WEBVTT 00:00:01.274 --> 00:00:06.690 What is going to be the future of learning? NOTE Paragraph 00:00:06.690 --> 00:00:08.970 I do have a plan, 00:00:08.970 --> 00:00:12.050 but in order for me to tell you what that plan is, 00:00:12.050 --> 00:00:15.020 I need to tell you a little story, 00:00:15.020 --> 00:00:17.866 which kind of sets the stage. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:17.866 --> 00:00:19.653 I tried to look at 00:00:19.653 --> 00:00:23.060 where did the kind of learning we do in schools, 00:00:23.060 --> 00:00:25.330 where did it come from? 00:00:25.330 --> 00:00:27.762 And you can look far back into the past, 00:00:27.762 --> 00:00:31.575 but if you look at present-day schooling the way it is, 00:00:31.575 --> 00:00:35.277 it's quite easy to figure out where it came from. 00:00:35.277 --> 00:00:39.225 It came from about 300 years ago, 00:00:39.225 --> 00:00:41.442 and it came from the last 00:00:41.442 --> 00:00:44.410 and the biggest of the empires on this planet. ["The British Empire"] 00:00:44.410 --> 00:00:46.755 Imagine trying to run the show, 00:00:46.755 --> 00:00:49.163 trying to run the entire planet, 00:00:49.163 --> 00:00:52.987 without computers, without telephones, 00:00:52.987 --> 00:00:57.119 with data handwritten on pieces of paper, 00:00:57.119 --> 00:01:00.669 and traveling by ships. 00:01:00.669 --> 00:01:02.823 But the Victorians actually did it. 00:01:02.823 --> 00:01:05.991 What they did was amazing. 00:01:05.991 --> 00:01:09.303 They created a global computer 00:01:09.303 --> 00:01:12.359 made up of people. 00:01:12.359 --> 00:01:14.152 It's still with us today. 00:01:14.152 --> 00:01:20.131 It's called the bureaucratic administrative machine. 00:01:20.131 --> 00:01:23.458 In order to have that machine running, 00:01:23.458 --> 00:01:26.659 you need lots and lots of people. 00:01:26.659 --> 00:01:31.018 They made another machine to produce those people: 00:01:31.018 --> 00:01:33.914 the school. 00:01:33.914 --> 00:01:36.691 The schools would produce the people 00:01:36.691 --> 00:01:40.540 who would then become parts of the 00:01:40.540 --> 00:01:43.925 bureaucratic administrative machine. 00:01:43.925 --> 00:01:48.315 They must be identical to each other. 00:01:48.315 --> 00:01:50.472 They must know three things: 00:01:50.472 --> 00:01:53.512 They must have good handwriting, because the data is handwritten; 00:01:53.512 --> 00:01:55.667 they must be able to read; 00:01:55.667 --> 00:01:57.946 and they must be able to do multiplication, 00:01:57.946 --> 00:02:01.609 division, addition and subtraction in their head. 00:02:01.609 --> 00:02:05.136 They must be so identical that you could pick one up from New Zealand 00:02:05.136 --> 00:02:07.471 and ship them to Canada 00:02:07.471 --> 00:02:11.552 and he would be instantly functional. 00:02:11.552 --> 00:02:14.421 The Victorians were great engineers. 00:02:14.421 --> 00:02:17.910 They engineered a system that was so robust 00:02:17.910 --> 00:02:20.365 that it's still with us today, 00:02:20.365 --> 00:02:24.341 continuously producing identical people 00:02:24.341 --> 00:02:29.157 for a machine that no longer exists. 00:02:29.157 --> 00:02:32.085 The empire is gone, 00:02:32.085 --> 00:02:34.989 so what are we doing with that design 00:02:34.989 --> 00:02:37.358 that produces these identical people, 00:02:37.358 --> 00:02:40.261 and what are we going to do next 00:02:40.261 --> 00:02:44.181 if we ever are going to do anything else with it? NOTE Paragraph 00:02:44.181 --> 00:02:45.871 ["Schools as we know them are obsolete"] NOTE Paragraph 00:02:45.871 --> 00:02:47.763 So that's a pretty strong comment there. 00:02:47.763 --> 00:02:51.557 I said schools as we know them now, they're obsolete. 00:02:51.557 --> 00:02:53.291 I'm not saying they're broken. 00:02:53.291 --> 00:02:56.288 It's quite fashionable to say that the education system's broken. 00:02:56.288 --> 00:02:59.939 It's not broken. It's wonderfully constructed. 00:02:59.939 --> 00:03:06.165 It's just that we don't need it anymore. It's outdated. 