Sugata Mitra, in this absolutely endearing TED talk, speaks about how the rise of the internet and cloud computing should compel us to re-imagine education ... a system he claims isn't broken, per se, just built for another world and another time.
His stories of how children in the slums of India, left unaided with a computer stuck in a wall, began a self directed journey of learning, is an example of why we might consider a different paradigm for education. No longer just top down, but bottom up.
Onstage at TED2013, Sugata Mitra makes his bold TED Prize wish: Help me design the School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can explore and learn from each other -- using resources and mentoring from the cloud. Hear his inspiring vision for Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE), and learn more at tedprize.org.
Another great example of this sort of thinking comes from Salman Khan (founder of the Khan Academy). Millions of kids around the world now turn to the Khan Academy's on-line educational videos and multi-media activities to grasp some of the more complex elements of math and science. Why? Because Khan's approach not only makes the topics approachable, amusing and engaging, it enables kids to learn at their own pace.
Watch and find out why one kid said, "this was the first time I smiled doing a derivative".
Education, done well, can be captivating.
http://www.ted.com Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script -- give students video lectures to watch at home, and do "homework" in the classroom with the teacher available to help.
As Sir Ken Robinson so aptly put it in his TED talk on education:
If you are interested in the topic of education, TED has pulled together a list of some of their favourites in a post on their blog.