We usually have a fixated image of what schools look like and how traditional methods are used for teaching, yet technology is shaping the path for new and inspiring methods of learning. Schools without walls, teachers or textbooks might seem like a science-fiction utopia, yet it is what professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University Sugata Mitra aspired to, and achieved. How did it all start? With a simple computer.
Intuitively students started to take advantage of its connectivity to teach themselves and their peers about the world around them.
The ambitious mission is called School in the Cloud and the Self Organized Learning Environment (SOLE) and it uses Microsoft technology to make it a reality.
(School In The Cloud – teaser from Docs & Pieces on Vimeo)
This week, at a TED conference in Vancouver, Mitra will announce he’s the opening of five School in the Cloud labs in India and the United Kingdom, which enables anyone anywhere to host cloud-based learning.
Mitra calls self-organized education “learning at the edge of chaos.”
“There is a space in between the complete order and the complete chaos, where something strange happens, the kind of environment that causes dust devils to form,” he says. “When you look at children learning by themselves, it’s so non-intuitive. It struck me that if you create a chaotic learning environment with children, a situation with just the right amount of chaos, you get spontaneous “
(The Granny Cloud from Docs & Pieces on Vimeo)
To learn more about this inspiring and ground-breaking learning initiative please visit this story.
