TED2013
Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud
Filmed:
Readability: 3.1
3,417,649 views
Onstage at TED2013, Sugata Mitra makes his bold TED Prize wish: Help me design the School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can explore and learn from each other -- using resources and mentoring from the cloud. Hear his inspiring vision for Self Organized Learning Environments.
Sugata Mitra - Education researcher
Educational researcher Sugata Mitra is the winner of the 2013 TED Prize. His wish: Build a School in the Cloud, where children can explore and learn from one another. Full bio
Educational researcher Sugata Mitra is the winner of the 2013 TED Prize. His wish: Build a School in the Cloud, where children can explore and learn from one another. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:17
What is going to be the future of learning?
0
1274
5416
00:22
I do have a plan,
1
6690
2280
00:24
but in order for me to tell you what that plan is,
2
8970
3080
00:27
I need to tell you a little story,
3
12050
2970
00:30
which kind of sets the stage.
4
15020
2846
00:33
I tried to look at
5
17866
1787
00:35
where did the kind of learning we do in schools,
6
19653
3407
00:38
where did it come from?
7
23060
2270
00:41
And you can look far back into the past,
8
25330
2432
00:43
but if you look at present-day schooling the way it is,
9
27762
3813
00:47
it's quite easy to figure out where it came from.
10
31575
3702
00:51
It came from about 300 years ago,
11
35277
3948
00:55
and it came from the last
12
39225
2217
00:57
and the biggest of the empires on this planet. ["The British Empire"]
13
41442
2968
01:00
Imagine trying to run the show,
14
44410
2345
01:02
trying to run the entire planet,
15
46755
2408
01:05
without computers, without telephones,
16
49163
3824
01:08
with data handwritten on pieces of paper,
17
52987
4132
01:13
and traveling by ships.
18
57119
3550
01:16
But the Victorians actually did it.
19
60669
2154
01:18
What they did was amazing.
20
62823
3168
01:21
They created a global computer
21
65991
3312
01:25
made up of people.
22
69303
3056
01:28
It's still with us today.
23
72359
1793
01:30
It's called the bureaucratic administrative machine.
24
74152
5979
01:36
In order to have that machine running,
25
80131
3327
01:39
you need lots and lots of people.
26
83458
3201
01:42
They made another machine to produce those people:
27
86659
4359
01:46
the school.
28
91018
2896
01:49
The schools would produce the people
29
93914
2777
01:52
who would then become parts of the
30
96691
3849
01:56
bureaucratic administrative machine.
31
100540
3385
01:59
They must be identical to each other.
32
103925
4390
02:04
They must know three things:
33
108315
2157
02:06
They must have good handwriting, because the data is handwritten;
34
110472
3040
02:09
they must be able to read;
35
113512
2155
02:11
and they must be able to do multiplication,
36
115667
2279
02:13
division, addition and subtraction in their head.
37
117946
3663
02:17
They must be so identical that you could pick one up from New Zealand
38
121609
3527
02:21
and ship them to Canada
39
125136
2335
02:23
and he would be instantly functional.
40
127471
4081
02:27
The Victorians were great engineers.
41
131552
2869
02:30
They engineered a system that was so robust
42
134421
3489
02:33
that it's still with us today,
43
137910
2455
02:36
continuously producing identical people
44
140365
3976
02:40
for a machine that no longer exists.
45
144341
4816
02:45
The empire is gone,
46
149157
2928
02:47
so what are we doing with that design
47
152085
2904
02:50
that produces these identical people,
48
154989
2369
02:53
and what are we going to do next
49
157358
2903
02:56
if we ever are going to do anything else with it?
50
160261
3920
03:00
["Schools as we know them are obsolete"]
51
164181
1690
03:01
So that's a pretty strong comment there.
52
165871
1892
03:03
I said schools as we know them now, they're obsolete.
53
167763
3794
03:07
I'm not saying they're broken.
54
171557
1734
03:09
It's quite fashionable to say that the education system's broken.
55
173291
2997
03:12
It's not broken. It's wonderfully constructed.
56
176288
3651
03:15
It's just that we don't need it anymore. It's outdated.
57
179939
6226
03:22
What are the kind of jobs that we have today?
58
186165
2407
03:24
Well, the clerks are the computers.
