0:00:01.274,0:00:06.690
What is going to be the future of learning?

0:00:06.690,0:00:08.970
I do have a plan,

0:00:08.970,0:00:12.050
but in order for me to tell you what that plan is,

0:00:12.050,0:00:15.020
I need to tell you a little story,

0:00:15.020,0:00:17.866
which kind of sets the stage.

0:00:17.866,0:00:19.653
I tried to look at

0:00:19.653,0:00:23.060
where did the kind of learning we do in schools,

0:00:23.060,0:00:25.330
where did it come from?

0:00:25.330,0:00:27.762
And you can look far back into the past,

0:00:27.762,0:00:31.575
but if you look at present-day schooling the way it is,

0:00:31.575,0:00:35.277
it's quite easy to figure out where it came from.

0:00:35.277,0:00:39.225
It came from about 300 years ago,

0:00:39.225,0:00:41.442
and it came from the last

0:00:41.442,0:00:44.410
and the biggest of the empires on this planet. ["The British Empire"]

0:00:44.410,0:00:46.755
Imagine trying to run the show,

0:00:46.755,0:00:49.163
trying to run the entire planet,

0:00:49.163,0:00:52.987
without computers, without telephones,

0:00:52.987,0:00:57.119
with data handwritten on pieces of paper,

0:00:57.119,0:01:00.669
and traveling by ships.

0:01:00.669,0:01:02.823
But the Victorians actually did it.

0:01:02.823,0:01:05.991
What they did was amazing.

0:01:05.991,0:01:09.303
They created a global computer

0:01:09.303,0:01:12.359
made up of people.

0:01:12.359,0:01:14.152
It's still with us today.

0:01:14.152,0:01:20.131
It's called the bureaucratic administrative machine.

0:01:20.131,0:01:23.458
In order to have that machine running,

0:01:23.458,0:01:26.659
you need lots and lots of people.

0:01:26.659,0:01:31.018
They made another machine to produce those people:

0:01:31.018,0:01:33.914
the school.

0:01:33.914,0:01:36.691
The schools would produce the people

0:01:36.691,0:01:40.540
who would then become parts of the

0:01:40.540,0:01:43.925
bureaucratic administrative machine.

0:01:43.925,0:01:48.315
They must be identical to each other.

0:01:48.315,0:01:50.472
They must know three things:

0:01:50.472,0:01:53.512
They must have good handwriting, because the data is handwritten;

0:01:53.512,0:01:55.667
they must be able to read;

0:01:55.667,0:01:57.946
and they must be able to do multiplication,

0:01:57.946,0:02:01.609
division, addition and subtraction in their head.

0:02:01.609,0:02:05.136
They must be so identical that you could pick one up from New Zealand

0:02:05.136,0:02:07.471
and ship them to Canada

0:02:07.471,0:02:11.552
and he would be instantly functional.

0:02:11.552,0:02:14.421
The Victorians were great engineers.

0:02:14.421,0:02:17.910
They engineered a system that was so robust

0:02:17.910,0:02:20.365
that it's still with us today,

0:02:20.365,0:02:24.341
continuously producing identical people

0:02:24.341,0:02:29.157
for a machine that no longer exists.

0:02:29.157,0:02:32.085
The empire is gone,

0:02:32.085,0:02:34.989
so what are we doing with that design

0:02:34.989,0:02:37.358
that produces these identical people,

0:02:37.358,0:02:40.261
and what are we going to do next

0:02:40.261,0:02:44.181
if we ever are going to do anything else with it?

0:02:44.181,0:02:45.871
["Schools as we know them are obsolete"]

0:02:45.871,0:02:47.763
So that's a pretty strong comment there.

0:02:47.763,0:02:51.557
I said schools as we know them now, they're obsolete.

0:02:51.557,0:02:53.291
I'm not saying they're broken.

0:02:53.291,0:02:56.288
It's quite fashionable to say that the education system's broken.

0:02:56.288,0:02:59.939
It's not broken. It's wonderfully constructed.

