1. The document discusses key points from a video about Sugatra Mitra's experiment with "hole in the wall" computers in India. Mitra placed computers in slums and remote villages without instruction to see how children would interact with them. He found that the children quickly learned to use the computers on their own and taught each other. 2. It asks questions about the future of learning, why current school systems were created, and how self-organized learning environments (SOLEs) could work. Mitra argues that the Victorian-era school system is outdated and not preparing children for the future. 3. SOLEs allow for broadband-enabled collaboration between students who raise their own questions and direct their own

1. PRACTICE II. DIDACTICS OF ELT. 2018
Video session: A hole in the Wall. Sugatra Mitra (2013)
QUESTIONS:
 What is going to be the future of learning?
 Why did rich children seem so gifted?
 Where and how did they perform the experiment?
 Who created the present school system? Why?
 How is present day schooling going to prepare children for the world?
 What is the reptilian brain?
 How does the grandma’s in the cloud project work?
 Do you think that it will be possible to develop SOLEs in the future in our country?
Why/ not?
1. Taking into account what Sugatra Mitra says about education in the past and his
reflexion about what the Victorians has done, what is it that we are going todo
next?. It is easy to say that the School system is broken, but in fact it is outdated.
We are surrounded by technology where people in the future will be working
where they want, whenever they want, and wherever they want.
2. Rich children seem gifted in the sense that they do wonderful things with
computers, they can have access to that.
3. He used to teach in New Delhi and he made such an experiment: he made a hole
in the boundary wall of the slum next to his office, and stuck a computer inside it
just to see what would happen if he gave a computer to children who never
would have one. The children, when they saw it, they started asking him
questions such as What is it? Why have you put it there?. The thing is that after 8
hours in contact with the computer, he found them browsing and teaching each
other how to browse. He repeated the experiment in a village 300 miles out of

2. New Delhi, in a remote village. The same happened. In 9 months children will
reach the same standard as a secretary in the west.
4. The present school system came from 300 years ago and it came from the British
Empire. No telephone, no computers and travelling by ships. They created a
global computer made up of people, the beraucratic administrative machine. In
order to have it running they produced people, and the school. These people
were identical, and they had to know everything and at the same time be
functional. The Victorians were great engineers, they continuously producing
identical people.
5. Todays’ system prepare children to the future. That is why he created that
experiment.
6. The reptilian brain, located in the centre of ourbrain, when it is threatened, it
shuts down everything else, it shuts down the prefrontal cortex, the parts which
learn, shuts everything down. Punishment and examinations are seen as threats.
So the system, at the age of empire had to develop people like these in order to
survive.
7. The Granny cloud sits on the internet for , through Skype. He saw something
similar in a village called Diggles, in the nothwestern England, deep inside a
village in Tamil Nadu, India and relates this project with SOLE: Self- organized
Learning Environment. This is basically broadband, collaboration and
encouragement put together. The teacheris not present, the teacheronly rises a
questions and everything is done by students.
8. I think it would be great to achieve this kind of project in classrooms. Students
wouldhave a betterunderstandingof the researchcomponent to this newprogram and
feel lessoverwhelmed,nottomentionall the benefits! Istrongly believe, thatkidsmay
be eager,engaged,and enthusedinthis task. The information theycan gain wouldbe
powerful enough,but put on top of that practicing smart research skills,working
cooperatively,and presentingoral activitiesvery powerful.This isa way of teaching
from another perspective andat the same time taking the most ofstudents abilitiesin
order to be focusedon what they are doing.