00:03:06.165 --> 00:03:08.572 What are the kind of jobs that we have today? 00:03:08.572 --> 00:03:10.706 Well, the clerks are the computers. 00:03:10.706 --> 00:03:13.237 They're there in thousands in every office. 00:03:13.237 --> 00:03:16.442 And you have people who guide those computers 00:03:16.442 --> 00:03:18.919 to do their clerical jobs. 00:03:18.919 --> 00:03:22.183 Those people don't need to be able to write beautifully by hand. 00:03:22.183 --> 00:03:25.215 They don't need to be able to multiply numbers in their heads. 00:03:25.215 --> 00:03:27.487 They do need to be able to read. 00:03:27.487 --> 00:03:31.637 In fact, they need to be able to read discerningly. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:31.637 --> 00:03:34.744 Well, that's today, but we don't even know 00:03:34.744 --> 00:03:37.303 what the jobs of the future are going to look like. 00:03:37.303 --> 00:03:39.947 We know that people will work from wherever they want, 00:03:39.947 --> 00:03:43.145 whenever they want, in whatever way they want. 00:03:43.145 --> 00:03:47.333 How is present-day schooling going to prepare them 00:03:47.333 --> 00:03:49.876 for that world? NOTE Paragraph 00:03:49.876 --> 00:03:54.924 Well, I bumped into this whole thing completely by accident. 00:03:54.924 --> 00:03:57.556 I used to teach people how to write computer programs 00:03:57.556 --> 00:04:00.020 in New Delhi, 14 years ago. 00:04:00.020 --> 00:04:03.777 And right next to where I used to work, there was a slum. 00:04:03.777 --> 00:04:06.364 And I used to think, how on Earth are those kids 00:04:06.364 --> 00:04:08.884 ever going to learn to write computer programs? 00:04:08.884 --> 00:04:11.964 Or should they not? 00:04:11.964 --> 00:04:14.581 At the same time, we also had lots of parents, 00:04:14.581 --> 00:04:17.012 rich people, who had computers, 00:04:17.012 --> 00:04:20.143 and who used to tell me, "You know, my son, 00:04:20.143 --> 00:04:22.332 I think he's gifted, 00:04:22.332 --> 00:04:25.206 because he does wonderful things with computers. 00:04:25.206 --> 00:04:29.182 And my daughter -- oh, surely she is extra-intelligent." 00:04:29.182 --> 00:04:31.290 And so on. So I suddenly figured that, 00:04:31.290 --> 00:04:33.086 how come all the rich people are having 00:04:33.086 --> 00:04:35.227 these extraordinarily gifted children? 00:04:35.227 --> 00:04:37.142 (Laughter) 00:04:37.142 --> 00:04:39.966 What did the poor do wrong? 00:04:39.966 --> 00:04:42.969 I made a hole in the boundary wall 00:04:42.969 --> 00:04:45.001 of the slum next to my office, 00:04:45.001 --> 00:04:47.745 and stuck a computer inside it just to see what would happen 00:04:47.745 --> 00:04:50.729 if I gave a computer to children who never would have one, 00:04:50.729 --> 00:04:54.065 didn't know any English, didn't know what the Internet was. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:54.065 --> 00:04:55.017 The children came running in. 00:04:55.017 --> 00:04:57.187 It was three feet off the ground, and they said, "What is this?" NOTE Paragraph 00:04:57.187 --> 00:05:00.171 And I said, "Yeah, it's, I don't know." 00:05:00.171 --> 00:05:02.387 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:05:02.387 --> 00:05:04.943 They said, "Why have you put it there?" NOTE Paragraph 00:05:04.943 --> 00:05:06.158 I said, "Just like that." NOTE Paragraph 00:05:06.158 --> 00:05:09.167 And they said, "Can we touch it?"I said, "If you wish to." NOTE Paragraph 00:05:09.167 --> 00:05:11.544 And I went away. 00:05:11.544 --> 00:05:13.288 About eight hours later, 00:05:13.288 --> 00:05:16.243 we found them browsing and teaching each other how to browse. 00:05:16.243 --> 00:05:18.740 So I said, "Well that's impossible, because -- 00:05:18.740 --> 00:05:22.281 How is it possible? They don't know anything." NOTE Paragraph 00:05:22.281 --> 00:05:25.145 My colleagues said, "No, it's a simple solution. 