0:02:59.939,0:03:06.165
It's just that we don't need it anymore. It's outdated.

0:03:06.165,0:03:08.572
What are the kind of jobs that we have today?

0:03:08.572,0:03:10.706
Well, the clerks are the computers.

0:03:10.706,0:03:13.237
They're there in thousands in every office.

0:03:13.237,0:03:16.442
And you have people who guide those computers

0:03:16.442,0:03:18.919
to do their clerical jobs.

0:03:18.919,0:03:22.183
Those people don't need to be able to write beautifully by hand.

0:03:22.183,0:03:25.215
They don't need to be able to multiply numbers in their heads.

0:03:25.215,0:03:27.487
They do need to be able to read.

0:03:27.487,0:03:31.637
In fact, they need to be able to read discerningly.

0:03:31.637,0:03:34.744
Well, that's today, but we don't even know

0:03:34.744,0:03:37.303
what the jobs of the future are going to look like.

0:03:37.303,0:03:39.947
We know that people will work from wherever they want,

0:03:39.947,0:03:43.145
whenever they want, in whatever way they want.

0:03:43.145,0:03:47.333
How is present-day schooling going to prepare them

0:03:47.333,0:03:49.876
for that world?

0:03:49.876,0:03:54.924
Well, I bumped into this whole thing completely by accident.

0:03:54.924,0:03:57.556
I used to teach people how to write computer programs

0:03:57.556,0:04:00.020
in New Delhi, 14 years ago.

0:04:00.020,0:04:03.777
And right next to where I used to work, there was a slum.

0:04:03.777,0:04:06.364
And I used to think, how on Earth are those kids

0:04:06.364,0:04:08.884
ever going to learn to write computer programs?

0:04:08.884,0:04:11.964
Or should they not?

0:04:11.964,0:04:14.581
At the same time, we also had lots of parents,

0:04:14.581,0:04:17.012
rich people, who had computers,

0:04:17.012,0:04:20.143
and who used to tell me, "You know, my son,

0:04:20.143,0:04:22.332
I think he's gifted,

0:04:22.332,0:04:25.206
because he does wonderful things with computers.

0:04:25.206,0:04:29.182
And my daughter -- oh, surely she is extra-intelligent."

0:04:29.182,0:04:31.290
And so on. So I suddenly figured that,

0:04:31.290,0:04:33.086
how come all the rich people are having

0:04:33.086,0:04:35.227
these extraordinarily gifted children?

0:04:35.227,0:04:37.142
(Laughter)

0:04:37.142,0:04:39.966
What did the poor do wrong?

0:04:39.966,0:04:42.969
I made a hole in the boundary wall

0:04:42.969,0:04:45.001
of the slum next to my office,

0:04:45.001,0:04:47.745
and stuck a computer inside it just to see what would happen

0:04:47.745,0:04:50.729
if I gave a computer to children who never would have one,

0:04:50.729,0:04:54.065
didn't know any English, didn't know what the Internet was.

0:04:54.065,0:04:55.017
The children came running in.

0:04:55.017,0:04:57.187
It was three feet off the ground, and they said, "What is this?"

0:04:57.187,0:05:00.171
And I said, "Yeah, it's, I don't know."

0:05:00.171,0:05:02.387
(Laughter)

0:05:02.387,0:05:04.943
They said, "Why have you put it there?"

0:05:04.943,0:05:06.158
I said, "Just like that."

0:05:06.158,0:05:09.167
And they said, "Can we touch it?"I said, "If you wish to."

0:05:09.167,0:05:11.544
And I went away.

0:05:11.544,0:05:13.288
About eight hours later,

0:05:13.288,0:05:16.243
we found them browsing and teaching each other how to browse.

0:05:16.243,0:05:18.740
So I said, "Well that's impossible, because --

0:05:18.740,0:05:22.281
How is it possible? They don't know anything."

0:05:22.281,0:05:25.145
My colleagues said, "No, it's a simple solution.

