Posted by
Dave Thomson
at
23:10
Professor Sugata Mitra is an advocate of allowing children to use their innate abilities to learn through the use of technology and learning in groups. He is currently Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK.
His now famous Hole in the Wall experiment was the inspiration for the Indian author Vikas Swarup to write his first novel which was then to become the movie Slumdog Millionaire!
The hole in the wall experiment involved placing a computer kiosk in the wall of an Indian slum in Dehli to observe how children would use it. The experiment was established to prove that children could learn how to use computers without any formal training. The experiment has since been repeated at many places in India, Cambodia, Africa and within the UK with amazing results.
The HIWEL (Hole In the Wall Education Ltd) team have undertaken both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the various experiments covering a range of measures such as Academic performance and Peer to Peer Learning Patterns.
What this might say about the education of children in developed countries is both interesting and challenging as Professor Mitra says that his findings are not restricted poor families in other countries but for any child which could be said to be 'remote'. He suggests that the word 'remote' could apply to children in rural locations or in cities anywhere in the world.
If children can work collaboratively to solve shared problems using technology to support their learning and they appear to do this more effectively than would otherwise be the case then why do we need teachers?
What Professor Mitra is saying does not actually remove teachers but it does change their role and it raises important questions about our approach to teaching and learning, particularly for very young children and opportunities they have for working with technology in groups.
Professor Mitra suggest that what we tend to find in the West is lots of children with computers of their own, working on their own and not in groups. Schools could well pick up some of his ideas and focus on creating opportunities for what he terms 'Minimal Invasive Education. He is also clear that working on their own is significantly less effective that working together.
Interesting to consider whether the collaboration always needs to be working together on the same machine rather than working in online communities.
Interesting to consider whether the collaboration always needs to be working together on the same machine rather than working in online communities.
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For me, this ingenious experiment makes me wonder how one can measure the importance of different facets of collaborative learning.
What are the necessary/sufficient criteria for learning to self organise?
Is collaboration better or worse when participants can push each other out the way?
How important is being able hear your collaborators?
Is it better to have fewer computers than people (as is the case with pair programming)?
(Software developers sometimes use a collaborative process called pair-programming.)
There again, didn't the children say:
"We need a faster processor and a better mouse"
... sounds like developers - perhaps they were pair programming!
The additional point about learning borrowing technology stacks is so true. Education deserves unique solutions to its unique needs. Too many solutions simply say wiki(or whatever)=collaboration - just because a wiki is A solution to a colloborative problem it doesn't make it THE solution to all collaborative problems. I'm self-censoring a rant here.
We're seeing interesting ideas like stackOverflow (wiki/forum/voting solution to meet the needs of developers). I'd be interested to hear what the facets of a learning collaborative platform would look like (without referencing back to an existing technology).