Barefoot In the head

If you think so....

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Location: Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, United Kingdom

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Sunday, July 12, 2009

Towards a new education for children

We know that:
Groups of children (6-12 yeards old in groups of 4 or so), given unrestricted and unsupervised access to the Internet can learn almost anything on their own. It doesn't matter who or where they are. We know this from 20 years of research, standing on the shoulders of Aurobindo, Piaget, Vygotsky and Montessori.

This kind of learning is activated by questions, not answers.

There will always be children in the world who, for some reason or the other, cannot pay for education.

Hypothesis:
There will always be people in the world who are willing to mediate in children's learning for, say, one hour a week, with no remuneration.

Speculation:
If we create 'clouds' of mediators and children on the Internet and an arrangement by which they can interact, we would have an alternative schooling.

Action:
In the last three years, we have created 12 Self Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs) in addition to the several hundred 'hole in the wall' computers that exist in India, Cambodia and several African countries.

There exists a cloud of mediators, numbering in hundreds, that have begun to interact with these SOLEs. The cloud is self organised and called a Self Organised Mediation Environment (SOME). The mediators interact with the children over Skype.

Next:
We need a Self Organised Assessment Method (SOAM) by which children can assess their learning accurately.

We need a curruculum that is driven by questions. Self organised and self populating.

We need computing environments for children that are powered by free energy and bandwidth.

Schools in clouds, integrated with the fabric of space and time....