00:05:25.145 --> 00:05:27.968 One of your students must have been passing by, 00:05:27.968 --> 00:05:30.063 showed them how to use the mouse." NOTE Paragraph 00:05:30.063 --> 00:05:31.586 So I said, "Yeah, that's possible." NOTE Paragraph 00:05:31.586 --> 00:05:34.645 So I repeated the experiment. I went 300 miles out of Delhi 00:05:34.645 --> 00:05:36.636 into a really remote village 00:05:36.636 --> 00:05:40.428 where the chances of a passing software development engineer 00:05:40.428 --> 00:05:44.844 was very little. (Laughter) 00:05:44.844 --> 00:05:47.507 I repeated the experiment there. 00:05:47.507 --> 00:05:49.794 There was no place to stay, so I stuck my computer in, 00:05:49.794 --> 00:05:51.994 I went away, came back after a couple of months, 00:05:51.994 --> 00:05:53.689 found kids playing games on it. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:53.689 --> 00:05:54.640 When they saw me, they said, 00:05:54.640 --> 00:05:57.122 "We want a faster processor and a better mouse." NOTE Paragraph 00:05:57.122 --> 00:06:01.416 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:06:01.416 --> 00:06:04.825 So I said, "How on Earth do you know all this?" NOTE Paragraph 00:06:04.825 --> 00:06:07.280 And they said something very interesting to me. 00:06:07.280 --> 00:06:08.945 In an irritated voice, they said, 00:06:08.945 --> 00:06:11.498 "You've given us a machine that works only in English, 00:06:11.498 --> 00:06:17.583 so we had to teach ourselves English in order to use it." (Laughter) 00:06:17.583 --> 00:06:19.560 That's the first time, as a teacher, 00:06:19.560 --> 00:06:24.651 that I had heard the word "teach ourselves" said so casually. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:24.651 --> 00:06:28.253 Here's a short glimpse from those years. 00:06:28.253 --> 00:06:30.900 That's the first day at the Hole in the Wall. 00:06:30.900 --> 00:06:33.138 On your right is an eight-year-old. 00:06:33.138 --> 00:06:38.858 To his left is his student. She's six. 00:06:38.858 --> 00:06:42.455 And he's teaching her how to browse. 00:06:42.455 --> 00:06:45.741 Then onto other parts of the country, 00:06:45.741 --> 00:06:48.024 I repeated this over and over again, 00:06:48.024 --> 00:06:51.469 getting exactly the same results that we were. 00:06:51.469 --> 00:06:55.396 ["Hole in the wall film - 1999"] 00:06:55.396 --> 00:06:59.661 An eight-year-old telling his elder sister what to do. 00:07:04.460 --> 00:07:10.017 And finally a girl explaining in Marathi what it is, 00:07:10.017 --> 00:07:14.266 and said, "There's a processor inside." NOTE Paragraph 00:07:14.266 --> 00:07:16.759 So I started publishing. 00:07:16.759 --> 00:07:19.314 I published everywhere. I wrote down and measured everything, 00:07:19.314 --> 00:07:21.516 and I said, in nine months, a group of children 00:07:21.516 --> 00:07:24.214 left alone with a computer in any language 00:07:24.214 --> 00:07:28.729 will reach the same standard as an office secretary in the West. 00:07:28.729 --> 00:07:33.489 I'd seen it happen over and over and over again. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:33.489 --> 00:07:36.221 But I was curious to know, what else would they do 00:07:36.221 --> 00:07:38.461 if they could do this much? 00:07:38.461 --> 00:07:40.989 I started experimenting with other subjects, 00:07:40.989 --> 00:07:43.957 among them, for example, pronunciation. 00:07:43.957 --> 00:07:46.405 There's one community of children in southern India 00:07:46.405 --> 00:07:49.173 whose English pronunciation is really bad, 00:07:49.173 --> 00:07:52.693 and they needed good pronunciation because that would improve their jobs. 00:07:52.693 --> 00:07:56.771 I gave them a speech-to-text engine in a computer, 00:07:56.771 --> 00:08:00.045 and I said, "Keep talking into it until it types what you say." 00:08:00.045 --> 00:08:04.677 (Laughter) 00:08:04.677 --> 00:08:09.861 They did that, and watch a little bit of this. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:09.861 --> 00:08:15.373 Computer: Nice to meet you.Child: Nice to meet you. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:15.373 --> 00:08:17.644 Sugata Mitra: The reason I ended with the face 00:08:17.644 --> 00:08:21.461 of this young lady over there is because I suspect many of you know her. 00:08:21.461 --> 00:08:24.957 She has now joined a call center in Hyderabad 00:08:24.957 --> 00:08:29.679 and may have tortured you about your credit card bills 00:08:29.679 --> 00:08:34.452 in a very clear English accent. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:34.452 --> 00:08:38.829 So then people said, well, how far will it go? 00:08:38.829 --> 00:08:40.399 Where does it stop? 00:08:40.399 --> 00:08:43.762 I decided I would destroy my own argument 00:08:43.762 --> 00:08:46.266 by creating an absurd proposition. 00:08:46.266 --> 00:08:50.154 I made a hypothesis, a ridiculous hypothesis. 00:08:50.154 --> 00:08:51.958 Tamil is a south Indian language, and I said, 00:08:51.958 --> 00:08:54.603 can Tamil-speaking children in a south Indian village 00:08:54.603 --> 00:08:58.108 learn the biotechnology of DNA replication in English 00:08:58.108 --> 00:09:00.355 from a streetside computer? 00:09:00.355 --> 00:09:02.540 And I said, I'll measure them. They'll get a zero. 00:09:02.540 --> 00:09:05.594 I'll spend a couple of months, I'll leave it for a couple of months, 00:09:05.594 --> 00:09:07.898 I'll go back, they'll get another zero. 00:09:07.898 --> 00:09:12.254 I'll go back to the lab and say, we need teachers. 00:09:12.254 --> 00:09:16.317 I found a village. It was called Kallikuppam in southern India. 00:09:16.317 --> 00:09:18.994 I put in Hole in the Wall computers there, 00:09:18.994 --> 00:09:22.681 downloaded all kinds of stuff from the Internet about DNA replication, 00:09:22.681 --> 00:09:25.986 most of which I didn't understand. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:25.986 --> 00:09:28.963 The children came rushing, said, "What's all this?" NOTE Paragraph 00:09:28.963 --> 00:09:33.971 So I said, "It's very topical, very important. But it's all in English." NOTE Paragraph 00:09:33.971 --> 00:09:37.325 So they said, "How can we understand such big English words 00:09:37.325 --> 00:09:39.403 and diagrams and chemistry?" NOTE Paragraph 00:09:39.403 --> 00:09:42.227 So by now, I had developed a new pedagogical method, 00:09:42.227 --> 00:09:45.111 so I applied that. I said, "I haven't the foggiest idea." 00:09:45.111 --> 00:09:48.306 (Laughter) 00:09:48.306 --> 00:09:51.256 "And anyway, I am going away." 00:09:51.256 --> 00:09:55.624 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:09:55.624 --> 00:09:59.213 So I left them for a couple of months. 00:09:59.213 --> 00:10:01.848 They'd got a zero. I gave them a test. 00:10:01.848 --> 00:10:02.772 I came back after two months 00:10:02.772 --> 00:10:06.432 and the children trooped in and said, "We've understood nothing." NOTE Paragraph 00:10:06.432 --> 00:10:08.507 So I said, "Well, what did I expect?" 00:10:08.507 --> 00:10:12.592 So I said, "Okay, but how long did it take you 00:10:12.592 --> 00:10:15.353 before you decided that you can't understand anything?" NOTE Paragraph 00:10:15.353 --> 00:10:17.301 So they said, "We haven't given up. 00:10:17.301 --> 00:10:19.277 We look at it every single day." NOTE Paragraph 00:10:19.277 --> 00:10:21.742 So I said, "What? You don't understand these screens 00:10:21.742 --> 00:10:24.446 and you keep staring at it for two months? What for?" NOTE Paragraph 00:10:24.446 --> 00:10:26.959 So a little girl who you see just now, 00:10:26.959 --> 00:10:29.691 she raised her hand, and she says to me in broken Tamil and English, 00:10:29.691 --> 00:10:31.888 she said, "Well, apart from the fact that 00:10:31.888 --> 00:10:35.039 improper replication of the DNA molecule causes disease, 00:10:35.039 --> 00:10:37.560 we haven't understood anything else." NOTE Paragraph 00:10:37.560 --> 00:10:43.272 (Laughter) (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:10:43.272 --> 00:10:47.392 So I tested them. 00:10:47.392 --> 00:10:50.664 I got an educational impossibility, zero to 30 percent 00:10:50.664 --> 00:10:52.968 in two months in the tropical heat 00:10:52.968 --> 00:10:56.408 with a computer under the tree in a language they didn't know 00:10:56.408 --> 00:10:59.480 doing something that's a decade ahead of their time. 00:10:59.480 --> 00:11:04.857 Absurd. But I had to follow the Victorian norm. 00:11:04.857 --> 00:11:08.257 Thirty percent is a fail. 00:11:08.257 --> 00:11:11.193 How do I get them to pass? I have to get them 20 more marks. 