Hole in the wall learning, or Self Organizing Learning Environments

I saw this video on TED talks about SOLE (Self Organizing Learning Environments), by Prof. Sugata Mitra. His research and his initiatives have so many implications for the future of ICT in Education. Below is an excerpt from his wiki, about the project. http://solesandsomes.wikispaces.com/A+bit+about+SOLE+%26+SOME

We know that:
Groups of children (6-12 years old in groups of 4 or so), given unrestricted and unsupervised access to the Internet can learn almost anything on their own. It doesn’t matter who or where they are. We know this from 20 years of research, standing on the shoulders of Aurobindo, Piaget, Vygotsky and Montessori.

This kind of learning is activated by questions, not answers.

There will always be children in the world who, for some reason or the other, cannot pay for education. There will always be children in the world who, for some reason of the other, will not have an adequate education.

Hypothesis:
There will always be people in the world who are willing to mediate in children’s learning for, say, one hour a week, with no remuneration.

Speculation:
If we create ‘clouds’ of mediators and children on the Internet and an arrangement by which they can interact, we would have an alternative schooling.

Action:
In the last three years, we have created 12 Self Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs) in addition to the several hundred ‘hole in the wall’ computers that exist in India, Cambodia and several African countries.

There exists a cloud of mediators that have begun to interact with these SOLEs. The cloud is self organised and called a Self Organised Mediation Environment (SOME). The mediators interact with the children over Skype.

http://solesandsomes.wikispaces.com/A+bit+about+SOLE+%26+SOME

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