TED Talk Hole In the Wall

This morning I sat down and watched a very interesting video from one of the infamous TED Talks. In this video, my thinking on today's form of education was not only challenged, but eternally changed. Bare with me, as I try to do the same for you.

The speaker, Sugata Mitra starts off with the question, "Where did the kind of learning we do in schools, come from?" This question intrigued me. I honestly never took a moment out of my life to actually stop and think, where did this school system idea originate? Mr. Mitra tells us how today we have the physical computer, but in the times of the largest and last of the empires, all they had was people. Hence, the need to create a system, the school, where everyone was identical. Everyone would have the same handwriting, be able to read, and know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, in their head. Now the victorian empire could flourish whether the connection was in Canada or New Zealand.

So how are taking that same idea of identical people and applying it today? With so many socioeconomic classes, are we allotting the same opportunities to the low-class citizens as the high-class citizens? Or are we allowing the rich to be seen as gifted while the poor gets labeled incompetent?

Mr. Mitra put this question to the test with his hole in the wall experiment. He placed a computer in the hole of a wall in the slums of India, testing to see if those so called poor and incompetent children were really as incompetent as they were being labeled. Not only did the children teach themselves English but they also taught themselves how to use this, to them, foreign object; a computer. This sparked Mr.Mitra interest and so he continuously repeated his experiment. Ultimately he found that we as homo sapiens have a natural desire to learn. We don't have to MAKE learning happen, we simply need to LET learning happen.

This is the way learning must be facilitated in today's school system. Educators must stop feeding children loads and loads of information that simply test their foundational skills. Instead, simply give students a question and allow them to teach themselves. Allow the learning to emerge within them. This is what Mr. Mitra calls S.O.L.E, Self Organized Learning Environments.

http://uniqed.com/2014/05/building-schools-cloud/

The teacher no longer drills students with the chore of learning and memorizing. Instead, he or she give students the question, tools, and necessary encouragement to collaborate with each and allow learning to organize all on its own. In doing this, we take the idea of the identical student from the victorian empire and mold it into the need of our students today. Every student learns the same information because they explore it together.

Students no longer need to be able to simply write and simply read. They now need to be able to read and understand, write and create, multiply and build. They need to keep the idea of knowing and understanding alive. Otherwise, the technological era will cause students to become less of an innovator and more of a regurgitator. Then learning will become obsolete. I encourage you, dear reader, to stop teaching your students and allow them to teach themselves. facilitate their lerning, direct their learning, but allow them to explore the reasons why all on their own!