating TED talk by Sugata Mitra on child directed education. Concerned that there are places not only in India but in every country where good teachers can’t or won’t go, his project makes internet enabled computers available to children, then leaves them to learn. The presentation looks at children managing their own learning, how interest can overcome language barriers* and how deep learning happens when children interact with each other. He shows how children can navigate the internet to achieve educational objectives, on their own, how they create Self Organising Learning Environments (SOLEs) and how support can come from far away.

This presentation builds on Mitra’s previous TED talk which told of the “Hole in the Wall” experiment in a New Delhi slum where children played with and learned how to use a computer without supervision or formal teaching and to teach each other.

Arthur C Clarke made a salient point in the latest presentation “If children have interest, then education will happen”

*Hear about how 12 yr old Tamil speaking students taught themselves biotechnology in English, on their own.