59
188572
2134
03:26
They're there in thousands in every office.
60
190706
2531
03:29
And you have people who guide those computers
61
193237
3205
03:32
to do their clerical jobs.
62
196442
2477
03:34
Those people don't need to be able to write beautifully by hand.
63
198919
3264
03:38
They don't need to be able to multiply numbers in their heads.
64
202183
3032
03:41
They do need to be able to read.
65
205215
2272
03:43
In fact, they need to be able to read discerningly.
66
207487
4150
03:47
Well, that's today, but we don't even know
67
211637
3107
03:50
what the jobs of the future are going to look like.
68
214744
2559
03:53
We know that people will work from wherever they want,
69
217303
2644
03:55
whenever they want, in whatever way they want.
70
219947
3198
03:59
How is present-day schooling going to prepare them
71
223145
4188
04:03
for that world?
72
227333
2543
04:05
Well, I bumped into this whole thing completely by accident.
73
229876
5048
04:10
I used to teach people how to write computer programs
74
234924
2632
04:13
in New Delhi, 14 years ago.
75
237556
2464
04:15
And right next to where I used to work, there was a slum.
76
240020
3757
04:19
And I used to think, how on Earth are those kids
77
243777
2587
04:22
ever going to learn to write computer programs?
78
246364
2520
04:24
Or should they not?
79
248884
3080
04:27
At the same time, we also had lots of parents,
80
251964
2617
04:30
rich people, who had computers,
81
254581
2431
04:32
and who used to tell me, "You know, my son,
82
257012
3131
04:36
I think he's gifted,
83
260143
2189
04:38
because he does wonderful things with computers.
84
262332
2874
04:41
And my daughter -- oh, surely she is extra-intelligent."
85
265206
3976
04:45
And so on. So I suddenly figured that,
86
269182
2108
04:47
how come all the rich people are having
87
271290
1796
04:48
these extraordinarily gifted children?
88
273086
2141
04:51
(Laughter)
89
275227
1915
04:53
What did the poor do wrong?
90
277142
2824
04:55
I made a hole in the boundary wall
91
279966
3003
04:58
of the slum next to my office,
92
282969
2032
05:00
and stuck a computer inside it just to see what would happen
93
285001
2744
05:03
if I gave a computer to children who never would have one,
94
287745
2984
05:06
didn't know any English, didn't know what the Internet was.
95
290729
3336
05:09
The children came running in.
96
294065
952
05:10
It was three feet off the ground, and they said, "What is this?"
97
295017
2170
05:13
And I said, "Yeah, it's, I don't know."
98
297187
2984
05:16
(Laughter)
99
300171
2216
05:18
They said, "Why have you put it there?"
100
302387
2556
05:20
I said, "Just like that."
101
304943
1215
05:22
And they said, "Can we touch it?"I said, "If you wish to."
102
306158
3009
05:25
And I went away.
103
309167
2377
05:27
About eight hours later,
104
311544
1744
05:29
we found them browsing and teaching each other how to browse.
105
313288
2955
05:32
So I said, "Well that's impossible, because --
106
316243
2497
05:34
How is it possible? They don't know anything."
107
318740
3541
05:38
My colleagues said, "No, it's a simple solution.
108
322281
2864
05:41
One of your students must have been passing by,
109
325145
2823
05:43
showed them how to use the mouse."
110
327968
2095
05:45
So I said, "Yeah, that's possible."
111
330063
1523
05:47
So I repeated the experiment. I went 300 miles out of Delhi
112
331586
3059
05:50
into a really remote village
113
334645
1991
05:52
where the chances of a passing software development engineer
114
336636
3792
05:56
was very little. (Laughter)
115
340428
4416
06:00
I repeated the experiment there.
116
344844
2663
06:03
There was no place to stay, so I stuck my computer in,
117
347507
2287
06:05
I went away, came back after a couple of months,
118
349794
2200
06:07
found kids playing games on it.
119
351994
1695
06:09
When they saw me, they said,
120
353689
951
06:10
"We want a faster processor and a better mouse."
121
354640
2482
06:13
(Laughter)
122
357122
4294
06:17
So I said, "How on Earth do you know all this?"
123
361416
3409
06:20
And they said something very interesting to me.
