The Granny Cloud | Angèle Oberheinrich | TEDxKIT

Angèle Oberheinrich introduces the Granny Cloud, a team of volunteers all over the world that reaches out to children with limited educational resources around the globe in a variety of settings and provides them with the opportunity to experience worlds far removed from their own. Members of the Granny Cloud interact with groups of children, engaging them in conversation and in activities of various kinds, such as reading and telling stories, craft activities, solving puzzles and exploring big questions. The role of the Granny includes provoking curiosity, asking questions, listening attentively and providing warm encouragement. You don't have to be a grandmother to become part of the team - volunteers are between 24 and 78 years old and male as well as female.

For many years, Angèle Oberheinrich has been volunteering for the Granny Cloud. With lots of enthusiasm and untiring dedication, she applies her energies to supporting children all over the world.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at:
https://www.ted.com/tedx

Hello, I'm Granny Angèle,

and I'd like to tell you
about the Granny Cloud

and how it connects children
around the world.

The Granny Cloud is a group of people
who connect with children via Skype

mainly in remote areas.

The idea began with an experiment
in slums of Hyderabad in India

and took off in the village
of Shirgaon in Maharashtra

in 2009

in a lab that had been set up
as part of the main project in Hyderabad.

Most of the first Grannies
were retired women.

They had read an article
in the British newspaper

about Sugata Mitra's experiment

and volunteered to spend
some of their free time

communicating with children
in India via Skype.

At first, there was just
a handful of Grannies,

mainly women and mainly
from the UK and Europe,

singing songs, playing games
and telling stories with children.

Ten years on, we've had
more than 300 Grannies.

Some of them dedicated
a few months of their time,

and others have been in it
for the long haul.

The number of active Grannies
at any given time is about 70:

not all in England and not all female.

We've also reached out to children
in different countries

including Colombia, Cambodia and Mexico

though most are in India.

At the moment, we have independent,
self-funded Granny Cloud centers

in India as well as
in Jamaica and Greenland.

"Granny."

Why "granny?"

(Laughter)

Well, "granny" is
a gender-and age-free term.

(Laughter)

Grannies are women and men

aged from 24 to 78 years of age.

(Laughter)

The initiative, which began in 2009,

was originally called
Self-organized Mediation Environments.

It's a bit of mouthful.

"The grandmother approach"
was how it was described

to emphasize the warm,
encouraging nature of the interaction.

The media, as they do,
picked up on the word "grandmother,"

and as it was a relationship
via the Internet,

the term "Granny Cloud"
developed and stuck.

The Grannies are all volunteers

and come from many
different countries in the world,

and English is not necessarily
their native language.

Some people think
that we're all just old and bored

and have nothing better to do

than fiddle around trying to learn
how to use the Internet.

(Laughter)

Well, we're not.

(Laughter)

What do you think 70-year-olds
do at 6 AM on a Monday morning?

Anybody? No.

I for one am still asleep,

but I know one 70-year-old
who gets up, dresses quickly,

puts on a bit of mascara,
grabs a cup of coffee

and by 6:30, is doing
"Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes"

with a bunch of three-year-olds
in a nursery school in India.

Well, rather her than me.

I have tried it, but 6 AM
is not my favorite time of day.

And besides, I'd probably poke my eye out
with the mascara brush

even at the best of times.

Though it was the case
at the start of the Granny Cloud,

learning English
is not necessarily the main aim.

The children see
what possibilities there are

outside their own communities,
outside their own culture.

They don't only connect with the Grannies

but also with children
from other cultures:

my granddaughter, for instance.

I have a lovely granddaughter,

and when she was about five or six,
she joined in a Granny session with me.

She spoke to children living
in the Sundarbans in the Bay of Bengal.

And Alesia had been swimming.

The Bengali children wanted to know
where she'd been swimming.

"Well, where do you go swimming?"

"In a swimming pool, of course."

But the Bengali children
swim in fish ponds along with the fish,

and I don't think Alesia believed that.

These children are having fun
beside a fish pond.

They're not in it, but I think
they might fall in it quite soon, okay.

And I've Grannies
connect with Grannies as well.

We know each other over Skype,

and we have Skype meetings
which we call "Granny tea parties."

(Laughter)

And we get together
and talk about new ideas

and try to sort out
any problems there might be.

And, of course, the children talk to us

and tell us about where they live,
their way of life.

And quite often, you'll see Indian
children dressed in really thick clothes

at temperatures when Europeans
would be basking in the sun.

And there was one Granny
talking to children in Greenland

who was told, "Oh,
it's not particularly cold today.

It's quite mild.

It's only minus five degrees centigrade."

Yeah.

