Sugata Mitra carved a hole in a wall in a New Delhi slum—about 3 feet high—and placed a computer in it. When kids asked what it was, he said, “I don’t know,” and walked away. Photo: courtesy of Sugata Mitra.

After his 6-year-old son taught himself to use a computer, 2013 TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra wanted to test the idea that kids can learn on their own, by discovery rather than formal training. So Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in the wall near a slum in New Delhi, set up an Internet-connected computer there, and abandoned it in 1999. They also set up a hidden camera.

Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the CloudBefore long, children from the community figured out how to search for information online. They began learning English and other subjects, and started teaching each other. Consequently, Mitra’s “Hole in the Wall” experiment catalyzed his pursuit to advance child-driven learning for thousands of kids around the world.

In his talk from TED2013, Mitra describes repeating the “Hole in the Wall” experiment 300 miles away. He installed a mysterious computer on the side of a road where such machinery was even less familiar than in New Delhi.

12-year-old Arun Chavan was one of the kids who found himself drawn to that computer in Shirgaon, a coastal village in India. Over the next few months, he taught himself to use it. And now, more than a decade later, he lives in the United States and studies at Yale University.

We connected with Chavan to discover how the “Hole in the Wall” impacted his life. Here’s what he’s up to today:

How old are you?

I am 23 now.

And you’re at Yale. What inspires you about your field of study?

I am doing a PhD in Evolutionary Biology. I’m just amazed by the stunning diversity of organisms around us. The excitement of digging into the past to discover how it arose is what keeps me going.

What were your first thoughts when the street-side computer appeared in your community? 

I was a kid then, studying in the sixth grade. I had never handled a computer before. I thought it was great to have those computers lying around to play with. I don’t remember being afraid to use them. I think we figured out soon enough that restarting the computer fixes almost every problem!

What was your favorite thing about participating in the “Hole in Wall” program?

I would say mainly three things: First, that there was nobody telling us what to do and not to do. Second, that it wasn’t the same as having a computer to yourself. We learned things as a group. We learned everything empirically, and taught each other what we found. And third, that the computers in the “Hole in the Wall” were connected to the Internet. It was amazing to be able to Google anything, or to chat with my sister who was studying in a different city.

How did your family feel about your participation?  Did it affect their lives in any way?

My parents were as excited as I was. A few years later when we got ourselves a computer, the only thing I taught my father to do was to switch it on. In his 40s, he taught himself how to use it, and now he regularly blogs to share his paintings and writings.

Are you still in contact with the kids you studied with using the “Hole in the Wall” computer? 

Unfortunately, I am not in contact with many of my friends from that time. Some of us went to different cities to attend college after high school. Most of those who stayed back attended vocational training programs and are working now.

Now that you’re a PhD student, are you teaching? If so, did your experience with the “Hole in the Wall” impact the way you instruct and connect with students?

Only recently have I started teaching. In the discussion sessions I lead, I tend not to intervene unless it is necessary, and I try to let the students understand things from their own discussion and ideas. I don’t know if I borrowed this approach from “Hole in the Wall,” but I find it similar.

What is the most important thing you learned from the “Hole in the Wall” experience?

Sugata Mitra’s “Hole if the Wall” idea is quite radical, I think. But it’s too important to be ignored. I like how he dares to imagine (and also hopes for) a completely different future of education than most of us do.

Along with the “Hole in the Wall,” many other things — interactions with certain people, books, and parents — have impacted my way of thinking. It’s really hard to tease apart what I have learned from the “Hole in the Wall.” I think that you can learn anything if you really want to — this could possibly be a “Hole in the Wall” effect.

What does curiosity mean to you?

A driving force to explore something new, I guess! Curiosity is also exciting for me.

If you could give a TED Talk, what would it be about?

My father writes and directs plays. As a kid, I acted in many of them. These plays have significantly influenced my thinking and have greatly contributed to who I am. If I had to give a TED talk, it would probably be about that experience.

Arun Chavan is now studying for a PhD at Yale. Photo: courtesy of Arun Chavan.