00:11:11.193 --> 00:11:16.030 I couldn't find a teacher. What I did find was a friend that they had, 00:11:16.030 --> 00:11:18.416 a 22-year-old girl who was an accountant 00:11:18.416 --> 00:11:20.864 and she played with them all the time. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:20.864 --> 00:11:22.985 So I asked this girl, "Can you help them?" NOTE Paragraph 00:11:22.985 --> 00:11:25.256 So she says, "Absolutely not. 00:11:25.256 --> 00:11:28.333 I didn't have science in school. I have no idea 00:11:28.333 --> 00:11:32.862 what they're doing under that tree all day long. I can't help you." NOTE Paragraph 00:11:32.862 --> 00:11:37.393 I said, "I'll tell you what. Use the method of the grandmother." NOTE Paragraph 00:11:37.393 --> 00:11:38.723 So she says, "What's that?" NOTE Paragraph 00:11:38.723 --> 00:11:40.110 I said, "Stand behind them. 00:11:40.110 --> 00:11:41.716 Whenever they do anything, you just say, 00:11:41.732 --> 00:11:44.513 'Well, wow, I mean, how did you do that? 00:11:44.529 --> 00:11:47.625 What's the next page? Gosh, when I was your age, I could have never done that.' 00:11:47.625 --> 00:11:50.547 You know what grannies do." NOTE Paragraph 00:11:50.547 --> 00:11:52.721 So she did that for two more months. 00:11:52.721 --> 00:11:55.635 The scores jumped to 50 percent. 00:11:55.635 --> 00:11:57.289 Kallikuppam had caught up 00:11:57.289 --> 00:11:59.167 with my control school in New Delhi, 00:11:59.167 --> 00:12:03.303 a rich private school with a trained biotechnology teacher. 00:12:03.303 --> 00:12:08.140 When I saw that graph I knew there is a way to level the playing field. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:08.140 --> 00:12:10.236 Here's Kallikuppam. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:10.236 --> 00:12:18.431 (Children speaking) Neurons ... communication. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:18.431 --> 00:12:22.122 I got the camera angle wrong. That one is just amateur stuff, 00:12:22.122 --> 00:12:24.618 but what she was saying, as you could make out, 00:12:24.618 --> 00:12:27.025 was about neurons, with her hands were like that, 00:12:27.025 --> 00:12:30.581 and she was saying neurons communicate. 00:12:30.581 --> 00:12:33.925 At 12. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:33.925 --> 00:12:37.135 So what are jobs going to be like? 00:12:37.135 --> 00:12:39.426 Well, we know what they're like today. 00:12:39.426 --> 00:12:41.764 What's learning going to be like? We know what it's like today, 00:12:41.764 --> 00:12:44.817 children pouring over with their mobile phones on the one hand 00:12:44.817 --> 00:12:48.590 and then reluctantly going to school to pick up their books with their other hand. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:48.590 --> 00:12:52.549 What will it be tomorrow? 00:12:52.549 --> 00:12:57.449 Could it be that we don't need to go to school at all? 00:12:57.449 --> 00:13:00.989 Could it be that, at the point in time when you need to know something, 00:13:00.989 --> 00:13:04.309 you can find out in two minutes? 00:13:04.309 --> 00:13:08.414 Could it be -- a devastating question, 00:13:08.414 --> 00:13:11.206 a question that was framed for me by Nicholas Negroponte -- 00:13:11.206 --> 00:13:14.245 could it be that we are heading towards or maybe in 00:13:14.245 --> 00:13:17.605 a future where knowing is obsolete? 00:13:17.605 --> 00:13:20.138 But that's terrible. We are homo sapiens. 00:13:20.138 --> 00:13:24.055 Knowing, that's what distinguishes us from the apes. 00:13:24.055 --> 00:13:25.832 But look at it this way. 00:13:25.832 --> 00:13:28.378 It took nature 100 million years 00:13:28.378 --> 00:13:30.514 to make the ape stand up 00:13:30.514 --> 00:13:32.698 and become Homo sapiens. 