Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching. Watch the whole thing!
Notice the basics of teaching here: positive reinforcement, socialization, perfect timing, self-teaching.
Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have had a rather famous disagreement over priorities in the rush to improve the world. Gates has said that prioritizing worldwide Internet access over Malaria research is a 'joke'. I think Bill Gates is totally wrong. In fact, I think if we had made worldwide Internet access a goal a decade ago, we would already have a cure for malaria and quite a few other problems as well.
3 comments:
Mitra is right on. Computers-in-the-wall are ideal for underdeveloped countries, and first world countries, as well. I have learned more and better from the internet than any under-grad and post-grad education. There's something about finding an answer to a question on-your-own. It becomes easier each time you do it. With so much raw knowledge available, education, for me, becomes more about meta-learning and meta-cognition. I wish Mitra and TED the best. -- Tom Cooney
Dear Patrick,
I'm studying 19th century Pittsburgh, the Silicon Valley of its day. Lots of billionaires, lots of half starved, great tech progress which mostly paid off half a century later.
Some of the keenest/richest proponents of the new railroad/steel technologies thought they'd solve all the world's problems (see the trans-african railroads).
Oops.
Donald McCaig
The railroad DID change everything, and the absence of it has killed quite a lot. Look at at a railroad map of Africa and you will see almost no railroads. All of China, India, Russia, the US, Japan and Western Europe can fit within Africa, but there are still not trans-continently railroads, and no wat to get cotton to the coast except by very expensive truck. It's on the reasons Africa is not a player in the world economy.
I am fundamentally a believer in the Marquis de Condorcet, in that I think trapped and disseminated knowledge enables us to leap frog, in 50 years, with all the progress made in 5,000. And yes, it's happening! See >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Condorcet#The_Idea_of_Progress
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