Sugata Mitra's "Help me design the School in the Cloud"

''Educational researcher Sugata Mitra is the winner of the 2013 TED Prize. His wish: Build a School in the Cloud, where children can explore and learn from one another. Onstage at TED2013, Sugata Mitra makes his bold TED Prize wish: Help me design the School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can explore and learn from each other -- using resources and mentoring from the cloud. Hear his inspiring vision for Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE).

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.html?utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button__2013-02-27   09/03/2013

   

We have nearly all seen the footage from Mitra's "Hole in the world"experiment from 1999, however there is no stopping this man, a man of vision with a passion to improve global education. There are some fascinating observances in his latest talk on TedX and none of his ideas are implausible with the technology we have available to do it right now. Learning as the product of educational self-organisaton, then learning emerges, it's not about making learning happen, but letting learning happen. Teacher sets the learning in motion and then steps back in awe".

The key here for us is self-organisation, at our school in our middle year program we have a focus on building self-organisation skills, being responsible not only for their belongings but also for their learning, the decisions/choices they make, the ability to self advocate and to be resilient. These skills all set these girls up for a fabulous future and one that is preparing them to be self-organised learners, learning from the cloud, whether that is through online courses offered at school or in the future at university or participating in a model like Mitra's. 

This is inspiring but it also provides us with hope, hope that the education system is on the cusp of change.