As I wade through marking a large pile of mid-year exam papers reflecting a form of assessment that I no longer believe in (if I ever did, which I doubt!), it is nice to take a breath and be led, via Twitter (well, via my email notification of Twitter, to be exact, as I'm not the world's most avid twitterite, am I?) to an interview by Steve Wheeler with Sugata Mitra, and thence to the latter's TED Talk on YouTube, which was posted, I see, in February.You'd probably seen it before, but you may remember that I played his 'hole in the wall' experiment TED talk at the Long Weekend d'Immersion in 2011 as I think it speaks volumes about learning and motivation. The latest TED talk is a summary of his previous work and his vision for the future of learning. What he says really resonates with me as it calls into question the whole structure of western education, the role of teachers and the relevance of schools in their present form. It's easy to see why some feel threatened by his approach as, if he's right, then teaching as we know it could go the way of the dinosaurs.
He presents what he calls the SOLE (Self-Organised Learning Environment) for which the only requirements are BROADBAND, COLLABORATION and ENCOURAGEMENT.
He says "We need to look at learning as the product of educational self-organisation. If we allow the educational process to self-organise then learning emerges. It's not about MAKING learning happen, it's about LETTING it happen. The teacher sets the process in motion and then stands back in awe and watches learning happen." I can really relate to this as I don't think anyone has ever successfully MADE me learn anything. I have, of course, 'learned' a heap of things out of obligation, but any deep, real learning I have done over the years has had a large element of self-organisation. It can be random and punctuated by fertile and fallow periods but it's been a largely effective process of action and reflection dictated by my own curiosity, interest, needs and head-space. Two key factors, which I've mentioned many times, are MOTIVATION and CHOICE.
Sugata Mitra ends with "I think we need a curriculum of big questions". Some would go further and suggest that those big questions should ideally be generated by the students themselves rather than the teacher.
I like his 'granny cloud' initative which links older people with time and expertise to young learners, via Skype. That's something I'd be interested in getting involved with once I hang up my official boots. It's not dissimilar to some of the things we've done on Blackboard Collaborate with L'Ecole Hors les Murs. I love that 'hands across the water' stuff.
Now, how's that for a productive procrastination of exam marking?
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