>>Sugata Mitra: Imagine that you -- you know,
you've applied for a job, and you go in there
and your prospective employer says what can
you do, and you say I have good handwriting
and I can recite the 17 times-tables.
Now, about a hundred years ago, if you said
those two things, you would get the job because
you needed good handwriting and you needed
to be able to do arithmetic in your head because
the school was going to produce people who
would fit into a gigantic bureaucratic administrative
machine, a computer made up of people. Everybody
had to be identical. Everybody had to get
50 out of a hundred in everything and fit
in.
But today, you won't get that job.
Today, we've actually got computers, real
computers, which are made up of little pieces
of electronics.
So guess what? We can be people again.
So I was kind of bumped into all of this through
a set of experiments called Hole-in-the-Wall,
and it was called Hole-in-the-Wall because
it involved putting computers embedded into
walls and buildings and that sort of thing
and left for children to play with. And they
had the Internet on it.
And what was surprising in those days was
we found that children would actually be able
to operate all that, children who had never
seen a computer before or didn't know any
English would actually learn to operate computers
and do, well, Google searches in about four
months' time.
And it was very surprising at that time. Not
so surprising now because two-and-a-half-year-olds
learn how to use an iPad by themselves, but
it was quite surprising then. And here is
sort of a brief glimpse of that. So that was
my very first experiment. On the right, this
eight-year-old boy. On the left, his student,
a six-year-old girl. And he was teaching her
how to browse.
But none of them go to school, know English
or anything.
[ Video playing ]
>>Sugata Mitra: More of the experiments.
[ Video ends ]
>>Sugata Mitra: So all unsupervised, and things
they did kind of taught themselves, which
is unusual.
So we measured all of this and discovered
that groups of children, if given a computer
connected to the Internet and left for a while,
in a nine-month period would become -- or
would learn to do what the average office
secretary in the west does.
So in those days, that raised a lot of questions
about what's training them in this environment,
what does it all mean.
And I wasn't really very sure of anything
other than the fact that this happens. Every
time you do it, it happens.
Then I started to watch the children, see
what would they do if I continued with this,
if I left the computer there.
And on the average, about four months down
the line, they run into Google, and they start
Googling their homework. And the slum teachers
in Delhi, New Delhi where I was doing this,
they started saying, you know, the children
have changed a lot. Their English has become
near perfect.
[ Laughter ]
>>Sugata Mitra: And you know, this the quality
of their work is very deep and so on.
So, and I was thinking to my of, my God, what
have I done? Is this learning?
And guess what? About seven years later I
would get the answer to that question, is
it learning, and I will get it of all places
from northeastern England.
I continued to see how far children would
go with their -- this kind of self-organized
behavior. Self- -- I called it minimally invasive
or self-organized learning.
Amongst the many experiments, there was one
school in Hyderabad in southern India where
the problem was of English pronunciation.
The children were going to school, they were
learning English, but the English was taught
by these local language speakers, Telugu-speaking
teachers, so the children would pick up their
accent.
When they applied for a job, then the interview
board says, you know, your English is very
good but we can't quite understand what you're
saying. So that didn't help much.
So I thought, well, let me tackle that problem,
and I did that by giving the children a computer
with a speech-to-text engine on it, asked
them to talk into the computer. So they spoke
and the computer typed complete nonsense.
So the children said it doesn't understand
anything that we're saying.
So I said I'll tell you what. I'll leave this
computer here and I'll go away, and you have
to make yourselves understood. So the children
said how? And I invented my first pedagogical
principle. I said I have no idea.
[ Laughter ]
>>Sugata Mitra: I left them with the computer.
When I came back, I saw this little fellow
outside the classroom, outside of the school
so I said to him in English, I said, "Faisan,
how are you?" And Faisan looks up at me and
says, "Fantastic." I said, good Lord, what's
happening here? And so I went in and I found
that they had downloaded something called
the Speaking Oxford Dictionary. The dictionary
would say words to them. They would repeat
the words back to the computer and check if
the computer was typing it right, and they
would correct each other's pronunciation.