To learn more about the Hole in the Wall, read Sugata Mitra’s TED Book, Beyond the Hole in the Wall: Discover the Power of Self-Organized Learning. And for more on how to inspire self-organized learning wherever you may be, download this toolkit »

Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud

At TED2013, Mitra invited the world to embrace child-driven learning by setting up Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs) and helping him design a learning lab in India, where children can “embark on intellectual adventures.”

We gave Mitra a call and asked him to reflect on his TED Prize win, dive deeper into his thoughts about learning and share the personal experiences that inspired his passion for igniting curiosity in children across the globe.

Here’s our conversation:

What does winning the TED Prize mean to you?

To me, it is a great symbol of recognition — that my work of the last few decades does have acceptability and is of real interest to the world. I was nervous that my work would get put aside as “out of the box,” a phrase I dislike immensely, and forgotten. I am more confident now, thanks to TED.

How did your upbringing shape your interest in self-directed learning?

I did not know anything about self-directed learning until 1999 when I stumbled upon it because of the Hole in the Wall experiment. I grew up more or less by myself in a big bungalow in Delhi with a large garden that had lots of trees and all sorts of birds, animals and insects. We used to learn together, if that makes any sense.

If you were part of a SOLE as a child, what big question do you imagine you might have asked first?

I think I have always been in a SOLE. I grew up quite alone and used to experiment constantly with my surroundings — trees and animals and birds and myself. There were no computers, so I used to ask questions to nature, and often, she would answer.

What is the first thing you remember learning on your own? Did you enjoy the process?

When I was 4 or so, we used to live in my mother’s house in Calcutta. The morning newspaper was rolled up and tossed into our first-floor balcony by the newspaper man. I was always up very early and used to pick it up and take it to my grandfather. I did not know he was dying from cancer. One day when I went to his room with the paper, it was empty and there were people crying. I went back to the balcony and put the paper back where it had fallen and stood for some time wondering if I should pick it up and try again. I learned you can’t turn back time. I did not enjoy the process, I am afraid.

Some people have misunderstood your strategy as anti-teacher, when in fact you are arguing that teachers have a crucial role to play — just a different one — in this technological age. Who was your favorite teacher and why?

My favorite teacher was Father Lewicki at St. Xavier’s High School. When I was 16, I told him I don’t see why I should believe in God. He said I should read Teilhard de Chardin and decide for myself.

Will child-driven education work differently depending on a child’s culture, gender and access to resources?

Easy access to an unsupervised, publicly visible computer with broadband is critical. But children are impacted differently depending on their reading comprehension, particularly in English. Culture does not matter so much when you are dealing with 8-12-year-olds. Neither does gender.

How has parenting informed your perspective on self-directed learning?

My father did his Ph.D. under Benjamin Bloom in Chicago, in the days of objective-driven and “programmed” learning. He then became one of the first psychoanalysts in India. I think he taught me a lot of things by not telling me to do things — by not teaching and only listening.

I learnt how to listen and that people will tell you everything if you listen and say “hmmm” once in a while. My mother, who was once a student of Rabindranath Tagore, taught me how to do lots of things just by thinking about them.

Your Hole in the Wall experiment inspired Vikas Swarup’s novel Q & A, the book that Slumdog Millionaire is based on. How do you think your TED Prize wish will impact popular culture?

In an age where “knowing” may be obsolete, Homo sapiens will have to reinvent ourselves. The wish, I hope, will be a tiny step in that direction. If children have wings, they will learn how to fly.

Did your experience as a parent impact your views about self-directed learning?

The Hole in the Wall experiment was based on what I had learned from my son when he was 6. It was 1987 and I had bought my first PC, spending nearly a year’s salary at the time. When it arrived, I said to my son, “Don’t even think about it.”

About three days later, I was looking for a file on the DOS system. Every time I typed DIR, all the file names would scroll up too fast for me to read them. As I was trying the third time, a little voice from behind said. “If you type DIR/W/P, it will show up like a page.” I was a bit shocked. “How did you know that?” I asked. “Well, that’s what you did yesterday!” he said. From then on, I let him use the computer.