0:05:25.145,0:05:27.968
One of your students must have been passing by,

0:05:27.968,0:05:30.063
showed them how to use the mouse."

0:05:30.063,0:05:31.586
So I said, "Yeah, that's possible."

0:05:31.586,0:05:34.645
So I repeated the experiment. I went 300 miles out of Delhi

0:05:34.645,0:05:36.636
into a really remote village

0:05:36.636,0:05:40.428
where the chances of a passing software development engineer

0:05:40.428,0:05:44.844
was very little. (Laughter)

0:05:44.844,0:05:47.507
I repeated the experiment there.

0:05:47.507,0:05:49.794
There was no place to stay, so I stuck my computer in,

0:05:49.794,0:05:51.994
I went away, came back after a couple of months,

0:05:51.994,0:05:53.689
found kids playing games on it.

0:05:53.689,0:05:54.640
When they saw me, they said,

0:05:54.640,0:05:57.122
"We want a faster processor and a better mouse."

0:05:57.122,0:06:01.416
(Laughter)

0:06:01.416,0:06:04.825
So I said, "How on Earth do you know all this?"

0:06:04.825,0:06:07.280
And they said something very interesting to me.

0:06:07.280,0:06:08.945
In an irritated voice, they said,

0:06:08.945,0:06:11.498
"You've given us a machine that works only in English,

0:06:11.498,0:06:17.583
so we had to teach ourselves English in order to use it." (Laughter)

0:06:17.583,0:06:19.560
That's the first time, as a teacher,

0:06:19.560,0:06:24.651
that I had heard the word "teach ourselves" said so casually.

0:06:24.651,0:06:28.253
Here's a short glimpse from those years.

0:06:28.253,0:06:30.900
That's the first day at the Hole in the Wall.

0:06:30.900,0:06:33.138
On your right is an eight-year-old.

0:06:33.138,0:06:38.858
To his left is his student. She's six.

0:06:38.858,0:06:42.455
And he's teaching her how to browse.

0:06:42.455,0:06:45.741
Then onto other parts of the country,

0:06:45.741,0:06:48.024
I repeated this over and over again,

0:06:48.024,0:06:51.469
getting exactly the same results that we were.

0:06:51.469,0:06:55.396
["Hole in the wall film - 1999"]

0:06:55.396,0:06:59.661
An eight-year-old telling his elder sister what to do.

0:07:04.460,0:07:10.017
And finally a girl explaining in Marathi what it is,

0:07:10.017,0:07:14.266
and said, "There's a processor inside."

0:07:14.266,0:07:16.759
So I started publishing.

0:07:16.759,0:07:19.314
I published everywhere. I wrote down and measured everything,

0:07:19.314,0:07:21.516
and I said, in nine months, a group of children

0:07:21.516,0:07:24.214
left alone with a computer in any language

0:07:24.214,0:07:28.729
will reach the same standard as an office secretary in the West.

0:07:28.729,0:07:33.489
I'd seen it happen over and over and over again.

0:07:33.489,0:07:36.221
But I was curious to know, what else would they do

0:07:36.221,0:07:38.461
if they could do this much?

0:07:38.461,0:07:40.989
I started experimenting with other subjects,

0:07:40.989,0:07:43.957
among them, for example, pronunciation.

0:07:43.957,0:07:46.405
There's one community of children in southern India

0:07:46.405,0:07:49.173
whose English pronunciation is really bad,

0:07:49.173,0:07:52.693
and they needed good pronunciation because that would improve their jobs.

0:07:52.693,0:07:56.771
I gave them a speech-to-text engine in a computer,

0:07:56.771,0:08:00.045
and I said, "Keep talking into it until it types what you say."

0:08:00.045,0:08:04.677
(Laughter)

0:08:04.677,0:08:09.861
They did that, and watch a little bit of this.

0:08:09.861,0:08:15.373
Computer: Nice to meet you.Child: Nice to meet you.