124
364825
2455
06:23
In an irritated voice, they said,
125
367280
1665
06:24
"You've given us a machine that works only in English,
126
368945
2553
06:27
so we had to teach ourselves English in order to use it." (Laughter)
127
371498
6085
06:33
That's the first time, as a teacher,
128
377583
1977
06:35
that I had heard the word "teach ourselves" said so casually.
129
379560
5091
06:40
Here's a short glimpse from those years.
130
384651
3602
06:44
That's the first day at the Hole in the Wall.
131
388253
2647
06:46
On your right is an eight-year-old.
132
390900
2238
06:49
To his left is his student. She's six.
133
393138
5720
06:54
And he's teaching her how to browse.
134
398858
3597
06:58
Then onto other parts of the country,
135
402455
3286
07:01
I repeated this over and over again,
136
405741
2283
07:03
getting exactly the same results that we were.
137
408024
3445
07:07
["Hole in the wall film - 1999"]
138
411469
3927
07:11
An eight-year-old telling his elder sister what to do.
139
415396
4265
07:20
And finally a girl explaining in Marathi what it is,
140
424460
5557
07:25
and said, "There's a processor inside."
141
430017
4249
07:30
So I started publishing.
142
434266
2493
07:32
I published everywhere. I wrote down and measured everything,
143
436759
2555
07:35
and I said, in nine months, a group of children
144
439314
2202
07:37
left alone with a computer in any language
145
441516
2698
07:40
will reach the same standard as an office secretary in the West.
146
444214
4515
07:44
I'd seen it happen over and over and over again.
147
448729
4760
07:49
But I was curious to know, what else would they do
148
453489
2732
07:52
if they could do this much?
149
456221
2240
07:54
I started experimenting with other subjects,
150
458461
2528
07:56
among them, for example, pronunciation.
151
460989
2968
07:59
There's one community of children in southern India
152
463957
2448
08:02
whose English pronunciation is really bad,
153
466405
2768
08:05
and they needed good pronunciation because that would improve their jobs.
154
469173
3520
08:08
I gave them a speech-to-text engine in a computer,
155
472693
4078
08:12
and I said, "Keep talking into it until it types what you say."
156
476771
3274
08:15
(Laughter)
157
480045
4632
08:20
They did that, and watch a little bit of this.
158
484677
5184
08:25
Computer: Nice to meet you.Child: Nice to meet you.
159
489861
5512
08:31
Sugata Mitra: The reason I ended with the face
160
495373
2271
08:33
of this young lady over there is because I suspect many of you know her.
161
497644
3817
08:37
She has now joined a call center in Hyderabad
162
501461
3496
08:40
and may have tortured you about your credit card bills
163
504957
4722
08:45
in a very clear English accent.
164
509679
4773
08:50
So then people said, well, how far will it go?
165
514452
4377
08:54
Where does it stop?
166
518829
1570
08:56
I decided I would destroy my own argument
167
520399
3363
08:59
by creating an absurd proposition.
168
523762
2504
09:02
I made a hypothesis, a ridiculous hypothesis.
169
526266
3888
09:06
Tamil is a south Indian language, and I said,
170
530154
1804
09:07
can Tamil-speaking children in a south Indian village
171
531958
2645
09:10
learn the biotechnology of DNA replication in English
172
534603
3505
09:14
from a streetside computer?
173
538108
2247
09:16
And I said, I'll measure them. They'll get a zero.
174
540355
2185
09:18
I'll spend a couple of months, I'll leave it for a couple of months,
175
542540
3054
09:21
I'll go back, they'll get another zero.
176
545594
2304
09:23
I'll go back to the lab and say, we need teachers.
177
547898
4356
09:28
I found a village. It was called Kallikuppam in southern India.
178
552254
4063
09:32
I put in Hole in the Wall computers there,
179
556317
2677
09:34
downloaded all kinds of stuff from the Internet about DNA replication,
180
558994
3687
09:38
most of which I didn't understand.
181
562681
3305
09:41
The children came rushing, said, "What's all this?"
182
565986
2977
09:44
So I said, "It's very topical, very important. But it's all in English."
183
568963
5008
09:49
So they said, "How can we understand such big English words
184
573971
3354
09:53
and diagrams and chemistry?"
