Barefoot In the head. A few year ago, I was a bit curious about how well learners can evaluate each other. I designed a small experiment to find out. It goes like this: Take a group of learners, say 15 in number, in a classroom. Give everybody 15 sheets of paper and ask them to write their names on the top right corner of every sheet. Now, ask everyone to write down a question about something they have recently learned, been taught or discussed. In other words, you have conducted an examination without making a question paper and without having to mark a pile of answer books. I tried this for three years in the course I teach on Educational Technology for M.Ed.
In the meanwhile, I thought you might like to try.... Sugata Mitra (Sugatam) sur Twitter. Prof Sugata Mitra’s Experiments: “Hole-in-the-Wall” to SOLE Self Organized Learning Environment. | From Classrooms to Learning Ecologies – Mapping new Spaces of Learning. Dr. Sugata Mitra, physicist, cognitive researcher and pedagogue is certainly one of the most intelligent and original thinkers I have come across. In fact, many years ago, when he was doing his post-doc in Vienna, I had the pleasure of getting lessons from him on calculus!
Now professor at the University of Newcastle, it’s indeed great to see him today speak at TED Lectures, at the UN General Assembly, CNN etc…. I have been sending links about his stories to friends saying: “I know this guy”. Dr. Mitra became famous with a curious socio-pedagogic ‘experiment’ in New Delhi (when he was technology head of NIIT – one of the big five e-training institutes of the world). I’ll never forget the chills that ran down my spine when I first saw the public space experiment in Delhi . The experimental setting popularly known as the ‘Hole-in-the-Wall’ later became the inspirational story for the oscar winning movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. SOLE – Self Organised Learning Environment Here are some links: Self Organized Learning Environment « What Ed Said.
Summer holidays are over in Hyderabad and yesterday was my first Skype session in some time, with the kids at Madina Creative School SOLE – Self Organised Learning Environment. There were about a dozen 10 year olds, half of whom were familiar from the earlier experimental sessions before the summer and the rest were new faces. I blogged here and here and here about my earlier experiences and what I’d learned from them. This time I went in unprepared and with no expectations. I wasn’t even sure whether there would be kids online since it’s their first week back at school. Fortunately there was power and a connection and sound and video. Often these are not things things that can be taken for granted!
I felt more confident this time than in my first few sessions in February/March, when I didn’t know what to expect and nothing I prepared seemed to work. These are kids with limited English and no exposure to people of other cultures in other countries. Like this: Like Loading... Sugata Mitra - Le Futur des communications - une vidéo High-tech et Science. Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves. Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education. Sugata Mitra | Profile on TED.com.