A presentation I made to BCS to support its educational outreach and support program in Berkshire

1. Encouraging New Perspectives in
Children

2. What is the Challenge?
• Children do not have balanced media
exposure
• Over exposure to the world of ‘glamour’
• Boys – want to become footballers
• Girls – footballers wives!

3. Gateshead Experiment
• Initiated by Prof. Sugata Mitra of Newcastle
University
• Children can teach themselves on their own
• Projects:
– Hole-in-the-wall
– SOLE (self-organised Learning Environments) and
SOME (self-organised Mediation Environments)

4. Gateshead Experiment
• Used selected TED Videos to expose learners
to the wonderful world outside
• Children were excited and after watching the
TED videos some wanted to become
musicians, and some engineers and the other
artists and scientists

5. TED Videos (an example)

6. Gateshead Experiment
• The Granny Cloud
• Retired Teachers, volunteer their time
• To support the learners

7. Gateshead Experiment
• How many retired professionals do we have in
Berkshire?
• Can we use their expertise and time to spread
the beauty of the world around?

8. Proposal
• Database of local domain experts
• Select a TED video and show the video to children
• Expert simplifies the talk where required, and then be
there in person to answer any questions that the
children may have.
• Using TED videos with local domain experts lends itself
to making use of the immense knowledge pool
• Many retired and elderly people who have done
exceptionally well in their respective domains - and
now have an opportunity to transfer the knowledge to
our younger generation with support from TED videos

9. THANK YOU
kurienp@gmail.com