In other words, they invented pedagogy, which
is what teachers are supposed to do. Here's
a little look at that.
[ Video playing ]
>>> Yes, he is my cousin.
>>> Computer. Yes, he is my cousin.
>>> Yes, he is my cousin.
>>Sugata Mitra: They compare each others,
but all invented by themselves. And by the
way, several of these little girls, you might
actually know them because two of them work
in call centers in Hyderabad. Might have tried
to sell you a credit card.
[ Laughter ]
>>Sugata Mitra: So I continued, and about
seven years ago Newcastle University called
me and said we've got a large research grant
to improve schooling in India, and we think
you should head this and you should help with
this.
So I came over to Newcastle. In Newcastle,
the question which the faculty asked was how
far can this go? Are you trying to say that
this can impact schooling?
So I didn't have an answer to that and I decided
to make -- to find out.
I made a research question. The research question
was can Tamil-speaking 12-year-old children
in an Indian village learn the bio technology
of DNA replication in English from a roadside
computer on their own?
And I thought this is an excellent social
science question. I would give them an examination
to start with. They would get a zero. I would
come back after a couple of months, give them
an examination again. They would get another
zero. I would go back to Newcastle and say,
"We need teachers."
I found a village, and I -- they already had
a Hole-in-the-Wall computer, so I put -- downloaded
some material off the Internet on genetics,
DNA and how it reproduces. The children came
rushing in and said, "What you are doing?
Are you installing a game?"
I said, "No, it's not a game. It's something
very interesting but I'm afraid it's all in
English."
So the children took a look and said, "Well,
how can we understand this? It's terrible.
It's got big words. It's chemistry."
And so I used my pedagogical principle, and
I said, "I have no idea, actually, how you'll
understand it, and anyway, I'm going away."
[ Laughter ]
>>Sugata Mitra: So I left them.
I came after two months. The children marched
in and said, "We've understood nothing."
So I said, "Well, what do you expect? So how
did you come to that conclusion?"
They said, "No, we look at it every day."
So I said, "You look at it every day and still
you don't understand a thing. Why do you look
at it anyway?"
So one little girl then says to me, "Well,
apart from the fact that improper replication
of the DNA molecule causes genetic disease,
we've understand nothing else."
[ Laughter ]
>>Sugata Mitra: So here she is. That's a village
called Kallikuppam. It changed my life, actually.
[ Video starts ]
>>Sugata Mitra: Where is it? Where is it?
Neuron?
>>> Neuron. Neuron.
[ Video stops ]
>>Sugata Mitra: That last bit, I didn't get
the camera angled right but what she was saying
was "neurons communicate" with her hands like
that. You know, the dendrites?
So I came back and I measured and they'd gone
from zero to 30% in two months, an utter educational
impossibility if you look at the circumstances.
But I couldn't go back to England with these
results because 30% in the Victorian system
is a fail. So how do I get them another 20
marks? I can't get a teacher over there.
What I did find was a young girl who was a
great friend of the children and she used
to -- and I told her, "Can you teach some
more biotechnology?"
She said "No. I didn't have any science in
school. I have no idea what the kids are doing
under that tree with the computer all day
long. I can't help you."
So I said at that point -- I don't know why
I thought that way -- I said, "Use the method
of a grandmother."
She said, "What's that?"
I said, "Stand behind them and every time
they do anything, say 'Wow, fantastic, how
do you do that?'"
[ Laughter ]
>>Sugata Mitra: "'Can you do a bit more? When
I was your age, I could never have done anything
like that.'"
So she did -- she did that for two months.
[ Laughter ]
>>Sugata Mitra: The scores jumped to 50%.
The children in Kuppam had caught up with
my control school in New Delhi with a trained
biotechnology teacher in a rich private school.