185
577325
2078
09:55
So by now, I had developed a new pedagogical method,
186
579403
2824
09:58
so I applied that. I said, "I haven't the foggiest idea."
187
582227
2884
10:01
(Laughter)
188
585111
3195
10:04
"And anyway, I am going away."
189
588306
2950
10:07
(Laughter)
190
591256
4368
10:11
So I left them for a couple of months.
191
595624
3589
10:15
They'd got a zero. I gave them a test.
192
599213
2635
10:17
I came back after two months
193
601848
924
10:18
and the children trooped in and said, "We've understood nothing."
194
602772
3660
10:22
So I said, "Well, what did I expect?"
195
606432
2075
10:24
So I said, "Okay, but how long did it take you
196
608507
4085
10:28
before you decided that you can't understand anything?"
197
612592
2761
10:31
So they said, "We haven't given up.
198
615353
1948
10:33
We look at it every single day."
199
617301
1976
10:35
So I said, "What? You don't understand these screens
200
619277
2465
10:37
and you keep staring at it for two months? What for?"
201
621742
2704
10:40
So a little girl who you see just now,
202
624446
2513
10:42
she raised her hand, and she says to me in broken Tamil and English,
203
626959
2732
10:45
she said, "Well, apart from the fact that
204
629691
2197
10:47
improper replication of the DNA molecule causes disease,
205
631888
3151
10:50
we haven't understood anything else."
206
635039
2521
10:53
(Laughter) (Applause)
207
637560
5712
10:59
So I tested them.
208
643272
4120
11:03
I got an educational impossibility, zero to 30 percent
209
647392
3272
11:06
in two months in the tropical heat
210
650664
2304
11:08
with a computer under the tree in a language they didn't know
211
652968
3440
11:12
doing something that's a decade ahead of their time.
212
656408
3072
11:15
Absurd. But I had to follow the Victorian norm.
213
659480
5377
11:20
Thirty percent is a fail.
214
664857
3400
11:24
How do I get them to pass? I have to get them 20 more marks.
215
668257
2936
11:27
I couldn't find a teacher. What I did find was a friend that they had,
216
671193
4837
11:31
a 22-year-old girl who was an accountant
217
676030
2386
11:34
and she played with them all the time.
218
678416
2448
11:36
So I asked this girl, "Can you help them?"
219
680864
2121
11:38
So she says, "Absolutely not.
220
682985
2271
11:41
I didn't have science in school. I have no idea
221
685256
3077
11:44
what they're doing under that tree all day long. I can't help you."
222
688333
4529
11:48
I said, "I'll tell you what. Use the method of the grandmother."
223
692862
4531
11:53
So she says, "What's that?"
224
697393
1330
11:54
I said, "Stand behind them.
225
698723
1387
11:56
Whenever they do anything, you just say,
226
700110
1606
11:57
'Well, wow, I mean, how did you do that?
227
701732
2781
12:00
What's the next page? Gosh, when I was your age, I could have never done that.'
228
704529
3096
12:03
You know what grannies do."
229
707625
2922
12:06
So she did that for two more months.
230
710547
2174
12:08
The scores jumped to 50 percent.
231
712721
2914
12:11
Kallikuppam had caught up
232
715635
1654
12:13
with my control school in New Delhi,
233
717289
1878
12:15
a rich private school with a trained biotechnology teacher.
234
719167
4136
12:19
When I saw that graph I knew there is a way to level the playing field.
235
723303
4837
12:24
Here's Kallikuppam.
236
728140
2096
12:26
(Children speaking) Neurons ... communication.
237
730236
8195
12:34
I got the camera angle wrong. That one is just amateur stuff,
238
738431
3691
12:38
but what she was saying, as you could make out,
239
742122
2496
12:40
was about neurons, with her hands were like that,
240
744618
2407
12:42
and she was saying neurons communicate.
241
747025
3556
12:46
At 12.
242
750581
3344
12:49
So what are jobs going to be like?
243
753925
3210
12:53
Well, we know what they're like today.
244
757135
2291
12:55
What's learning going to be like? We know what it's like today,
245
759426
2338
12:57
children pouring over with their mobile phones on the one hand
246
761764
3053
13:00
and then reluctantly going to school to pick up their books with their other hand.
