Access to Education for Unprivileged Children
Berlin (GER), July 2007 - A keynote speech by Professor Sugata Mitra will be among the highlights at Online Educa 2007, the world's largest international conference on technology-supported learning and training, taking place from November, 28 to 30 in Berlin's Hotel InterContinental. Professor Mitra, an internationally renowned software specialist and visionary, will present some if his latest findings concerning self-organizing learning systems in primary education.
Sugata Mitra has become internationally known for his "Hole in the Wall" experiment, which he started in New Delhi in 1999. Installing a PC with Internet capability in an opening in a wall beside his office in a poor Delhi neighborhood, Mitra monitored how children, left to their own curiosity, made use of the machine. Based on his observations, Mitra developed an approach he terms "Minimally Invasive Education" (MIE), a future-oriented procedure with special relevance for unprivileged children.
MIE assumes that children can achieve knowledge and skills via PCs and Internet almost completely on their own, without any major intervention. Sugata Mitra is convinced: "Children will learn to live together and learn together. They will come to know how to evaluate different points of view. Self-organizing learning systems will continuously evolve their own curricula and learning methods".
At Online Educa 2007, Mitra - currently professor for educational technology at Newcastle University, UK - will give insights into his latest research concerning MIE and present empirical data as well as best practice examples.