In a couple of weeks, I was asking my son how to do things that I did not know my computer could do. I wrote a paper suggesting that children can learn to use computers by themselves just by watching each other. It was very badly received. Twelve years later, in 1999, my friend and employer Rajendra Pawar let me do the Hole in the Wall. He had no clue what I was trying to find out. The rest is history.

Learn more about Sugata Mitra’s TED Prize wish »

Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud

Since Sugata is passionate about reinventing the way kids learn, he’s curated a list of 5 great TED Talks that align with his vision for the future of learning. From Sir Ken Robinson’s talk about creativity in schools to Arvind Gupta’s reflection on turning garbage into educational toys, Sugata’s diverse inspirations fan the flames of curiosity and explore the significance of learning beyond the classroom.

Watch Mitra’s playlist of talks here »

Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the CloudOn Tuesday, Sugata Mitra accepted the 2013 TED Prize and offered a bold wish for the world: that we encourage children to explore questions about our world in self-organized learning environments. He proposed the founding of a School in the Cloud based in India, and encouraged TED community members, wherever they may be, to foster education by encouraging a sense of wonder in kids.

This week’s TED Weekends, posted a few days earlier than usual, features essays from great thinkers on the ideas advanced in Mitra’s talk. Here, a selection of these essays, for your reading pleasure. 

Sugata Mitra: We Need Schools … Not Factories

From Plato to Aurobindo, from Vygotsky to Montessori, centuries of educational thinking have vigorously debated a central pedagogical question: How do we spark creativity, curiosity, and wonder in children? But those who philosophized pre-Google were prevented from wondering just how the Internet might influence the contemporary answer to this age-old question.

Today, we can and must; a generation that has not known a world without vast global and online connectivity demands it of us. Read the full essay  »

Courtney E. Martin: The Most Powerful Technology of All … Questions

Many will see Sugata Mitra’s wish — to build a “School in the Clouds” — as a TED-style, uber futuristic, and potentially impractical, solution for a very real problem across the globe. But the innovation at the very heart of his wish, truth be told, is not about computers or Skype or even Google. The most critical technology is a really good question.

I think a lot about the power of questions, because I’m a journalist. Well, that, and a nosy person. I’m the kind of person that you sit down next to at a dinner party and ten minutes later you realize that I’ve pulled your life story right out of you. In many ways, it’s not a conscious process, even for me. One minute I’m learning someone’s name and the next I’m asking them, “And then what happened?!” Read the full essay »

Jackie Bezos: A Cloud of Human Potential

In every town in every nation, young people are moments away from inheriting complex problems. At the same time, disparities in educational opportunity and achievement are widening and threatening to undermine the vast potential of our youngest generations. As a global community, it is unconscionable that we leave so much promise unrealized among our youth.

In places where the greatest inequity exists, Dr. Sugata Mitra’s “School in the Cloud” holds enormous promise for leveling the playing field. But his methodology, which taps into a child’s innate sense of wonder and curiosity through Self-organized Learning Environments (or SOLES), is relevant for communities and classrooms everywhere. In essence, it’s about putting the power to learn, create and collaborate into the hands of our children. Read the full essay »

Vanessa Lafaye: If We Turn the Internet Into the World’s Memory, What Becomes of Our Own?

It is interesting to note that Mitra’s TEDTalk is titled, “The Future of Learning” rather than “Education.” This distinction seems like the heart of the issue, not only for SOLE (self-organized learning environment), but more widely. It’s the difference between absorbing information, and developing faculties for creative thought and analytical problem-solving.

He traces today’s education system back to the Victorian-era hunger for literate bureaucrats, needed to keep the wheels of the British Empire running smoothly. As it happens, my employer Wiley was established even before this time. Also as it happens, publishing is undergoing a dramatic reinvention today, in search of new models in response to the urgent imperative to prepare our young for the creative economy of tomorrow. This got me thinking about evolution, of knowledge and ourselves. Read the full essay »

People around the world answered Sugata’s invitation to help reinvent the way kids learn, by spreading the word about self-organized learning and committing to contribute resources for his School in the Cloud. Based on the conversation online, the TED community is ready and willing to reimagine education.

