Sugata Mitra Hole in the Wall TED Talk

I recently watched Sugata Mitra's TED Talk on his ideas about the future of learning and his hole in the wall experiments.  If you have not seen this video I strongly urge you to watch it.

.

In his award winning talk, Sugata describes his hole in the wall experiments where he gave computers to non-English speaking students in rural parts of India with no instruction or explanation of how they work.  And what happened was pretty unbelievable... they taught themselves not only how to work the computers but other things such as computer programming and the biotechnology of DNA replication!

So what does this mean?  How can this change the current and future classrooms that we are teaching in?  If the children in rural India could teach themselves, do we even need teachers?

I think the main point of Sugatra's talk is that our goal as teachers is not to MAKE learning happen but to LET learning happen and encourage students as it happens.  Sugatra talks about the use of Grannies in his experiments.  Grannies are your stereotypical grandmother that is extremely patient and willing to sit with you while you figure something out for nearly ever.  He used volunteers to skype with struggling students to offer encouragement and admiration.  And guess what, this helped!  Giving students a question, letting them figure it out on their own and offering encouragement and admiration proved to be a successful method for getting students to learn.

After watching this video I felt inspired to rethink how a typical classroom works.  Instead of lecturing for hours while students quietly take down notes, why not ask students the big question and let them do the work of figuring it out.  This makes students more invested and interested in what they are learning and allows the teacher more time to offer help and encouragement to those students who need it.