Newcastle University

The researcher who brought computer literacy to children living in a Delhi slum is turning his attention to schools in some of the world’s poorest areas, in the belief that the innovative use of technology can help to raise aspirations and achievement.

‘There will always be areas in the world where, for whatever reason, good schools and good teachers do not exist’, explains Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University.

'This problem is not going to go away or get better without intervention. Therefore, we need to be looking for alternative forms of teaching to ensure children do not miss out on a good standard of education.’

Professor Mitra’s current work began with his ‘hole in the wall’ experiment 10 years ago, which involved putting a computer with an Internet connection into a Delhi slum and was the inspiration behind the Oscar-winning film, Slumdog Millionaire. In just a month, children with no prior knowledge of computers or English had become computer literate.

This clearly showed that, even without direct input from a teacher, if there is an environment that stimulates curiosity, it is possible for children to teach themselves and share pertinent knowledge. Professor Mitra called this process ‘minimally invasive education’.

He has now taken existing technology a step further and is using Skype – software that allows people to talk and see ach other over the Internet for free – to bring teachers into schools in remote or undesirable locations such as the inner city ghettoes of Hyderabad in India.

In the Skype sessions, a life-size image of the teacher or storyteller is projected onto a wall in the school where they an ‘interact’ with the pupils in real-time. As the research got underway, one of the most unusual requests from the children was for British grandmothers to read them fairy tales over the  Internet. Within weeks, dozens of volunteers had come forward.

Professor Mitra discovered the issue of ‘remoteness’ played a key role in how children acquired knowledge. In India, the quality of English declined in rural areas, but this was also evident in urban areas where there were extreme social ivides between the lower and upper classes.

The strongest factor affecting the results in these Indian schools was the attitude of teachers. The poorest schools were not necessarily the most financially poor, but ones here teachers perceived that they were working in remote, undesirable areas.

‘Financial incentives are no good if teachers are sitting there wishing they were somewhere else’, said Professor Mitra. ‘Children sense these things and it has a knock-on effect on how they learn.’

‘Technology should not be seen as a threat to teaching but an asset. Computers cannot replace good teachers but they can get a high standard of education into the schools where they are needed most, while still allowing teachers to live where they want to.’

Professor Mitra is now planning to establish educational facilities in remote areas of India where groups of children an organise their own learning to pass the government high school examinations without the need for a teacher.

Reproduced from Ahead 2010, Profile and Annual Review, Newcastle University