0:08:15.373,0:08:17.644
Sugata Mitra: The reason I ended with the face

0:08:17.644,0:08:21.461
of this young lady over there is because I suspect many of you know her.

0:08:21.461,0:08:24.957
She has now joined a call center in Hyderabad

0:08:24.957,0:08:29.679
and may have tortured you about your credit card bills

0:08:29.679,0:08:34.452
in a very clear English accent.

0:08:34.452,0:08:38.829
So then people said, well, how far will it go?

0:08:38.829,0:08:40.399
Where does it stop?

0:08:40.399,0:08:43.762
I decided I would destroy my own argument

0:08:43.762,0:08:46.266
by creating an absurd proposition.

0:08:46.266,0:08:50.154
I made a hypothesis, a ridiculous hypothesis.

0:08:50.154,0:08:51.958
Tamil is a south Indian language, and I said,

0:08:51.958,0:08:54.603
can Tamil-speaking children in a south Indian village

0:08:54.603,0:08:58.108
learn the biotechnology of DNA replication in English

0:08:58.108,0:09:00.355
from a streetside computer?

0:09:00.355,0:09:02.540
And I said, I'll measure them. They'll get a zero.

0:09:02.540,0:09:05.594
I'll spend a couple of months, I'll leave it for a couple of months,

0:09:05.594,0:09:07.898
I'll go back, they'll get another zero.

0:09:07.898,0:09:12.254
I'll go back to the lab and say, we need teachers.

0:09:12.254,0:09:16.317
I found a village. It was called Kallikuppam in southern India.

0:09:16.317,0:09:18.994
I put in Hole in the Wall computers there,

0:09:18.994,0:09:22.681
downloaded all kinds of stuff from the Internet about DNA replication,

0:09:22.681,0:09:25.986
most of which I didn't understand.

0:09:25.986,0:09:28.963
The children came rushing, said, "What's all this?"

0:09:28.963,0:09:33.971
So I said, "It's very topical, very important. But it's all in English."

0:09:33.971,0:09:37.325
So they said, "How can we understand such big English words

0:09:37.325,0:09:39.403
and diagrams and chemistry?"

0:09:39.403,0:09:42.227
So by now, I had developed a new pedagogical method,

0:09:42.227,0:09:45.111
so I applied that. I said, "I haven't the foggiest idea."

0:09:45.111,0:09:48.306
(Laughter)

0:09:48.306,0:09:51.256
"And anyway, I am going away."

0:09:51.256,0:09:55.624
(Laughter)

0:09:55.624,0:09:59.213
So I left them for a couple of months.

0:09:59.213,0:10:01.848
They'd got a zero. I gave them a test.

0:10:01.848,0:10:02.772
I came back after two months

0:10:02.772,0:10:06.432
and the children trooped in and said, "We've understood nothing."

0:10:06.432,0:10:08.507
So I said, "Well, what did I expect?"

0:10:08.507,0:10:12.592
So I said, "Okay, but how long did it take you

0:10:12.592,0:10:15.353
before you decided that you can't understand anything?"

0:10:15.353,0:10:17.301
So they said, "We haven't given up.

0:10:17.301,0:10:19.277
We look at it every single day."

0:10:19.277,0:10:21.742
So I said, "What? You don't understand these screens

0:10:21.742,0:10:24.446
and you keep staring at it for two months? What for?"

0:10:24.446,0:10:26.959
So a little girl who you see just now,

0:10:26.959,0:10:29.691
she raised her hand, and she says to me in broken Tamil and English,

0:10:29.691,0:10:31.888
she said, "Well, apart from the fact that

0:10:31.888,0:10:35.039
improper replication of the DNA molecule causes disease,

0:10:35.039,0:10:37.560
we haven't understood anything else."

0:10:37.560,0:10:43.272
(Laughter) (Applause)

0:10:43.272,0:10:47.392
So I tested them.