The children also gain confidence.

When I first started speaking
to children on Skype,

I heard a lot of,
"Yes, ma'am," "No, ma'am."

They were really rather shy
and didn't know what to say,

and they didn't have
a lot of English either,

but now that they've got to know me,

they'll tell me
that I'm a very cruel Granny

eating all the ice cream myself.

(Laughter)

Well, it is difficult
to send ice cream via the Internet.

So, personal touch is very important.

When the first centers were set up,

the children saw the Grannies
on huge screens, like cinema screens.

It didn't work very well.

And later on, the smaller
screens were introduced

showing the Grannies
more or less life-size,

giving the impression that they
were in the same room as the children.

And there were stories
of children reaching out

wanting to touch Granny's face.

Her skin looks so soft
they want to know what it feels like.

And they get as close
to the computer as possible

so they can be close to Granny.

It's really rather lovely.

So, what do we do?

Well, we do all sorts of things:

sing songs, play games.

What else?

We might ask the children a question

that they can search
for an answer in the Internet.

And yes, all sorts of things we do.

And ... oh yes, this one.

This is Liz, the Jelly Granny.

(Laughter)

I don't think Liz likes
being called the Jelly Granny,

but I'm afraid she's stuck with it.

She was teaching the children
a song about jelly.

You know this one, "Wibble wobble,
wibble wobble jelly on the plate"?

Well, the jelly almost wibble-wobbled
off the plate onto her computer.

(Laughter)

That would have been the end
of the session and her computer too.

But she did save it. She did save it.

And this picture, by the way,
is a still from a documentary film,

which is quite good.

And if you're interested in seeing it,
it can be viewed on Vimeo.

Yeah, and sometimes,
the children lead the sessions.

They might start off by telling us about
something that's happening in the school,

a project they have,

or they'll tell us about a festival
that they've been celebrating.

That's rather nice.

Sounds lovely, doesn't it?

It is rather, but it doesn't always work.

There are so many things
that can go wrong.

To start with, we haven't got
a common language.

And the technology,
well, it has improved over the years,

but it's still not perfect.

And then the weather.

The weather can cause
all sorts of problems.

During the monsoon, heavy rain
can interfere with the Internet,

so we don't have a connection.

Or the children don't go to the centers
because it's pouring with rain.

And then in the winter months
when it gets dark early,

they have to leave the centers early

so that they're home
before darkness falls.

Otherwise, they won't see
what dangers there are on the way home.

This is particularly a problem
in the Sundarbans,

where they've got snakes -
nasty ones, yes.

Okay.

So, you're all prepared
for a super-duper session.

You've got puppets and books and games,
and you might get to sing a song or two.

It's going to be wonderful,

but it isn't.

It doesn't happen.

Failure.

A failed session and depressed Granny.

But we don't give up.

We try again, and next time,
it all works out:

perhaps not quite as planned
but beautifully all the same.

And we all work under the guidance of
our lovely Granny Cloud director, Suneeta.

There she is, wearing
one of her gorgeous saris.

A very hard-working woman,
a volunteer as well as the rest of us.

At the centers,
we communicate with vary:

from a computer lab in a school -
it's quite well-equipped,

and Granny sessions are integrated
in the school curriculum -

to a small room in an urban slum

which doubles as
a paper recycling business.

The Granny sessions are co-ordinated
by a member of an NGO, using a laptop.

This is the entrance
to the paper recycling room.

The owner's family of four
lives above in another room.

Not luxurious at all.

And this is what it looks like
inside the paper recycling room.

There's a bit more space
than you can see there but not a lot.

But the children have fun there.

The children from the early
days have moved on,

and we have one or two success stories.

A boy from the Hyderabad project

has studied medicine
and is now a qualified doctor.

And a girl from the Shirgaon center

has a bachelor's degree
in computer sciences

and is working at the Indian Institute
of Technology as a junior research fellow.

(Sighs)

(Laughter)

And there are many groups around the world

that would love to have Granny sessions,

but as I say, we only have
about 70 active Grannies.

So, we haven't got the time

to share with all the children
we would like to reach,

but we do reach out and help those
that want to set up centers of their own.

There is a Spanish-speaking
Granny Cloud center in Bogota,

which we helped to set up.

And we are now in the process
of helping to set up a center

in Fort Severn.

It's a First Nation settlement
in Ontario in Canada.

Very remote, very cold I think
way up there in the north,

but there's a school with children,
and they'd like to have Granny sessions,

so we're helping to get them on their way.

And I think it's a wonderful idea.

Wasn't my idea,

but I'm really happy to be part of it,

and I hope it continues
to spread around the world.

And thank you for listening to me.

(Applause)