After working for many years with his colleague Professor James Tooley setting up self organised learning centres (SOLEs) or ‘holes-in the-wall’ in India, he was inspired to create a similar resource in the UK.
The result is iLAB:Learn, the University’s new centre of excellence in technology-enhanced education, which is being launched on 8 March 2010.
“Groups of Indian children were able to organise their own lessons using a single computer through unsupervised access to the world wide web, albeit with a friendly mediator on hand if they needed help,” explained Professor Mitra. “When I tried a similar approach in Gateshead it worked even better, for the simple reason that English is their native language, so they don’t need to struggle to overcome that barrier before they can begin to learn from the web.”
Professor Mitra soon found several local schools that were interested in exploring how self organised learning worked in the classroom.
One school he has been visiting regularly over the past few months is St Aidan’s School in Gateshead, and they were the first to test the new resource. The 10-year-olds, who have previously shown they can answer GCSE level questions unaided, were given two hours to research Egypt using Google, with minimal intervention from staff. If they got stuck, they could use Skype to call a mediator.
“I’m not suggesting we do away with teachers – far from it – but maybe it’s time to look at how we can make best use of the teachers we’ve got, by using their talents more creatively and productively and letting children learn certain things their own way,” said Professor Mitra.
“Schools using SOLEs to complement their existing teaching are realising they have an immediate effect on the behaviour and the attainment levels of their pupils.”
Professor Mitra and Professor Tooley set up 12 SOLEs in underprivileged areas of India and have been observing the results for the last three years.
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Professor Sugata Mitra
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published on: 8th March 2010