The hole in the wall: self organising systems in education

Transcript of a keynote speech by Sugata Mitra at “Into something rich and strange” – making sense of the sea-change, the 2010 Association for Learning Technology Conference in Nottingham, England. In the chair, Richard Noss, Co-director of the London Knowledge Lab. This text transcript is at http://repository.alt.ac.uk/855/ [82 kB PDF]. A one hour video of the talk is on the ALT-C 2010 web site at http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2010/ and on the ALT YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/ClipsFromALT/. Alongside this there will be an experimental version of the video that includes the #altc2010 twitter stream at the time of Sugata’s talk. Made publicly available by ALT in November 2010 under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wale

Self-Organizing Traffic at a Malfunctioning Intersection

Traffic signals and traffic flow models have been studied extensively in the past and have provided valuable insights on the design of signalling systems, congestion control, and punitive policies. This paper takes a slightly different tack and describes what happens at an intersection where the traffic signals are malfunctioning and stuck in some configuration. By modelling individual vehicles as agents, we were able to replicate the surprisingly organized traffic flow that we observed at a real malfunctioning intersection in urban India. Counter-intuitively, the very lawlessness that normally causes jams was causing traffic to flow smoothly at this intersection. We situate this research in the context of other research on emergent complex phenomena in traffic, and suggest further lines of research that could benefit from the analysis and modelling of rule-breaking behaviour.Self-Organizing Systems, Complex Systems, Traffic, Emergent Behaviour, Agent-Based Modelling, Rule-Breaking

The Self Organised Learning Environment (SOLE) School Support Pack.

This document is designed to support the implementation of Sugata Mitra’s Self Organised Learning Environment (SOLE) into multiple school contexts. It contains ‘whole school’ related information for Head Teachers and senior staff in addition to teaching and learning support for teachers and support staff. A kindle version of Sugata Mitra's "Beyond the Hole in the Wall: Discover the Power of Self-Organized Learning" is available here http://goo.gl/iaL4B

Afterthoughts

Writers Sugata Mitra and Payal Arora were invited to provide some afterthoughts having read each other's papers. As Arora observes, the Hole-in-the-Wall approach has shown that the absence of a teacher can sometimes encourage children to explore more bravely than they would in their presence. However, as she again observes, institutional indifference may result in abdication of responsibility and lack of sustainability. It sells its products to schools and hence locates its kiosks on school playgrounds. She also wonders whether placing of computers i

Ethnic Diversity, Public Spending and Political Regimes

We study the relationship between ethnic diversity and public spending under two different political regimes, namely, democracy and dictatorship. We build a theory where political leaders (democratically elected or not) decide on the allocation of spending on different types of public goods: a general public good and an ethnically-targetable public good. We show that the relationship between public spending and ethnic diversity is qualitatively different under the two regimes. In particular, higher ethnic diversity leads to greater investment in general rather than group-specific public goods under democracy; the opposite relation obtains under dictatorship. We also discuss some implications of our results for economic performance and citizen's welfare

Ethnic Diversity, Public Spending and Political Regimes

We study the relationship between ethnic diversity and public spending under two different political regimes, namely, democracy and dictatorship. We build a theory where political leaders (democratically elected or not) decide on the allocation of spending on different types of public goods: a general public good and an ethnically-targetable public good. We show that the relationship between public spending and ethnic diversity is qualitatively different under the two regimes. In particular, higher ethnic diversity leads to greater investment in general rather than group-specific public goods under democracy; the opposite relation obtains under dictatorship. We also discuss some implications of our results for economic performance and citizen's welfare

Ethnic Diversity, Public Spending and Political Regimes

Do democracies discriminate less against minorities as compared to non-democracies? How does the dominance of an ethnic group affect discrimination under various political regimes? We build a theory to analyse such questions. In our model, political leaders (democratically elected or not) decide on the allocation of spending on different types of public goods: a general public good and an ethnically targetable public good which benefits the majority ethnic group while imposing a cost on the other minorities. We show that, under democracy, lower ethnic dominance leads to greater provision of the general public good while higher dominance implies higher provision of the ethnically targetable good. Interestingly, the opposite relation obtains under dictatorship. This implies that political regime changes can favour or disfavour minorities based on the ambient level of ethnic dominance. Several historical events involving regime changes can be analysed within our framework and are consistent with our results

Self-Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs) in an English School: an example of transformative pedagogy?

Self-Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs) are models of learning in which students self-organise in groups and learn using a computer connected to the internet with minimal teacher support. The original ‘hole in the wall’ experiments in India are now applied to classrooms around the world. The idea of SOLEs is a social innovation that is inspiring educators (in schooling and also business contexts) everywhere, as demonstrated by Mitra’s award of the 2013 TED prize. However, when SOLEs are located in classrooms, a number of questions arise. Are SOLEs easily adapted for the classroom context? Is the impact on learning as transformative as suggested by the original ideas? This paper considers in detail the application over two years by one teacher, using SOLEs in a Year 4 classroom in an urban North East England primary school, in partnership with university researchers Dolan, Mitra and Leat. Issues of innovation and transformation are discussed, informed by the ideas of Bernstein, Engestrom, and Giroux. The SOLE concept, although flexible, has the potential to offer a divergent, radical transformative pedagogy. This sits somewhat uncomfortably alongside more convergent approaches which position the learner as subservient to the curriculum, with the task of merely mastering subject matter prescribed by the teacher. However, what is notable from this analysis is that transformative pedagogy seems to be positioned alongside, rather than in conflict with, the dominant educational framework