When I saw that graph, I thought to myself,
"There's another way. You missed it all along
but there is another way."
So I came back to Newcastle looking for grandmothers.
I put out a request in the local paper saying,
"If you are a British grandmother, if you
have broadband and a web camera can you give
me one hour of your time for free?"
In the first two weeks, I got 200. I know
more British grandmothers than anybody.
[ Laughter ]
>>Sugata Mitra: So what happens in northeastern
England in the schools that I'm working with
is that children research big questions by
themselves. If they need help, whether they're
in northeastern England or whether in southern
India, I have what's called the granny cloud.
The granny cloud sits up on the Internet,
and whenever there's a child in trouble we
beam a Gram and she goes over Skype and appears
on his wall. You'll see a bit of that.
[ Video starts ]
>>> Sugata's new teaching methods have now
also arrived on these shores. The lessons
learned from his very first experiment in
India with Hole in the Wall computers are
now being applied to schools in Gateshead.
>>Sugata MitraThe process is that you take
a group of children. You ask them to make
groups of four. Each group of four is allowed
to use one computer with an Internet connection.
And then you trigger off the system with a
question. That question's absolutely critical.
>>> What I want you to find out for me today
is: Where does language come from?
>>> Where are you going to start looking?
[ Video stops ]
>>Sugata Mitra: I'm going to skip ahead.
What happened next was basically they explored
and they came to anthropology and they figured
out where language came from. They were working,
these kids, easily 10 years ahead of their
time.
Do they retain this? Yes, they do. I have
measurements now which show that they retain
it for years and years because they found
it out for themselves.
I started working with children in poorer
areas of northeastern England, and I saw that
I could change their aspirations by showing
them TED talks and then having them research
what they've seen in the TED talk.
Between Google, Skype, and TED, the children
could be lifted a decade ahead of their time.
I'll just go one step ahead.
So what I'm creating right now, I've called
self-organized learning environments. They're
like little cybercafés for children.
What I'm going to do is to have such facilities
set up in really remote places where you cannot
build schools. They'll be stand-alone facilities
operated entirely by the granny cloud over
the Internet.
Just to get a little glimpse of that, I started
the first of these experiments about three
years ago.
[ Video starts ]
>>> That's right. As fast as you can.
>>> As fast as you can.
>>> You can't catch me.
You say it.
You can't catch me.
>>> You can't catch me.
>>> I'm the gingerbread man!
>>> I'm the gingerbread man!
>>> Well done! Very good! So again --
[ Video stops ]
>>Sugata Mitra: 5,000 miles apart.
So what do we need to build a school in the
cloud?
Well, I need free electricity and I need free
broadband. I think children all over the planet
should have free electricity and free broadband.
I need a curriculum which is made up of big
questions. What do I mean by a big question?
A question that children will engage with.
So for example, if you want to teach a class
about cell expression, biological cell expression,
if you say, "Children, today we're going to
do biological cell expression," they'll fall
asleep.
Instead of that, what you can say is, "Guess
what. I have a question. Why is it that women
cannot grow beards?"
Try it. It will get you cell expression very
quickly.
Self-organized and a fault-tolerant technology,
things that repair themselves. Self-organized
examination, self-organized assessment.
We don't want to produce (indiscernible).
We want to produce people. Who can make people?
The people can make people. And finally, if
we can do this over the cloud, then it can
be anywhere under any circumstance.
We could eventually level the playing field,
and that would, I think, change the world.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>>Sugata Mitra: Thank you. Thank you. Thank
you.
>>Jon Snow: Sugata, that was fantastic. Really
fantastic.
And what I -- you didn't reveal is that when
you went to Newcastle, you went and did what
all academics do and lived in a cluster of
posh houses out on the edge of town and you
went walking in the wild and now you've moved
to Gateshead and you live in a miner's cottage
next door to an alcoholic and on the other
side -- what's the other guy?
>>Sugata Mitra: Never mind. He might be listening
to this.