0:10:47.392,0:10:50.664
I got an educational impossibility, zero to 30 percent

0:10:50.664,0:10:52.968
in two months in the tropical heat

0:10:52.968,0:10:56.408
with a computer under the tree in a language they didn't know

0:10:56.408,0:10:59.480
doing something that's a decade ahead of their time.

0:10:59.480,0:11:04.857
Absurd. But I had to follow the Victorian norm.

0:11:04.857,0:11:08.257
Thirty percent is a fail.

0:11:08.257,0:11:11.193
How do I get them to pass? I have to get them 20 more marks.

0:11:11.193,0:11:16.030
I couldn't find a teacher. What I did find was a friend that they had,

0:11:16.030,0:11:18.416
a 22-year-old girl who was an accountant

0:11:18.416,0:11:20.864
and she played with them all the time.

0:11:20.864,0:11:22.985
So I asked this girl, "Can you help them?"

0:11:22.985,0:11:25.256
So she says, "Absolutely not.

0:11:25.256,0:11:28.333
I didn't have science in school. I have no idea

0:11:28.333,0:11:32.862
what they're doing under that tree all day long. I can't help you."

0:11:32.862,0:11:37.393
I said, "I'll tell you what. Use the method of the grandmother."

0:11:37.393,0:11:38.723
So she says, "What's that?"

0:11:38.723,0:11:40.110
I said, "Stand behind them.

0:11:40.110,0:11:41.716
Whenever they do anything, you just say,

0:11:41.732,0:11:44.513
'Well, wow, I mean, how did you do that?

0:11:44.529,0:11:47.625
What's the next page? Gosh, when I was your age, I could have never done that.'

0:11:47.625,0:11:50.547
You know what grannies do."

0:11:50.547,0:11:52.721
So she did that for two more months.

0:11:52.721,0:11:55.635
The scores jumped to 50 percent.

0:11:55.635,0:11:57.289
Kallikuppam had caught up

0:11:57.289,0:11:59.167
with my control school in New Delhi,

0:11:59.167,0:12:03.303
a rich private school with a trained biotechnology teacher.

0:12:03.303,0:12:08.140
When I saw that graph I knew there is a way to level the playing field.

0:12:08.140,0:12:10.236
Here's Kallikuppam.

0:12:10.236,0:12:18.431
(Children speaking) Neurons ... communication.

0:12:18.431,0:12:22.122
I got the camera angle wrong. That one is just amateur stuff,

0:12:22.122,0:12:24.618
but what she was saying, as you could make out,

0:12:24.618,0:12:27.025
was about neurons, with her hands were like that,

0:12:27.025,0:12:30.581
and she was saying neurons communicate.

0:12:30.581,0:12:33.925
At 12.

0:12:33.925,0:12:37.135
So what are jobs going to be like?

0:12:37.135,0:12:39.426
Well, we know what they're like today.

0:12:39.426,0:12:41.764
What's learning going to be like? We know what it's like today,

0:12:41.764,0:12:44.817
children pouring over with their mobile phones on the one hand

0:12:44.817,0:12:48.590
and then reluctantly going to school to pick up their books with their other hand.

0:12:48.590,0:12:52.549
What will it be tomorrow?

0:12:52.549,0:12:57.449
Could it be that we don't need to go to school at all?

0:12:57.449,0:13:00.989
Could it be that, at the point in time when you need to know something,

0:13:00.989,0:13:04.309
you can find out in two minutes?

0:13:04.309,0:13:08.414
Could it be -- a devastating question,

0:13:08.414,0:13:11.206
a question that was framed for me by Nicholas Negroponte --

0:13:11.206,0:13:14.245
could it be that we are heading towards or maybe in

0:13:14.245,0:13:17.605
a future where knowing is obsolete?

0:13:17.605,0:13:20.138
But that's terrible. We are homo sapiens.

0:13:20.138,0:13:24.055
Knowing, that's what distinguishes us from the apes.

0:13:24.055,0:13:25.832
But look at it this way.

0:13:25.832,0:13:28.378
It took nature 100 million years

0:13:28.378,0:13:30.514
to make the ape stand up

0:13:30.514,0:13:32.698
and become Homo sapiens.

