Using the Web To Turn Kids Into Autodidacts

theodp writes "Autodidacticism — self-education or self-directed learning — is nothing new, but the Internet holds the promise of taking it to the masses. Sugata Mitra, an Indian physicist whose earlier educational experiments inspired the film Slumdog Millionaire, is convinced that, with the Internet, kids can learn by themselves so long as they are in small groups and have well-posed questions to answer. And now, Mitra's Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLE) are going global, with testing in schools in Australia, Colombia, England and India. On their own, children can get about 30% of the knowledge required to pass exams, so to go further, Dr. Mitra supplements SOLE with e-mediators, amateur volunteers who use Skype to help kids learn online."

Comments

This IS traditional education for Americans

[Alan R Light]

If you've read John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education you'll know that in the 1800s the people of America were the best educated in the world, and had largely educated themselves.

Re:This IS traditional education for Americans

[Bigjeff5]

I've read it, and autodidacticism is one of the central tenants. In particular he pays a lot of attention to George Washington's self-education, which began around age 12 or 13, if I remember right, and was in full swing by the time he was 16 (when he taught himself surveying). Likely because his formal education ended so early, Washington always felt it was lacking, which he compensated for by continuing his self-education throughout his entire life.

That the man who is arguably the greatest man in American history was self taught is astounding. Mind you he was not a prodigy. He was smart, probably above average, but he was not a natural genius or anything of the sort. In fact most of the educated elite thought he was of moderate intelligence and some had a real problem with his elevated status and position of authority given his lack of formal education.

Gatto's book is definitely worth a read if you want some insight into the public education system (at least in New York) and why it works so poorly in the US.

And I don't see what is wrong with advertising someone's book if you found it insightful. Could you please explain to me the problem? I'll hold off on telling anybody about any books that I like until you do, thanks.

Taught myself computers this way

[Stele]

I was in 5th grade and our school had just gotten a TRS-80, the first computer I ever saw. Nobody in the school knew what to do with it - it just sat in the library. I and another kid in my class had reputations for being smart and inquisitive - the principal actually brought me broken radios and tape players and things to take apart.

Anyway, the school would send me and the other kid to the library once a day while the class did other stuff, and we taught ourselves to program the computer together, figuring out how to get the tape player working, storing our programs, etc.

That set me up for the rest of my life. In 10th grade (1986-7) I taught myself C while the rest of the class learned Pascal. By the time I got to college I knew more about programming than most of the professors.

Dropped out in 1992 and the rest is history.

I am grateful to the school system I was in (SW Virginia no less) to encourage and support my interest in such gadgetry, and to have the opportunity to learn things at my own pace. It works when done right.

TED talk by Sugata Mitra

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/lang/eng/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html

Re:who's qualified?

[HungryHobo]

Hell yes.
I know 2 or 3 people like this.

One of them is a college dropout who works all hours.
He's one of those busy people, you know the ones, from the saying "if you need something done give it to someone who's busy"

I mentioned 1 way hashes to him over a pint when we were chatting about a problem he was having in work to do with checking for duplicate details without violating data protection.
A few weeks later I chat to him and he's educated himself about hash functions beyond what would be covered in a CS degree.

I sat down with him one afternoon and went through the basics of how to write a simple "hello world" program and compile it and how to do simple loops.
just enough to get past the "where do I start" bit with coding.
6 months later he's writing applications for his office.

I mentioned data structures and various search algortihms to him when he was talking about how his code was always far far slower than the professional coders stuff.
I fully expect him to find out next time I talk to him that he's gone off and educated himself about datastructures and algorithms beyond what a normal cs course covers.

He'll go far in life... or, considering the workload he takes on, go nuts.... but probably go far in life.
He has the tallent and drive to educate himself while working 2 jobs and isn't afraid of learning.

A few pointers for self-learning

[presidenteloco]

When you are ready, study the more formal parts of modern philosophy
(epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science), to acquire the
meta-level skills necessary to understand what knowledge is, and what
its properties are, before you try to load up on too much specific knowledge.

Also, study some westernized writings on Zen philosophy, to the level at which you
understand its relationship to the other above-mentioned aspects of modern
philosophy. When you understand the significance of the dividing of the world
by the cutting strokes of the knife, you may be ready to start learning a few specifics.