>>Jon Snow: He might be listening. Even if
he's not, you might tell him to find out what
you said.
>>Sugata Mitra: Well, it's a different England.
If any of you ever want to visit, come on
over. I'll show you a proper pony and trap
and you can get a ride up to the university
from my house for about 20 quid.
>>Jon Snow: The point is you go into the schools
in that area around you, some of the poorer
areas, and I'm wondering how radical does
the reset in education have to be?
At the moment, the kids sit at desks. They
have a teacher in front of them. There may
be a few computers in the classroom. Where
do we go from there?
>>Sugata Mitra: Well, I think it's mostly
a question of how you think about education
and whether what I'm -- what I started this
talk with, by saying being prepared to fit
a machine that doesn't exist anymore is on
its way out.
If --
>>Jon Snow: You know, that's clear, but I
want to find out what the classroom looks
like. I mean, do I go to school anymore?
>>Sugata Mitra: You do. You go to a school
which looks like a children's club, like a
cybercafé for children. It's got computers
but it's not one computer per child. You have
to --
>>Jon Snow: How do I test each individual
child to ensure that they are each progressing
to a point of delivery?
>>Sugata Mitra: You simply measure who is
progressing in what subject and up to what
extent.
So it's possible that I might have progressed
a lot in painting and I do terribly in mathematics,
but we live in a world where that's all right.
>>Jon Snow: Yeah. But there's going to have
to be intervention at some point, right?
>>Sugata Mitra: Yes. And that's why I have
those grannies.
So the intervention is in the form of admiration.
>>Jon Snow: But it's not hello granny, goodbye
teacher.
>>Sugata Mitra: No, of course not. The teacher
has a big job. The teacher's job is to create
the big question which will drive the whole
system.
>>Jon Snow: Now, at the moment you can see
that by having clusters of four or five around
one computer, you have human interaction,
there's no danger of being burrowed into the
computer, but once you give everybody an iPad,
which will come soon enough, then they'll
become surely much more myopic, they'll become
much more burrowed into the computer, and
no longer relate to each other. Or do they?
>>Sugata Mitra: Well, I mean, that's not just
children. It's -- all of us spend most of
our lives now staring at our ties, you know,
like that (indicating). Even couples sitting
next to each other do that. So that's something
we have to face.
But in my --
>>Jon Snow: Yeah. But the danger is that at
least that doesn't happen until you're about
15, but now you're talking about a situation
which will start happening at 2 1/2.
>>Sugata Mitra: Except in the school, if they
follow my method, because in the school the
whole method is about talking to each other,
clustering around the computer.
>>Jon Snow: The incredible thing is that your
map, in the end, doesn't depend on computing,
it depends on electricity.
>>Sugata Mitra: Yeah, that's true, actually.
>>Jon Snow: So in many ways, the investment
has now to be in alternative forms of energy
production on a scale we've never dreamt of.
>>Sugata Mitra: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
And I'm looking at solar as that possible
solution.
>>Jon Snow: But then how do you also deliver
the technology, the iPad, to that? It's never
going to come down to $5 an iPad, is it?
>>Sugata Mitra: It really probably will. It
will probably be -- if I look 25 years ahead,
it will probably be free in some form or the
other, like a ballpoint pen is.
>>Jon Snow: You mean you will come out of
the maternity unit carrying an iPad?
>>Sugata Mitra: Carrying a -- yeah. Unless
you're born with it inside your head.
>>Jon Snow: The state will provide you an
iPad as you come out of the hospital.
>>Sugata Mitra: It may not exist as a physical
device, you know. It might just be inside
somewhere.
>>Jon Snow: Not a buried chip.
>>Sugata Mitra: Not necessarily there. It
could be in your kidney or somewhere, but
--
[ Laughter ]
>>Jon Snow: I think on that adventurous thought,
thank you very, very, very much for a fantastic
talk.
>>Sugata Mitra: Thank you.
[ Applause ]
