Penny Hero (dot) Net

“ New Delhi physicist Sugata Mitra has a radical proposal for bringing his country’s next generation into the Info Age”

I don’t wish to claim that this shows anything more or less than what it has shown, which is that curious kids in groups can train themselves to operate a computer at a basic level. In doing so, they also can get a generally good idea about the nature of browsing and the nature of the Internet … And, therefore, if they view these things as worth learning, no formal infrastructure is needed [to teach them]. (emph mine)

What he did was this: he mounted a camera in a tree, embedded an internet-connected computer in a wall in a “slum” area, and watched what happened.

He calls it “minimally invasive education” and believes that the key to promoting authentic computer literacy is “for teachers and other adults to give [kids] free rein, so their natural curiosity takes over and they teach themselves.”

Wow. Yes yes yes.

Another cool point was that the kids taught themselves in groups. it seemed that being in a group was a major component to self-learning.

How’s that for authentic education based on collaboration, social-ness, etc. de-centralized learning, and all those other literacy and educational buzzwords floating around! woo hoo!

But it makes sense. People don’t learn by rote memorization or being forced to learn something. They don’t really truly learn material by sitting at a desk and forcing it into their brains. we learn by practicing, doing, asking questions, figuring stuff out. NOT by lecture. we learn because we have a question, a problem, or out of curiosity.

lectures can help us prepare for tests, but this kind of “figure stuff out” method is what gets you to really learn something.

The thing that’s way cool is that this shows that this type of ‘decentralized’ learning model isn’t all that expensive.

So what’s the real difference between adults and kids? Just that adults “can’t” learn new things? No. it’s more like the sense of curiosity and self-confidence just fades or grows out of them or something. So the key to always being able to learn is to retain your sense of curiosity and spontenaety.

All these things are sort of “common sense”, but now there’s some sorta scientific “proof” that this is true.

I just wish that we had an educational system that matched research like this. individual teachers who model their classrooms around these ideas are awesome, but when they’re forced to “teach to the test” or their kids will fail and they’ll lose their funding… it just hurts everyone.

Anyway, gotta get back to work… just didn’t want to forget to write about this.