247
764817
3773
13:04
What will it be tomorrow?
248
768590
3959
13:08
Could it be that we don't need to go to school at all?
249
772549
4900
13:13
Could it be that, at the point in time when you need to know something,
250
777449
3540
13:16
you can find out in two minutes?
251
780989
3320
13:20
Could it be -- a devastating question,
252
784309
4105
13:24
a question that was framed for me by Nicholas Negroponte --
253
788414
2792
13:27
could it be that we are heading towards or maybe in
254
791206
3039
13:30
a future where knowing is obsolete?
255
794245
3360
13:33
But that's terrible. We are homo sapiens.
256
797605
2533
13:36
Knowing, that's what distinguishes us from the apes.
257
800138
3917
13:39
But look at it this way.
258
804055
1777
13:41
It took nature 100 million years
259
805832
2546
13:44
to make the ape stand up
260
808378
2136
13:46
and become Homo sapiens.
261
810514
2184
13:48
It took us only 10,000 to make knowing obsolete.
262
812698
3696
13:52
What an achievement that is.
263
816394
2182
13:54
But we have to integrate that into our own future.
264
818576
4027
13:58
Encouragement seems to be the key.
265
822603
2959
14:01
If you look at Kuppam,
266
825562
1210
14:02
if you look at all of the experiments that I did,
267
826772
2814
14:05
it was simply saying, "Wow," saluting learning.
268
829586
7135
14:12
There is evidence from neuroscience.
269
836721
2394
14:15
The reptilian part of our brain, which sits in the center of our brain,
270
839115
3202
14:18
when it's threatened, it shuts down everything else,
271
842317
3736
14:21
it shuts down the prefrontal cortex, the parts which learn,
272
846053
3678
14:25
it shuts all of that down.
273
849731
2744
14:28
Punishment and examinations are seen as threats.
274
852475
4148
14:32
We take our children, we make them shut their brains down,
275
856623
3625
14:36
and then we say, "Perform."
276
860248
2696
14:38
Why did they create a system like that?
277
862944
3481
14:42
Because it was needed.
278
866425
1646
14:43
There was an age in the Age of Empires
279
868071
2585
14:46
when you needed those people who can survive under threat.
280
870656
4270
14:50
When you're standing in a trench all alone,
281
874926
2267
14:53
if you could have survived, you're okay, you've passed.
282
877193
4031
14:57
If you didn't, you failed.
283
881224
2973
15:00
But the Age of Empires is gone.
284
884197
2656
15:02
What happens to creativity in our age?
285
886853
3638
15:06
We need to shift that balance back
286
890491
3015
15:09
from threat to pleasure.
287
893506
3409
15:12
I came back to England looking for British grandmothers.
288
896915
3952
15:16
I put out notices in papers saying,
289
900867
3017
15:19
if you are a British grandmother, if you have broadband and a web camera,
290
903884
3420
15:23
can you give me one hour of your time per week for free?
291
907304
3227
15:26
I got 200 in the first two weeks.
292
910531
2112
15:28
I know more British grandmothers than anyone in the universe. (Laughter)
293
912643
4908
15:33
They're called the Granny Cloud.
294
917551
3815
15:37
The Granny Cloud sits on the Internet.
295
921366
1730
15:38
If there's a child in trouble, we beam a Gran.
296
923096
4374
15:43
She goes on over Skype and she sorts things out.
297
927470
3569
15:46
I've seen them do it from a village called Diggles
298
931039
3619
15:50
in northwestern England,
299
934658
2045
15:52
deep inside a village in Tamil Nadu, India,
300
936703
3304
15:55
6,000 miles away.
301
940007
2240
15:58
She does it with only one age-old gesture.
302
942247
3576
16:01
"Shhh."
303
945823
1715
16:03
Okay?
304
947538
2725
16:06
Watch this.
305
950263
1536
16:07
Grandmother: You can't catch me. You say it.
306
951799
4256
16:11
You can't catch me.
307
956055
3768
16:15
Children: You can't catch me.
308
959823
2968
16:18
Grandmother: I'm the Gingerbread Man.Children: I'm the Gingerbread Man.
309
962791
5582
16:24
Grandmother: Well done! Very good.
