Blog Post #4: Sugata Mitra

Sky High: My immediate thought when I heard "School in the Cloud"

It's wild to consider how much the concept of "school" has changed since I was in high school just ten years ago. Prior to receiving my stepdad's old work laptop my junior year, my siblings and I had a carefully choreographed system of desktop computer sharing to get our homework done--but the majority of our assignments were expected to be completed on paper and delivered by hand. 

Even the way in which we collectively learned presented differently than educational expectations of today. The majority of my teachers demonstrated "stand-and-deliver" type instruction, essays were the assessment norm and an entirely independent endeavor to be completed on a quarterly basis, and math was a straightforward process (that I still didn't understand, even in its most basic form). 

Education, even in 2010, very much mirrored the 300-year-old Victorian model detailed by Sugata Mitra in his TEDTalk, "A School in the Cloud." Mitra explains that students in this era were parts of a "bureaucratic administrative machine" and were expected to fluently express three characteristics as a result of their schooling: good handwriting, ability to read, and ability to do basic math in one's head. These qualities still felt relevant during my own high school tenure, which presents an odd paradox now, as I become a high school teacher only ten years removed from my secondary education in a world where learning is so molded and guided by the presence of technology and its many splendors.

I remember cultivating a sense of independence outside of the classroom--through my after school job, by getting my license, in adventures with my friends. Now, however, we recognize that there is rich and ample opportunity for our students to begin that process in our classrooms, especially with the help of technology and its ability to individualize user experience. As educators, however--no matter how much our own education experience differs from that of our students--it is imperative that we use these auxiliary technologies productively and in a way that supports our students as present learners and their future selves.

Mitra, in looking at the Victorian model of educational, raises the question: "How is present day schooling going to prepare [our students] for that world?" The world in question is the rapidly digitized world in which we exist. Mitra, in his research, provided "Hole in the Wall" computers to children in remote Indian villages to see if and how students went about learning to operate them independently. What he discovered in the area of independent discovery or self-led learning was that, when left to their own devices (no pun intended), those kids learned. They learned what what, the how, and the why of advanced technological properties. 

Sugata Mitra

As Mitra tells us, it's not about "making learning happen," it's about "letting [learning] happen." Mitra encourages us to foster "Self-Organized Learning Environments," or SOLEs, wherein we pose "big questions" to our students and allow them to explore the questions at their own pace and in their own style. When I think about effectively and meaningfully engaging my students in an online environment, I see incredible potential with the institution of a SOLE. I think of the way in which Mitra's research subjects were able to articulate how the processes they had independently investigated actually worked when approached by the "method of the grandmother." It makes me question the role of the teacher, especially when I reflect on my own educational experience coupled with Mitra's findings. 

In our interactions with students, I think that we, as educators and mentors, need to demonstrate more confidence in our students so that they may mirror those tendencies and have the confidence they need to lead their own learning. I think that the power of Mitra's lessons lies in that he so boldly offered digital resources to his "students" and left them to figure it out by themselves. He implied that they had the ability to figure it out, and they affirmed that sense of confidence.

I think that my role as an educator with young people in these virtual and digital spaces is ultimately to gently nudge them to conclusions--provide them the tools, ask the big questions, but ultimately, let our students do the learning themselves. That way, they don't just find out the what; they can answer the how and the why in their learning as well.

I can't tell you why or how I learned the Pythagorean theorem, or Latin verb conjugations, nor do I remember how either of those processes work. My learning in those two contexts was not lead by me in any capacity. I was presented content for rote memorization, and told I'd need to know it for the test. That type of learning doesn't serve a purpose any longer. It's time to start asking the big questions and know our students will find the answers.

It's time to start asking the big questions.