Barn som driver deras egna lärande <> Children who determine their own learning

Sugata Mitras forskning började 1999, när han lämnade en dator i en vägg intill ett av Nya Delhis slumområde. Det var märkligt hur barnen, som inte kunde engelska och inte hade använt en dator tidigare, började lära sig saker. Det sägs att efter ett par veckor, någon frågade ett av barnen hur det lärde sig använda en dator. Barnet svarade med "Vad är en dator för något?" Klicka på titeln av detta inlägg, eller ser filmen till höger här på bloggen.

Några bra citat från Mitras tal:

"Children will learn to do what they want to learn to do."

Och från Arthur C. Clarke, när han hörde talas om Mitras forskning: "If children have interest, then education happens." Den är bra uttryckt. Barn som har intresse - det är inte alls samma sak som ett intresse som en lärare försöker skapa hos ett barn, orsak det står i läroplanen att detta barn behöver veta det och det och det.

"This is in rural Cambodia... a fairly silly arithmetic game, which no child would play in the classroom or at home, they'd throw it back at you and say this is very boring... If you leave it on the pavement, and if all the adults go away, then they will show off with each other about what they can do - which is what these children are doing."

Sugata Mitras research began in 1999, when he left a computer in a wall overlooking one of New Delhi’s slum areas. It was remarkable how the children, who didn’t know a word of English and had never used a computer before, started to learn things. It is said that after a couple of weeks, a journalist asked one of the children how he had learned to use a computer. The child answered with “What’s a computer?” Click on the title of this post, or see the film on the right hand side.

A few good quotes from Mitra’s speech:

"Children will learn to do what they want to learn to do."

And from Arthur C. Clarke, when he got word of Mitra’s research: “If children have interest, then education happens.” This is well expressed. Children that have interest - not at all the same thing as an interest that a teacher tries to generate in a child, because it says in the curriculum that this child needs to learn this, that and the other.

"This is in rural Cambodia... a fairly silly arithmetic game, which no child would play in the classroom or at home, they'd throw it back at you and say this is very boring... If you leave it on the pavement, and if all the adults go away, then they will show off with each other about what they can do - which is what these children are doing."