310
968373
4590
16:28
SM: So what's happening here?
311
972963
2458
16:31
I think what we need to look at is
312
975421
1844
16:33
we need to look at learning
313
977265
2381
16:35
as the product of educational self-organization.
314
979646
4588
16:40
If you allow the educational process to self-organize,
315
984234
2845
16:42
then learning emerges.
316
987079
2491
16:45
It's not about making learning happen.
317
989570
2393
16:47
It's about letting it happen.
318
991963
2216
16:50
The teacher sets the process in motion
319
994179
3273
16:53
and then she stands back in awe
320
997452
2719
16:56
and watches as learning happens.
321
1000171
2368
16:58
I think that's what all this is pointing at.
322
1002539
2953
17:01
But how will we know? How will we come to know?
323
1005492
2752
17:04
Well, I intend to build
324
1008244
1675
17:05
these Self-Organized Learning Environments.
325
1009919
3301
17:09
They are basically broadband, collaboration
326
1013220
3685
17:12
and encouragement put together.
327
1016905
2393
17:15
I've tried this in many, many schools.
328
1019298
1706
17:16
It's been tried all over the world, and teachers
329
1021004
2535
17:19
sort of stand back and say, "It just happens by itself?"
330
1023539
3626
17:23
And I said, "Yeah, it happens by itself.""How did you know that?"
331
1027165
3117
17:26
I said, "You won't believe the children who told me
332
1030282
3493
17:29
and where they're from."
333
1033775
2928
17:32
Here's a SOLE in action.
334
1036703
2744
17:35
(Children talking)
335
1039447
6109
17:41
This one is in England.
336
1045556
6289
17:47
He maintains law and order,
337
1051845
3766
17:51
because remember, there's no teacher around.
338
1055611
8515
18:01
Girl: The total number of electrons is not equal to the total number of protons -- SM: Australia
339
1066096
3903
18:05
Girl: -- giving it a net positive or negative electrical charge.
340
1069999
6735
18:12
The net charge on an ion is equal to the number of protons
341
1076734
3584
18:16
in the ion minus the number of electrons.
342
1080318
3293
18:19
SM: A decade ahead of her time.
343
1083611
3049
18:22
So SOLEs, I think we need a curriculum of big questions.
344
1086660
3603
18:26
You already heard about that. You know what that means.
345
1090263
2206
18:28
There was a time when Stone Age men and women
346
1092469
3401
18:31
used to sit and look up at the sky and say,
347
1095870
2104
18:33
"What are those twinkling lights?"
348
1097974
2479
18:36
They built the first curriculum, but we've lost sight of those wondrous questions.
349
1100453
4794
18:41
We've brought it down to the tangent of an angle.
350
1105247
4130
18:45
But that's not sexy enough.
351
1109377
3708
18:48
The way you would put it to a nine-year-old is to say,
352
1113085
2961
18:51
"If a meteorite was coming to hit the Earth,
353
1116046
3153
18:55
how would you figure out if it was going to or not?"
354
1119199
3398
18:58
And if he says, "Well, what? how?"
355
1122597
2560
19:01
you say, "There's a magic word. It's called the tangent of an angle,"
356
1125157
2985
19:04
and leave him alone. He'll figure it out.
357
1128142
2871
19:06
So here are a couple of images from SOLEs.
358
1131013
4458
19:11
I've tried incredible, incredible questions --
359
1135471
5589
19:16
"When did the world begin? How will it end?" —
360
1141060
4288
19:21
to nine-year-olds.
361
1145348
1945
19:23
This one is about what happens to the air we breathe.
362
1147293
2976
19:26
This is done by children without the help of any teacher.
363
1150269
4958
19:31
The teacher only raises the question,
364
1155227
2384
19:33
and then stands back and admires the answer.
365
1157611
3664
19:37
So what's my wish?
366
1161275
3736
19:40
My wish is
367
1165011
2216
19:43
that we design the future of learning.
368
1167227
4314
19:47
We don't want to be spare parts
369
1171541
1966
19:49
for a great human computer, do we?
370
1173507
2392
19:51
So we need to design a future for learning.