0:13:32.698,0:13:36.394
It took us only 10,000 to make knowing obsolete.

0:13:36.394,0:13:38.576
What an achievement that is.

0:13:38.576,0:13:42.603
But we have to integrate that into our own future.

0:13:42.603,0:13:45.562
Encouragement seems to be the key.

0:13:45.562,0:13:46.772
If you look at Kuppam,

0:13:46.772,0:13:49.586
if you look at all of the experiments that I did,

0:13:49.586,0:13:56.721
it was simply saying, "Wow," saluting learning.

0:13:56.721,0:13:59.115
There is evidence from neuroscience.

0:13:59.115,0:14:02.317
The reptilian part of our brain, which sits in the center of our brain,

0:14:02.317,0:14:06.053
when it's threatened, it shuts down everything else,

0:14:06.053,0:14:09.731
it shuts down the prefrontal cortex, the parts which learn,

0:14:09.731,0:14:12.475
it shuts all of that down.

0:14:12.475,0:14:16.623
Punishment and examinations are seen as threats.

0:14:16.623,0:14:20.248
We take our children, we make them shut their brains down,

0:14:20.248,0:14:22.944
and then we say, "Perform."

0:14:22.944,0:14:26.425
Why did they create a system like that?

0:14:26.425,0:14:28.071
Because it was needed.

0:14:28.071,0:14:30.656
There was an age in the Age of Empires

0:14:30.656,0:14:34.926
when you needed those people who can survive under threat.

0:14:34.926,0:14:37.193
When you're standing in a trench all alone,

0:14:37.193,0:14:41.224
if you could have survived, you're okay, you've passed.

0:14:41.224,0:14:44.197
If you didn't, you failed.

0:14:44.197,0:14:46.853
But the Age of Empires is gone.

0:14:46.853,0:14:50.491
What happens to creativity in our age?

0:14:50.491,0:14:53.506
We need to shift that balance back

0:14:53.506,0:14:56.915
from threat to pleasure.

0:14:56.915,0:15:00.867
I came back to England looking for British grandmothers.

0:15:00.867,0:15:03.884
I put out notices in papers saying,

0:15:03.884,0:15:07.304
if you are a British grandmother, if you have broadband and a web camera,

0:15:07.304,0:15:10.531
can you give me one hour of your time per week for free?

0:15:10.531,0:15:12.643
I got 200 in the first two weeks.

0:15:12.643,0:15:17.551
I know more British grandmothers than anyone in the universe. (Laughter)

0:15:17.551,0:15:21.366
They're called the Granny Cloud.

0:15:21.366,0:15:23.096
The Granny Cloud sits on the Internet.

0:15:23.096,0:15:27.470
If there's a child in trouble, we beam a Gran.

0:15:27.470,0:15:31.039
She goes on over Skype and she sorts things out.

0:15:31.039,0:15:34.658
I've seen them do it from a village called Diggles

0:15:34.658,0:15:36.703
in northwestern England,

0:15:36.703,0:15:40.007
deep inside a village in Tamil Nadu, India,

0:15:40.007,0:15:42.247
6,000 miles away.

0:15:42.247,0:15:45.823
She does it with only one age-old gesture.

0:15:45.823,0:15:47.538
"Shhh."

0:15:47.538,0:15:50.263
Okay?

0:15:50.263,0:15:51.799
Watch this.

0:15:51.799,0:15:56.055
Grandmother: You can't catch me. You say it.

0:15:56.055,0:15:59.823
You can't catch me.

0:15:59.823,0:16:02.791
Children: You can't catch me.

0:16:02.791,0:16:08.373
Grandmother: I'm the Gingerbread Man.Children: I'm the Gingerbread Man.

0:16:08.373,0:16:12.963
Grandmother: Well done! Very good.

0:16:12.963,0:16:15.421
SM: So what's happening here?