00:13:32.698 --> 00:13:36.394 It took us only 10,000 to make knowing obsolete. 00:13:36.394 --> 00:13:38.576 What an achievement that is. 00:13:38.576 --> 00:13:42.603 But we have to integrate that into our own future. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:42.603 --> 00:13:45.562 Encouragement seems to be the key. 00:13:45.562 --> 00:13:46.772 If you look at Kuppam, 00:13:46.772 --> 00:13:49.586 if you look at all of the experiments that I did, 00:13:49.586 --> 00:13:56.721 it was simply saying, "Wow," saluting learning. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:56.721 --> 00:13:59.115 There is evidence from neuroscience. 00:13:59.115 --> 00:14:02.317 The reptilian part of our brain, which sits in the center of our brain, 00:14:02.317 --> 00:14:06.053 when it's threatened, it shuts down everything else, 00:14:06.053 --> 00:14:09.731 it shuts down the prefrontal cortex, the parts which learn, 00:14:09.731 --> 00:14:12.475 it shuts all of that down. 00:14:12.475 --> 00:14:16.623 Punishment and examinations are seen as threats. 00:14:16.623 --> 00:14:20.248 We take our children, we make them shut their brains down, 00:14:20.248 --> 00:14:22.944 and then we say, "Perform." 00:14:22.944 --> 00:14:26.425 Why did they create a system like that? 00:14:26.425 --> 00:14:28.071 Because it was needed. 00:14:28.071 --> 00:14:30.656 There was an age in the Age of Empires 00:14:30.656 --> 00:14:34.926 when you needed those people who can survive under threat. 00:14:34.926 --> 00:14:37.193 When you're standing in a trench all alone, 00:14:37.193 --> 00:14:41.224 if you could have survived, you're okay, you've passed. 00:14:41.224 --> 00:14:44.197 If you didn't, you failed. 00:14:44.197 --> 00:14:46.853 But the Age of Empires is gone. 00:14:46.853 --> 00:14:50.491 What happens to creativity in our age? 00:14:50.491 --> 00:14:53.506 We need to shift that balance back 00:14:53.506 --> 00:14:56.915 from threat to pleasure. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:56.915 --> 00:15:00.867 I came back to England looking for British grandmothers. 00:15:00.867 --> 00:15:03.884 I put out notices in papers saying, 00:15:03.884 --> 00:15:07.304 if you are a British grandmother, if you have broadband and a web camera, 00:15:07.304 --> 00:15:10.531 can you give me one hour of your time per week for free? 00:15:10.531 --> 00:15:12.643 I got 200 in the first two weeks. 00:15:12.643 --> 00:15:17.551 I know more British grandmothers than anyone in the universe. (Laughter) 00:15:17.551 --> 00:15:21.366 They're called the Granny Cloud. 00:15:21.366 --> 00:15:23.096 The Granny Cloud sits on the Internet. 00:15:23.096 --> 00:15:27.470 If there's a child in trouble, we beam a Gran. 00:15:27.470 --> 00:15:31.039 She goes on over Skype and she sorts things out. 00:15:31.039 --> 00:15:34.658 I've seen them do it from a village called Diggles 00:15:34.658 --> 00:15:36.703 in northwestern England, 00:15:36.703 --> 00:15:40.007 deep inside a village in Tamil Nadu, India, 00:15:40.007 --> 00:15:42.247 6,000 miles away. 00:15:42.247 --> 00:15:45.823 She does it with only one age-old gesture. 00:15:45.823 --> 00:15:47.538 "Shhh." 00:15:47.538 --> 00:15:50.263 Okay? NOTE Paragraph 00:15:50.263 --> 00:15:51.799 Watch this. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:51.799 --> 00:15:56.055 Grandmother: You can't catch me. You say it. 00:15:56.055 --> 00:15:59.823 You can't catch me. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:59.823 --> 00:16:02.791 Children: You can't catch me. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:02.791 --> 00:16:08.373 Grandmother: I'm the Gingerbread Man.Children: I'm the Gingerbread Man. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:08.373 --> 00:16:12.963 Grandmother: Well done! Very good. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:12.963 --> 00:16:15.421 SM: So what's happening here? 00:16:15.421 --> 00:16:17.265 I think what we need to look at is 00:16:17.265 --> 00:16:19.646 we need to look at learning 00:16:19.646 --> 00:16:24.234 as the product of educational self-organization. 