371
1175899
3656
19:55
And I've got to -- hang on,
372
1179555
1636
19:57
I've got to get this wording exactly right,
373
1181191
2700
19:59
because, you know, it's very important.
374
1183891
2644
20:02
My wish is to help design a future of learning
375
1186535
2316
20:04
by supporting children all over the world
376
1188851
2234
20:06
to tap into their wonder and their ability to work together.
377
1191085
3046
20:10
Help me build this school.
378
1194131
2232
20:12
It will be called the School in the Cloud.
379
1196363
3336
20:15
It will be a school where children go on these intellectual adventures
380
1199699
5073
20:20
driven by the big questions which their mediators put in.
381
1204772
3857
20:24
The way I want to do this
382
1208629
2271
20:26
is to build a facility where I can study this.
383
1210900
4360
20:31
It's a facility which is practically unmanned.
384
1215260
2800
20:33
There's only one granny
385
1218060
1767
20:35
who manages health and safety.
386
1219827
2441
20:38
The rest of it's from the cloud.
387
1222268
1433
20:39
The lights are turned on and off by the cloud,
388
1223701
1915
20:41
etc., etc., everything's done from the cloud.
389
1225616
2028
20:43
But I want you for another purpose.
390
1227644
3225
20:46
You can do Self-Organized Learning Environments
391
1230869
2759
20:49
at home, in the school, outside of school, in clubs.
392
1233628
5016
20:54
It's very easy to do. There's a great document
393
1238644
2128
20:56
produced by TED which tells you how to do it.
394
1240772
1888
20:58
If you would please, please do it
395
1242660
3376
21:01
across all five continents
396
1246036
2365
21:04
and send me the data,
397
1248401
2211
21:06
then I'll put it all together, move it into the School of Clouds,
398
1250612
3504
21:10
and create the future of learning.
399
1254116
3264
21:13
That's my wish.
400
1257380
1792
21:15
And just one last thing.
401
1259172
1423
21:16
I'll take you to the top of the Himalayas.
402
1260595
2593
21:19
At 12,000 feet, where the air is thin,
403
1263188
3303
21:22
I once built two Hole in the Wall computers,
404
1266491
2985
21:25
and the children flocked there.
405
1269476
1455
21:26
And there was this little girl who was following me around.
406
1270931
2897
21:29
And I said to her, "You know, I want to give a computer to everybody, every child.
407
1273828
4716
21:34
I don't know, what should I do?"
408
1278544
2401
21:36
And I was trying to take a picture of her quietly.
409
1280945
4031
21:40
She suddenly raised her hand like this, and said to me,
410
1284976
4056
21:44
"Get on with it."
411
1289032
1889
21:46
(Laughter) (Applause)
412
1290921
11864
21:58
I think it was good advice.
413
1302785
1861
22:00
I'll follow her advice. I'll stop talking.
414
1304646
2068
22:02
Thank you. Thank you very much.
415
1306714
3990
22:06
(Applause)
416
1310704
3751
22:10
Thank you. Thank you. (Applause)
417
1314455
8324
22:18
Thank you very much. Wow. (Applause)
418
1322779
6415
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Sugata Mitra - Education researcherEducational researcher Sugata Mitra is the winner of the 2013 TED Prize. His wish: Build a School in the Cloud, where children can explore and learn from one another.
Why you should listen
In 1999, Sugata Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC and left it there, with a hidden camera filming the area. What they saw: kids from the slum playing with the computer and, in the process, learning how to use it -- then teaching each other. These famed “Hole in the Wall” experiments demonstrated that, in the absence of supervision and formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other -- if they’re motivated by curiosity. Mitra, now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University, called it "minimally invasive education."
Mitra thinks self-organized learning will shape the future of education. At TED2013, he made a bold TED Prize wish: Help me build a School in the Cloud where children can explore and learn on their own -- and teach one another -- using resouces from the worldwide cloud.
The School in the Cloud now includes seven physical locations -- five in India and two in the UK. At the same time, the School in the Cloud online platform lets students participate anywhere, with partner learning labs and programs in countries like Colombia, Pakistan and Greece. In 2016, Mitra held the first School in the Cloud conference in India. He shared that more than 16,000 SOLE sessions had taken place so far, with kids all around the world dipping their toes in this new education model.
Sugata Mitra | Speaker | TED.com