How Much Can Children Teach Themselves?

“ In nine months, a group of children left alone with a computer — in any language — would reach the same standard as an office secretary in the West."

- Sugata Mitra

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. What they saw was kids playing around with the computer, and in the process learning how to use it, how to go online, and teaching each other. The "Hole in the Wall" project demonstrates that an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mitra, who's now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University, calls it "minimally invasive education."

At TED2013, Sugata Mitra was awarded the TED Prize, and he made a bold wish: to help build a place where children can explore and learn on their own — and teach one another — using resources from the worldwide cloud.

Listen to this ... I would love to have a conversation about it via your posted comments!

Click here to watch and listen to Mitra's TED Talk