An experiment that began 10 years ago with children living in slums in India being given computers for education has brought about surprising results, according to the BBC.
The computers were installed as holes in the wall, much in the way people would expect to find a cashpoint, and children quickly learned to teach themselves and then began to pass that knowledge on to others.
“I think we have stumbled across a self-organising system with learning as an emergent behaviour,” said Professor Sugata Mirta of Newcastle University in the UK, at the TED Global (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference. He said that follow-up experiments suggest that children around the world can learn complex tasks quickly, and with little supervision.
“The children barely went to school, they didn’t know any English, they had never seen a computer before and they didn’t know what the internet was.” The children quickly figured out how to use the computers and access the internet. “I repeated the experiment across India and noticed that children will learn to do what they want to learn to do.”
“At the end of it we concluded that groups of children can lean to use computers on their own irrespective of who or where they are,” he said.
Professor Mirta has now formalised lessons from his experiments and has come up with the new concept of SOLE (Self Organised Learning Environments). These consist of a computer on a bench large enough for four children to sit around it. He said the learning doesn’t really take place when you give a child their own computer.
He has tested the spaces in the UK and Italy, with similar results, and now believes it should be tested more widely.
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Someone would probably steal the computers in the USA…
I’m still surprised they didn’t in India.
In a stratified society of very obvious have’s and have-not’s, any have-not child seen as having something will quickly garner the attention of the local constabulary. Stealing, in the case, would be suicidal.
As an Indian, I can pretty much say that computers were installed as holes in the wall to prevent theft.
And than these children grow up and runs smack into the Indian bureaucracy wall, if they didn’t run into the social class wall first.
These teaching studies are a waste of time if the culture isn’t changed first. And any first year anthropologist can tell you that culture is a means to maintain a society’s status quo. The only way to change it is violent outside intervention, since nobody within the culture will want to change it.
“violent outside intervention”
You must be an idiot.
keep you philosophies to yourself, 1 billion of us can decide for ourselves, thank you.
And be on topic, this is a tech blog, take your shit elsewhere.
It is foolish to call for
“violent outside intervention”
indians inspite of scarcity of few resources have shown their intellectual richness
Morever it is futile to talk about a certain nation in globalised internet community
Just consider this study as a study for introspection and devlopment of human race
and as the article quotes
“He has tested the spaces in the UK and Italy, with similar results, and now believes it should be tested more widely.”
Lets not deviate from topic
Sigh. Such protective instincts toward one’s culture. Which goes to prove the validity of that particular anthropological axiom.
No, I did NOT advocate “violence”. I’m merely stating basic anthropology. For an established culture to change, a violent event must occur.
Also, my comments are related to the tech blog on the efficacy of computer education and it’s results. But obviously, the stratified status quo here (the “idiot”) would rather everyone with a differing opinion to simply “shut up”. This is also typical of the culture there strangling the Indian people.
Here’s some “philosophy” for you fascists: computer education is nice an all. But as long as the culture remains – “shut your mouth”, nothing will result from such efforts.
No violent event is required for culture to change
Social Experiments on ground like one mike narrated above and on Net like wiki leaks
increase transparency,accountability and keep the pointer of devlopment and changes moving.
It has been always moving and it will always.It is wrong to state that any culture wants to maintain a status quo
Every culture has people who want change.
What right do you have to call this study a waste of time rather your comments are just waste of time
if you have guts do something on ground do it rather than critising someone’s effort
I am not protective of my culture,speaking in terms of anthroplogy too
It believes in introspection not in violence
every time a change is needed a new movement doesn’t need to be started
introspection is required