0:16:15.421,0:16:17.265
I think what we need to look at is

0:16:17.265,0:16:19.646
we need to look at learning

0:16:19.646,0:16:24.234
as the product of educational self-organization.

0:16:24.234,0:16:27.079
If you allow the educational process to self-organize,

0:16:27.079,0:16:29.570
then learning emerges.

0:16:29.570,0:16:31.963
It's not about making learning happen.

0:16:31.963,0:16:34.179
It's about letting it happen.

0:16:34.179,0:16:37.452
The teacher sets the process in motion

0:16:37.452,0:16:40.171
and then she stands back in awe

0:16:40.171,0:16:42.539
and watches as learning happens.

0:16:42.539,0:16:45.492
I think that's what all this is pointing at.

0:16:45.492,0:16:48.244
But how will we know? How will we come to know?

0:16:48.244,0:16:49.919
Well, I intend to build

0:16:49.919,0:16:53.220
these Self-Organized Learning Environments.

0:16:53.220,0:16:56.905
They are basically broadband, collaboration

0:16:56.905,0:16:59.298
and encouragement put together.

0:16:59.298,0:17:01.004
I've tried this in many, many schools.

0:17:01.004,0:17:03.539
It's been tried all over the world, and teachers

0:17:03.539,0:17:07.165
sort of stand back and say, "It just happens by itself?"

0:17:07.165,0:17:10.282
And I said, "Yeah, it happens by itself.""How did you know that?"

0:17:10.282,0:17:13.775
I said, "You won't believe the children who told me

0:17:13.775,0:17:16.703
and where they're from."

0:17:16.703,0:17:19.447
Here's a SOLE in action.

0:17:19.447,0:17:25.556
(Children talking)

0:17:25.556,0:17:31.845
This one is in England.

0:17:31.845,0:17:35.611
He maintains law and order,

0:17:35.611,0:17:44.126
because remember, there's no teacher around.

0:17:46.096,0:17:49.999
Girl: The total number of electrons is not equal to the total number of protons -- SM: Australia

0:17:49.999,0:17:56.734
Girl: -- giving it a net positive or negative electrical charge.

0:17:56.734,0:18:00.318
The net charge on an ion is equal to the number of protons

0:18:00.318,0:18:03.611
in the ion minus the number of electrons.

0:18:03.611,0:18:06.660
SM: A decade ahead of her time.

0:18:06.660,0:18:10.263
So SOLEs, I think we need a curriculum of big questions.

0:18:10.263,0:18:12.469
You already heard about that. You know what that means.

0:18:12.469,0:18:15.870
There was a time when Stone Age men and women

0:18:15.870,0:18:17.974
used to sit and look up at the sky and say,

0:18:17.974,0:18:20.453
"What are those twinkling lights?"

0:18:20.453,0:18:25.247
They built the first curriculum, but we've lost sight of those wondrous questions.

0:18:25.247,0:18:29.377
We've brought it down to the tangent of an angle.

0:18:29.377,0:18:33.085
But that's not sexy enough.

0:18:33.085,0:18:36.046
The way you would put it to a nine-year-old is to say,

0:18:36.046,0:18:39.199
"If a meteorite was coming to hit the Earth,

0:18:39.199,0:18:42.597
how would you figure out if it was going to or not?"

0:18:42.597,0:18:45.157
And if he says, "Well, what? how?"

0:18:45.157,0:18:48.142
you say, "There's a magic word. It's called the tangent of an angle,"

0:18:48.142,0:18:51.013
and leave him alone. He'll figure it out.

0:18:51.013,0:18:55.471
So here are a couple of images from SOLEs.

0:18:55.471,0:19:01.060
I've tried incredible, incredible questions --

0:19:01.060,0:19:05.348
"When did the world begin? How will it end?" —

0:19:05.348,0:19:07.293
to nine-year-olds.

0:19:07.293,0:19:10.269
This one is about what happens to the air we breathe.

0:19:10.269,0:19:15.227
This is done by children without the help of any teacher.