Sugata’s name is now trending on Twitter. The prospect of igniting the fire of curiosity in kids through collaboration and encouragement is so inspiring; even some critics are rooting for this project’s success.

Here are some highlights:

Something valuable for everyone in school or who has children in school. My hero Sugata Mitra shares the wisdom… fb.me/1AbwNx7Kz—
Ramon J. Thomas (@RamonThomas) October 31, 2012

Building a school in the cloud! Breaking the barriers!! blog.tedprize.com/congratulation…—
Subramanyan RG (@subramanyanrg) February 27, 2013

Congratulations to Sugata Mitra for winning TED Prize '13 -Blowing away conventional thoughts on Education! Brilliant! What an honour too!—
Joy Dev Chatterjee (@Joydc11) February 27, 2013

#TEDSOLE I commit to help with identity, marketing, branding, engagement strategy, teaching & North Texas collaboration @TEDPrize #TED2013—
Sarah Boswell (@SarahBoswell) February 27, 2013

hey #TED2013, the educational hookup I offered was to @toddsutler and his @OdysseyInitiate 50-state tour of best teaching practices—
Baratunde (@baratunde) February 27, 2013

@tedprize I'd be humbled take part. I commit to help w/ interaction design, usability, accessibility, marketing & more. #emailingnow—
Ryan Plesko (@plesko) February 27, 2013

"education should be about developing the ability to learn anything on one’s own." Let's do this everywhere! wp.me/p10512-ilS—
Deanna Martinez (@DeaBeEm) February 27, 2013

Sugata Mitra winning the 2013 TED Prize should be the most important story in every newspaper in the world. This can change learning forever—
Nikhil Goyal (@nikhilgoya_l) February 27, 2013

Teachers take note!! RT @TEDNews: winner of the 2013 @TEDPrize: Sugata Mitra and the school in the cloud! ted.com/prize #TED2013—
Matt W Kane (@Mattwkane) February 27, 2013

"If there's a child in trouble, we beam a gran." ~ Sugata Mitra #TED2013 #Education #LoveYou #education <3—
Amazing Women Rock (@AmazingWomen) February 27, 2013

love this "rid us of a system that is fast becoming obsolete": NRI ed pioneer Sugata Mitra wins $1 million TED Prize fb.me/KOI2Iuh2—
jalak jobanputra (@jalak) February 27, 2013

"Child Driven Education" – Sugata Mitra's winning TED presentation on giving kids access to education even far away ted.com/talks/lang/en/…—
  (@japanmama) February 27, 2013

Huge win for Sugata Mitra but remain skeptical on use of technology in primary education. Happy to be proven wrong. bit.ly/ZHHfDR—
Gautam John (@gkjohn) February 27, 2013

Are you inspired by Sugata’s wish? Join the conversation on Twitter by tweeting at @TEDPrize and using the #TEDSOLE hashtag.

It’s a question on so many minds: what will the future of education look like?

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity It’s something Sir Ken Robinson has asked for decades. And tonight in Session 3 of TED2013, Robinson got the opportunity to announce the winner of the 2013 TED Prize, someone who has a bold answer.

“So many kids are disengaged from education and there’s a tendency to confuse testing with learning,” says Robinson in his introduction. “What drives learning is curiosity, questioning … What fires people up to learn is having their mind opened up by possibilities.”

And with that, he revealed the winner of the $1 million TED Prize: education innovator Sugata Mitra, who has given two TED Talks over the years and released a TED ebook called Beyond The Hole in The Wall.

Mitra wants children around the globe, in addition to traditional schooling, to get a chance to participate in self-organized learning. Translation: to spend time in learning environments where they are given the space to explore on their own, make discoveries and share them with their peers. In his talk from the TED stage, Mitra offered a bold wish: to help design the future of learning by supporting children in tapping into their innate sense of wonder. To this end, Mitra asked the TED community to help him create the School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India where children can embark on intellectual adventures, connecting with information and mentors online. He also asked the community, wherever they may be, to create child-driven learning environments for the kids in their own lives.

In his talk, Mitra points out that schooling as it exists now was created 300 years ago in the British Empire.

Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education “The Victorians created a global computer made up of people. It’s called the bureaucratic administrative machine,” says Mitra, in the bold opening of his talk. “In order to keep that running, you need lots and lots of people. They must be identical to each other … So they created a system, called school, to make parts [for this human computer]. They must have good handwriting, they must be able to read, and they must be able to add, subtract and do division.”

But these skills aren’t as necessary with the advent of computers.“It’s quite fashionable to say education system is broken,” says Mitra. “It’s not, It’s wonderfully constructed — it’s just that we don’t need it anymore. It’s outdated.”

We can’t imagine the technology of the future, and thus we can’t know what jobs we’ll need the skills for. So Mitra suggests that education should be about developing the ability to learn anything on one’s own.

Mitra has a history of research to back up this wish. In 1999, he began what he calls his “hole in the wall” experiment. He carved a hole in a wall in a Delhi slum — about three feet high — and placed a computer in it. Kids had gathered around within a matter of hours and asked Mitra questions about what this thing was. He responded “I don’t know,” and walked away.

Soon the kids were surfing the internet — and teaching each other how to do it more effectively.

Mitra repeated the experiment 300 miles away, where computers even less familiar. He installed a mysterious computer on the side of a road. A few months later, he returned and found kids playing games on it. Remembers Mitra, “They said, ‘We want a faster processor and a better mouse.’”

Another thing these kids said that was music to his ears: “You’ve given us a machine that works only in English, so we had to teach ourselves English.”

Mitra says, “It was the first time I heard the words ‘teach ourselves’ said so casually.”

Mitra kept testing, seeing if rural students could learn different pronunciation simply by talking into a speech-to-text engine until it understood them. They did it. And then he went even more absurd. He asked:  Can Tamil-speaking 12-year-olds learn the biotech of DNA replication by themselves on a streetside computer in English?

Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselvesSlowly but surely, over months, the kids began to learn the material — showing understanding of concepts far advanced for their age. In three months, with a test, they went from 0% comprehension to 30%. But Mitra wanted to see if he could go further. He brought in a 22-year-old woman with no knowledge of the subject to tutor the kids, using “the method of the grandmother.” Instead of traditional instructing, she simply gave encouragement. The kids’ test comprehension scores jumped.

“We live in a world where, when we want to know something, we can learn it in two minutes,” says Mitra. “Could it be, the devastating question, that we’re heading towards a future where knowing is obsolete?”

Mitra isn’t ready to say that, but he is willing to challenge traditional modes of education based on teaching, testing and regurgitation. As Mitra explains, punishments and exams are seen as threats by kids. He says that these are tools no longer needed outside of the age of empire. Mitra urges us all to shift the incentive for education from threat to pleasure.

Mitra shared another one of his experiments — the “granny cloud,” a community of retired teachers who Skyped into learning centers and encouraged children with questions and assignments. He calls this type of environment a SOLE — a self-organized learning environment. It’s based on a curriculum of questions that set curiosity free, varying forms of peer assessment and certification without examination.

“If we let the educational process be a self-organizing organism, learning emerges,” says Mitra. “It’s not about making learning happen, it’s about letting education happen.”

Mitra’s $1 million TED Prize is not a gift– it’s seed money to fund a global  initiative toward this vision. The money will help Mitra break ground on the School in the Cloud in India this very year. This school will serve as both an education and research center to further explore approaches to self-directed learning. It will be managed by cloud technology, but with an adult supervisor always on hand. The plans for the school will be open-sourced.

But Mitra is asking for your help, too.

He has released a toolkit for parents, educators and teachers who want to create SOLEs. The online resource will help them support kids (8-12 years old) as they tap into their innate sense of wonder. The key: asking big questions. For example, “If a meteroite was coming toward the earth, how would you figure out if it was going to hit?” Mitra has been amazed with how kids come up with new approaches to questions like this.

Closing his talk, Mitra shared an anecdote. “A little girl was following me around. I said, ‘I want to give a computer to everyone,’” recalls Mitra. “She reached out her hand and she said to me, ‘Get on with it.’”