Sugata Mitra Response

Sugata Mitra's TED Talk titled "Build a School in the Cloud" began by giving a brief history of why education functions the way that it does today. He boiled it down to the Victorian British Empire's need to build identical people to work in the bureaucratic administrative machine who had good handwriting, be able to read, and be competent with multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction. Skills that are still important today, but are also seen as compliments to the ability to navigate technology effectively. Essentially meaning that public education would produce identical people without creativity -- a process that is now both outdated and obsolete. Interestingly, Mitra states that this type of public education is not 'broken' as much rhetoric points out, but is just not useful as a system any more.

This TED Talk makes me reexamine my role in the system of education as we know it. We all know that teaching to tests, planning to hit standards, or only working within the strict guidelines of a curriculum can strip student independence and creativity in learning. Mitra reminds us of this idea that student "learning is the product of self-organization." Students should of course be given opportunities to work out the solutions to difficult questions themselves feeding into the productive struggle. I think that it is up to us as teachers to frame this struggle in such a way that it 'sneaks,' as Brittany might say, into our own classrooms and curriculums. Being a completely SOLE classroom seems impossible within the guidance of PPSD, but aspects of it can definitely be adopted to better student learning, and should be. In science classrooms, it has been proven that in inquiry-based investigations where students are at the helm of their own lessons creates better learning environments and better understanding of the concepts being understood. This inquiry-based approach that we are beginning to see in the United States seems like the most similar curriculum I have seen when compared to Mitra, but we need teachers who are willing to try it and break from the norm!

Possibly the most important takeaway I found is the idea that we can all adopt the "method of the grandmother" when interacting with students and technology. Asking "why, how, tell me more?" of our students all the time, much like our grandmothers do to us, prompts student learning. Not only does it turn students into the teacher, but it encourages us as teachers to be patient and vulnerable in sometimes asking questions we truly do not know the answers. I see this being inherently connected to technology because letting kids play with technology and teach themselves how to best use it is an effective way to learn -- and is something that will be expected of them in any future job. Providing enough scaffolding with this type of intellectual adventure that they might go on in the technological world could really change a boring teacher-driven lesson into something memorable and effective for our students.