MIT Technology Review : MIT 2012 was held at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 24 — 25, 2012. –The best experiment in democratazing education, documentary in english, 23:25
Nicholas Negroponte, founder, One Laptop Per Child, on his latest experiment with the democratization of education – can children teach themselves to read?
Edx is a platform with aim to provide free education to the world. It is is part of a broader revolution in education programs based on using cloud computing, internet, mobile devices, etc. The story of emerging technology democratizing education.
America : education is on a crisis of quality and cost. In poor countries it is on a crisis of access and affordability.
I don’t think teaching is our role. Why do I have that feeling that education is going in the wrong direction ? Answer is the difference between education and learning which is the real issue. Then between knowing and understanding.
Best teachers are not remembered for what they knew, but because they understood us.
Going to no school zone, no literate adults, can kids teach themselves ? Experiment in Ethiopia starting 13:00mn
Experiments in 40 countries, 25 languages, 3 millions devices spread. Results in key words are :
- the most powerful idea : kids are teaching their parents how to read and write !! So what is the education body for ?
- next idea : kids teaching kids
Starting 12:20 mn -Experiment in 2 villages in Ethiopia. Kids who had never seen a sign, a piece of paper with prints. All adults illiterate. Bringing to the village as many tablets as children. Left closed boxes in the village, no instructions. There are hundreds of application on each tablet (movies, cartoons, books, games and programming languages) all in english. In 4mn a kid found the on on/switch button. Within 5 days using 47 apps average per child per day. Within 2 weeks singing ABC songs. Within 5 months they had hacked android J (plugging back the camera).
All kids gestures on the tablets are recorded (open data within MIT). Parents do not get engaged.
Collaboration is the other big issue as seen on the picture left above : kids are showing each other in the most natural and loving way. It is called collaborative learning.
In the village they are all using different apps. The question is : will those kids learn how to read. Because if you can learn to read then you can read to learn (and understand).
The program feeds the passion to learn (not like in developed countries which kills the joy to learn).