0:19:15.227,0:19:17.611
The teacher only raises the question,

0:19:17.611,0:19:21.275
and then stands back and admires the answer.

0:19:21.275,0:19:25.011
So what's my wish?

0:19:25.011,0:19:27.227
My wish is

0:19:27.227,0:19:31.541
that we design the future of learning.

0:19:31.541,0:19:33.507
We don't want to be spare parts

0:19:33.507,0:19:35.899
for a great human computer, do we?

0:19:35.899,0:19:39.555
So we need to design a future for learning.

0:19:39.555,0:19:41.191
And I've got to -- hang on,

0:19:41.191,0:19:43.891
I've got to get this wording exactly right,

0:19:43.891,0:19:46.535
because, you know, it's very important.

0:19:46.535,0:19:48.851
My wish is to help design a future of learning

0:19:48.851,0:19:51.085
by supporting children all over the world

0:19:51.085,0:19:54.131
to tap into their wonder and their ability to work together.

0:19:54.131,0:19:56.363
Help me build this school.

0:19:56.363,0:19:59.699
It will be called the School in the Cloud.

0:19:59.699,0:20:04.772
It will be a school where children go on these intellectual adventures

0:20:04.772,0:20:08.629
driven by the big questions which their mediators put in.

0:20:08.629,0:20:10.900
The way I want to do this

0:20:10.900,0:20:15.260
is to build a facility where I can study this.

0:20:15.260,0:20:18.060
It's a facility which is practically unmanned.

0:20:18.060,0:20:19.827
There's only one granny

0:20:19.827,0:20:22.268
who manages health and safety.

0:20:22.268,0:20:23.701
The rest of it's from the cloud.

0:20:23.701,0:20:25.616
The lights are turned on and off by the cloud,

0:20:25.616,0:20:27.644
etc., etc., everything's done from the cloud.

0:20:27.644,0:20:30.869
But I want you for another purpose.

0:20:30.869,0:20:33.628
You can do Self-Organized Learning Environments

0:20:33.628,0:20:38.644
at home, in the school, outside of school, in clubs.

0:20:38.644,0:20:40.772
It's very easy to do. There's a great document

0:20:40.772,0:20:42.660
produced by TED which tells you how to do it.

0:20:42.660,0:20:46.036
If you would please, please do it

0:20:46.036,0:20:48.401
across all five continents

0:20:48.401,0:20:50.612
and send me the data,

0:20:50.612,0:20:54.116
then I'll put it all together, move it into the School of Clouds,

0:20:54.116,0:20:57.380
and create the future of learning.

0:20:57.380,0:20:59.172
That's my wish.

0:20:59.172,0:21:00.595
And just one last thing.

0:21:00.595,0:21:03.188
I'll take you to the top of the Himalayas.

0:21:03.188,0:21:06.491
At 12,000 feet, where the air is thin,

0:21:06.491,0:21:09.476
I once built two Hole in the Wall computers,

0:21:09.476,0:21:10.931
and the children flocked there.

0:21:10.931,0:21:13.828
And there was this little girl who was following me around.

0:21:13.828,0:21:18.544
And I said to her, "You know, I want to give a computer to everybody, every child.

0:21:18.544,0:21:20.945
I don't know, what should I do?"

0:21:20.945,0:21:24.976
And I was trying to take a picture of her quietly.

0:21:24.976,0:21:29.032
She suddenly raised her hand like this, and said to me,

0:21:29.032,0:21:30.921
"Get on with it."

0:21:30.921,0:21:42.785
(Laughter) (Applause)

0:21:42.785,0:21:44.646
I think it was good advice.

0:21:44.646,0:21:46.714
I'll follow her advice. I'll stop talking.

0:21:46.714,0:21:50.704
Thank you. Thank you very much.

0:21:50.704,0:21:54.455
(Applause)

0:21:54.455,0:22:02.779
Thank you. Thank you. (Applause)

0:22:02.779,0:22:09.194
Thank you very much. Wow. (Applause)