00:16:24.234 --> 00:16:27.079 If you allow the educational process to self-organize, 00:16:27.079 --> 00:16:29.570 then learning emerges. 00:16:29.570 --> 00:16:31.963 It's not about making learning happen. 00:16:31.963 --> 00:16:34.179 It's about letting it happen. 00:16:34.179 --> 00:16:37.452 The teacher sets the process in motion 00:16:37.452 --> 00:16:40.171 and then she stands back in awe 00:16:40.171 --> 00:16:42.539 and watches as learning happens. 00:16:42.539 --> 00:16:45.492 I think that's what all this is pointing at. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:45.492 --> 00:16:48.244 But how will we know? How will we come to know? 00:16:48.244 --> 00:16:49.919 Well, I intend to build 00:16:49.919 --> 00:16:53.220 these Self-Organized Learning Environments. 00:16:53.220 --> 00:16:56.905 They are basically broadband, collaboration 00:16:56.905 --> 00:16:59.298 and encouragement put together. 00:16:59.298 --> 00:17:01.004 I've tried this in many, many schools. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:01.004 --> 00:17:03.539 It's been tried all over the world, and teachers 00:17:03.539 --> 00:17:07.165 sort of stand back and say, "It just happens by itself?" NOTE Paragraph 00:17:07.165 --> 00:17:10.282 And I said, "Yeah, it happens by itself.""How did you know that?" NOTE Paragraph 00:17:10.282 --> 00:17:13.775 I said, "You won't believe the children who told me 00:17:13.775 --> 00:17:16.703 and where they're from." NOTE Paragraph 00:17:16.703 --> 00:17:19.447 Here's a SOLE in action. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:19.447 --> 00:17:25.556 (Children talking) NOTE Paragraph 00:17:25.556 --> 00:17:31.845 This one is in England. 00:17:31.845 --> 00:17:35.611 He maintains law and order, 00:17:35.611 --> 00:17:44.126 because remember, there's no teacher around. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:46.096 --> 00:17:49.999 Girl: The total number of electrons is not equal to the total number of protons -- SM: Australia 00:17:49.999 --> 00:17:56.734 Girl: -- giving it a net positive or negative electrical charge. 00:17:56.734 --> 00:18:00.318 The net charge on an ion is equal to the number of protons 00:18:00.318 --> 00:18:03.611 in the ion minus the number of electrons. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:03.611 --> 00:18:06.660 SM: A decade ahead of her time. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:06.660 --> 00:18:10.263 So SOLEs, I think we need a curriculum of big questions. 00:18:10.263 --> 00:18:12.469 You already heard about that. You know what that means. 00:18:12.469 --> 00:18:15.870 There was a time when Stone Age men and women 00:18:15.870 --> 00:18:17.974 used to sit and look up at the sky and say, 00:18:17.974 --> 00:18:20.453 "What are those twinkling lights?" 00:18:20.453 --> 00:18:25.247 They built the first curriculum, but we've lost sight of those wondrous questions. 00:18:25.247 --> 00:18:29.377 We've brought it down to the tangent of an angle. 00:18:29.377 --> 00:18:33.085 But that's not sexy enough. 00:18:33.085 --> 00:18:36.046 The way you would put it to a nine-year-old is to say, 00:18:36.046 --> 00:18:39.199 "If a meteorite was coming to hit the Earth, 00:18:39.199 --> 00:18:42.597 how would you figure out if it was going to or not?" 00:18:42.597 --> 00:18:45.157 And if he says, "Well, what? how?" 00:18:45.157 --> 00:18:48.142 you say, "There's a magic word. It's called the tangent of an angle," 00:18:48.142 --> 00:18:51.013 and leave him alone. He'll figure it out. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:51.013 --> 00:18:55.471 So here are a couple of images from SOLEs. 00:18:55.471 --> 00:19:01.060 I've tried incredible, incredible questions -- 00:19:01.060 --> 00:19:05.348 "When did the world begin? How will it end?" — 00:19:05.348 --> 00:19:07.293 to nine-year-olds. 00:19:07.293 --> 00:19:10.269 This one is about what happens to the air we breathe. 