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.

The Three P's

From time to time I come across a snippet or a quote that I store away and have gathered quite a collection of them in recent times. I posted one a few weeks ago and when I was organising some notes, decided I should try to include one regularly. They might prove to be conversation starters and I will endeavour to include one every week or so, so keep an eye out for them.

Here is the one for this week, from Napolean Hill (he was an America author)

“Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success”

Another way to understand giftedness

I came across this snippet and followed it to read the rest of the story. It appears on an Irish blog which muses on gifted, talented and creative issues.

Sadly, this may be the situation that some gifted individuals find themselves in.

Just imagine, you have landed on a planet. On this planet people only eat a quarter of the food that you would normally eat. What is more, it is considered very bad form to request any more than the average helping, as this would be perceived as unnecessary and using more than a persons fair share.

The rest of this post is worth reading. It goes on to describe the need, the physical effects and the despairing realisation that things may not change.