We Need our Grannies.

 Sugata Mitra had an unconventional idea which led him to place computers in holes of the walls in super remote and incredibly poor villages around India.  Download a few programs onto the computer.  Watch as the towns children would flock to the computer, children who would ask, "What is this? What does it do?".  To which he would respond, "I have no idea!".  Then he would leave.

This idea stemmed from his curiosity surrounding the number of "gifted" children in rich communities and the supposed lack there-of in poor communities.  

And the experiment was to see how much learning would occur in an environment where the kids had to organize their own education, with no outside guidance.  

After setting up the computer with his chosen programs and leaving the children to figure everything out on their own, he would return months later to observe and record what had happened.

Every single time he returned to a village, he discovered results which proved his theory that schooling today as we know it is obsolete and outdated.  That the antiquated education system which was created hundreds of years ago and meant to turn out students who were all identical to one another needed to become a thing of the past.  He found that the children were thriving by creating their own learning environments.

He provided each community of children with only 3 things

1. Broadband

2. Collaboration

3. Encouragement

The encouragement came in "granny-style".

Granny Style: A form of encouragement that involves observing, asking questions, then expressing visual excitement and awe over the answers.  Comments may include, "wow!! how did you learn how to do that?!" or, "I would never have been able to do that when I was your age!!"

Mitra proposes that a new and improved model of education would be designed around his S.O.L.E. model (student organized learning environments), and teachers would adopt the "granny" mentality which would allow them to pose meaningful questions then stand back and admire the results. Instead of making their students learn, they are letting their students learn.

It's so interesting to think of education this way.  In a not so distant time, the youth of today will have instant access to the answers for just about any question they could possibly ask.  So it makes sense, for so many reasons, that the model of spewing out information and facts for students to attempt to absorb and memorize is pointless.  All Mitra does for the children he speaks about is provide them with a resource, a question, and some encouragement.  They naturally had all of the tools they needed to facilitate their own learning from there.  

Just as Ken Robinson says, if you can spark curiosity in a child, you don't have to do anything else.  It is the human in us that wants to learn and when we are inspired to do so, we will.  It seems to me that Mitra has proven this with his experiments.  

I think the number one reason that I wanted to become a teacher was really so that I could be an encourager.  I believe in kids and it means the world to me to get to tell them that, and then get to see what they accomplish.