Physicist turned educator Sugata Mitra has been awarded a million dollar TED prize to develop his enlightened idea of schools built in the cloud.
On stage at TED 2013 Sugata delivered one of the most fascinating talks ever (possible even eclipsing Sir Ken Robinson's speech about creativity). He argues that although it's fashionable to say the education system is broken, it's far from it. It's just that it's been the same way for hundreds of years.
He conducted experiments to see what could be learned by leaving children alone with computers. For example, putting a computer in a hole in the wall in a Delhi slum. The results were staggering:
- Children learning English in a matter of months
- 8 year olds reaching the same level of computer literacy as office secretaries within 9 months
- Kids going from 0% to 30% in education tests on complex subjects like biotechnology (subjects taught ten years later) in short time periods
But this is just the tip of the iceberg as you'll discover.
