Harrogate Online:- I was listening to one of your talks and you were talking about Granny Cloud. Could you tell us about the Granny Cloud and how that work?
Sugata Mitra:- Granny cloud basically a lose internet group of individuals who is interested in children’s education. They are not necessarily grandparents. People who are interested and who are willing to give an hour and week rigorously over the Internet to use Skype with schools or group of children or whatever, join the Granny Cloud. Of course, we have a method by which we screen them, so that we understand that the people who are doing that understand how children should be spoken to and may be have experience in dealing with children. We allocate them. Now there is an automatic system, a website through which you can register for it and then you get schools and the school and the granny then come together. We hold session but a session is not a lesson.
Harrogate Online:- So what happens in these sessions?
Sugata Mitra:- It’s a chat between grandmother, children and friends. It’s a chat about anything at all. For example- one of the grannies had a chat about jelly and she actually showed the children in India how she was going to make jelly and she made and showed them and the jelly nearly fell out of the plate and then the children started laughing at her. So it was all about fun, they learnt what jelly is but they all had a jolly good time.
Harrogate Online:- Don’t you think it would be more efficient to use a trained teacher in this way?
Sugata Mitra:- I do not have a very clear answer. We are trying to formulate. I am not sure, is the qualified and experienced teacher best option in this case or it is that a friendly grandmotherly figure is what is most important. I don’t know yet fully but I think both are important and they both will full-fill different needs.
Harrogate Online:- I was talking to one of the other plenaries earlier on, she was talking about the efficiency of inefficiency, what you can perceive to be in a code analytic way to be efficient can in fact be inefficient; and by building more emotional connections which otherwise sounds inefficient can deliver more learning, is this a similar thing with grannies?
Sugata Mitra:- Yes! It is possible. These grannies sometimes do really stupid and funny things. And children remember stupid funny thing much longer than when she was really teaching very well. I have also noticed that when children work on self-organize learning environments. For instance- if there is a lecture session and also self-organizing exercise, years later they will remember every single thing about organize learning exercise. If you ask them what was the lecture about that day; almost all will be blank.
Harrogate Online:- How does it work if teachers try to do some self-organizing exercise with their students?
Sugata Mitra:- Well! First of all, there is a kind of hand book available on the TED website. If you look for the word SOLE Tool Kit on the ted.com, then you will get that document. What it involves is- you take a group of children around 24, and you give them about five computers. So that if they wanted to use computer they would necessarily have to use in a groups or not use at all. In this environment, then ask them a question and the question has to be engaging. Like- if you will ask question like how tall Eiffel Tower is then it would not be engaging because even search engines take seconds to answer. But you might ask questions like why was Eiffel Tower built; that’s a deeper question. With this question children find themselves engaged rather than the simple previous question.
Now the children can form groups, they have to and then they change the groups. First of all they will find friends group together after 25 to 30 minutes when you see the interest level is flagging, then ask them to give you three or four report on the question you have asked. After they come up with their reports admire them. Admire is kind of reinforcement. So that’s what SOLE Tool Kit is basically.
You can watch the interview video here.