00:19:10.269 --> 00:19:15.227 This is done by children without the help of any teacher. 00:19:15.227 --> 00:19:17.611 The teacher only raises the question, 00:19:17.611 --> 00:19:21.275 and then stands back and admires the answer. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:21.275 --> 00:19:25.011 So what's my wish? 00:19:25.011 --> 00:19:27.227 My wish is 00:19:27.227 --> 00:19:31.541 that we design the future of learning. 00:19:31.541 --> 00:19:33.507 We don't want to be spare parts 00:19:33.507 --> 00:19:35.899 for a great human computer, do we? 00:19:35.899 --> 00:19:39.555 So we need to design a future for learning. 00:19:39.555 --> 00:19:41.191 And I've got to -- hang on, 00:19:41.191 --> 00:19:43.891 I've got to get this wording exactly right, 00:19:43.891 --> 00:19:46.535 because, you know, it's very important. 00:19:46.535 --> 00:19:48.851 My wish is to help design a future of learning 00:19:48.851 --> 00:19:51.085 by supporting children all over the world 00:19:51.085 --> 00:19:54.131 to tap into their wonder and their ability to work together. 00:19:54.131 --> 00:19:56.363 Help me build this school. 00:19:56.363 --> 00:19:59.699 It will be called the School in the Cloud. 00:19:59.699 --> 00:20:04.772 It will be a school where children go on these intellectual adventures 00:20:04.772 --> 00:20:08.629 driven by the big questions which their mediators put in. 00:20:08.629 --> 00:20:10.900 The way I want to do this 00:20:10.900 --> 00:20:15.260 is to build a facility where I can study this. 00:20:15.260 --> 00:20:18.060 It's a facility which is practically unmanned. 00:20:18.060 --> 00:20:19.827 There's only one granny 00:20:19.827 --> 00:20:22.268 who manages health and safety. 00:20:22.268 --> 00:20:23.701 The rest of it's from the cloud. 00:20:23.701 --> 00:20:25.616 The lights are turned on and off by the cloud, 00:20:25.616 --> 00:20:27.644 etc., etc., everything's done from the cloud. NOTE Paragraph 00:20:27.644 --> 00:20:30.869 But I want you for another purpose. 00:20:30.869 --> 00:20:33.628 You can do Self-Organized Learning Environments 00:20:33.628 --> 00:20:38.644 at home, in the school, outside of school, in clubs. 00:20:38.644 --> 00:20:40.772 It's very easy to do. There's a great document 00:20:40.772 --> 00:20:42.660 produced by TED which tells you how to do it. 00:20:42.660 --> 00:20:46.036 If you would please, please do it 00:20:46.036 --> 00:20:48.401 across all five continents 00:20:48.401 --> 00:20:50.612 and send me the data, 00:20:50.612 --> 00:20:54.116 then I'll put it all together, move it into the School of Clouds, 00:20:54.116 --> 00:20:57.380 and create the future of learning. 00:20:57.380 --> 00:20:59.172 That's my wish. NOTE Paragraph 00:20:59.172 --> 00:21:00.595 And just one last thing. 00:21:00.595 --> 00:21:03.188 I'll take you to the top of the Himalayas. 00:21:03.188 --> 00:21:06.491 At 12,000 feet, where the air is thin, 00:21:06.491 --> 00:21:09.476 I once built two Hole in the Wall computers, 00:21:09.476 --> 00:21:10.931 and the children flocked there. 00:21:10.931 --> 00:21:13.828 And there was this little girl who was following me around. NOTE Paragraph 00:21:13.828 --> 00:21:18.544 And I said to her, "You know, I want to give a computer to everybody, every child. 00:21:18.544 --> 00:21:20.945 I don't know, what should I do?" 00:21:20.945 --> 00:21:24.976 And I was trying to take a picture of her quietly. NOTE Paragraph 00:21:24.976 --> 00:21:29.032 She suddenly raised her hand like this, and said to me, 00:21:29.032 --> 00:21:30.921 "Get on with it." NOTE Paragraph 00:21:30.921 --> 00:21:42.785 (Laughter) (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:21:42.785 --> 00:21:44.646 I think it was good advice. 00:21:44.646 --> 00:21:46.714 I'll follow her advice. I'll stop talking. 00:21:46.714 --> 00:21:50.704 Thank you. Thank you very much. 00:21:50.704 --> 00:21:54.455 (Applause) 00:21:54.455 --> 00:22:02.779 Thank you. Thank you. (Applause) 00:22:02.779 --> 00:22:09.194 Thank you very much. Wow. (Applause)