Professor Sugata Mitra

Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University and previously a Visiting Professor at MIT. <br /> <br /> He is at the forefront of a new approach to education which challenges how we teach today's children in a technological age.<br /> <br /> His &ldquo;Hole in the Wall&rdquo; experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they&rsquo;re motivated by curiosity and peer interest.<br /> <br /> In 1999, Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there with a hidden camera filming the area.<br /> <br /> Almost immediately, children from the slum began playing with the computer and in the process taught each other how to use it and get online. <br /> <br /> The findings challenged some of the key assumptions of formal education, demonstrating that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity could result in learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge.<br /> <br /> Further research showed the importance of an encouraging adult in the educational environment and as a result the Granny Cloud was born.