Hole in the Wall TED Talk Reflection

When I first started watching the video I was a little confused about what the title of the assignment meant when it said “Hole in the Wall”. Continuing to watch the video I began to learn why it was call that. He first talked about how schools are becoming obsolete and that for the future there may not be a need for schools. In jobs today, we do not write as much as we used to because of computers, With that being said, are schools preparing students for the jobs that will be waiting for them? I agree with what he is saying because schools are so focused on writing and math instead of things that they will be needing to learn to use in jobs today. He then switches to discussing about how he started and got the idea for the “Hole in the Wall”. \

This is Mr. Mitra… 

When Mr. Mitra was working on programing computers he was meeting with people that said they had bright children, but all the people that would say that were wealthy people that could afford computers in their homes. So Mr. Mitra decided to cut a hole in the next to the slums, he then placed a computer in the wall for the students to use and learn from on their own. He left the computer there and the children began to learn how to use a computer which they had never seen before. So he thought he would stretch out and put a computer in a more remote area. The same thing happened in months they learned how to use it. I thought this was amazing that people that have no idea about what a computer is but they were still able to learn and know how to work one with just months of exposure. 

With these experiments a success, Mr. Mitra started doing this all over in different areas and in these areas children who had never seen a computer were learning how to use them and teach others how to use them. It is just amazing how people can learn on their own.  He started having grandmothers in the UK skype in and help the children and other people learn. He refers to this as the grandmother approach This is where there is a person or grandmother in these instances that will question the learners and have them explain how they did something. The grandmothers did this and they encouraged the learners. Mr. Mitra says that encouragement is the key to the learner’s success. I believe that he is correct and that encouragement is the key and that as teachers we need to be that encouragement for the students and help them grow. One last thing to think about is what Mr. Mitra discusses for just a few minutes, that is what will learning be like tomorrow? Will we need school? That is something that we all should think about because the future is coming and schooling is changing all the time. Will there come a time that we may not need school anymore? I don’t think so, because I believe that we need teachers to be there to help learners through and encourage them like the grandmothers did. It is hard to say though because with the technology we have we can get information and answers in minutes. Technology is always changing and with that, the chances of school disappearing is always possible.

Sources:

Google Images

Sugata Mitra TED 2013 Winning Talk-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpcEpmNbHds&feature=youtu.be