1
00:00:10,470 --> 00:00:13,350
The last time I stood

2
00:00:13,350 --> 00:00:16,496
on a TED main stage

3
00:00:17,740 --> 00:00:21,584
was in February, 2013.

4
00:00:23,622 --> 00:00:26,929
It was in Long Beach, California.

5
00:00:29,734 --> 00:00:33,061
TED gave me their prize
at that point in time,

6
00:00:33,302 --> 00:00:34,910
a million dollars.

7
00:00:35,670 --> 00:00:37,548
I thought they would put it
in my bank account,

8
00:00:37,548 --> 00:00:39,555
but they didn't, actually.

9
00:00:39,555 --> 00:00:41,034
(Laughter)

10
00:00:41,034 --> 00:00:43,189
They gave it to the university.

11
00:00:43,688 --> 00:00:48,443
But anyhow, here I am again
on a TED main stage.

12
00:00:50,781 --> 00:00:52,864
I spent the million dollars.

13
00:00:53,066 --> 00:00:54,408
(Laughter)

14
00:00:55,364 --> 00:00:57,958
I'll tell you what happened next.

15
00:00:58,210 --> 00:01:00,256
I thought I'll give you a report

16
00:01:00,256 --> 00:01:04,344
on what I did with the money,
and where we are at this point in time.

17
00:01:04,344 --> 00:01:06,780
It's not all gone;
there's just a little bit left.

18
00:01:06,780 --> 00:01:08,404
(Laughter)

19
00:01:10,816 --> 00:01:16,124
When TED gave me the prize, they also gave
another prize, a smaller one,

20
00:01:17,374 --> 00:01:23,063
to Sundance Institute to make
a documentary on the whole project.

21
00:01:23,724 --> 00:01:26,918
The documentary will be called
"The School in the Cloud."

22
00:01:27,285 --> 00:01:30,901
At the moment,
the documentary is not finished,

23
00:01:31,295 --> 00:01:33,805
but I got hold of a trailer

24
00:01:33,805 --> 00:01:36,666
and I thought
you might enjoy watching that.

25
00:01:39,837 --> 00:01:43,111
(Video) Sugata Mitra:
What is the future of learning?

26
00:01:44,664 --> 00:01:49,654
Could it be that we are heading
towards or maybe in a future

27
00:01:49,654 --> 00:01:52,245
when knowing is obsolete?

28
00:01:52,704 --> 00:01:56,202
Could it be that we don't need
to go to school at all?

29
00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:00,411
Could it be that at the point in time
when you need to know something,

30
00:02:00,411 --> 00:02:02,965
you can find it out in two minutes?

31
00:02:02,965 --> 00:02:04,930
[In 2013, Sugata Mitra asked TED

32
00:02:04,930 --> 00:02:07,510
to help him discover
the future of learning.]

33
00:02:08,570 --> 00:02:11,384
My wish is to build a facility

34
00:02:12,140 --> 00:02:15,409
where children go on
these intellectual adventures

35
00:02:15,790 --> 00:02:19,478
driven by the big questions
which their mediators put in.

36
00:02:19,740 --> 00:02:22,262
It's a facility
which is practically unmanned;

37
00:02:22,262 --> 00:02:24,840
it will be called the School in the Cloud.

38
00:02:29,404 --> 00:02:32,460
Woman: (Hindi) We really want him
to become an educated person,

39
00:02:32,460 --> 00:02:35,174
but it's difficult
because of the state of the school.

40
00:02:35,174 --> 00:02:36,864
[Former primary school, Korakati]

41
00:02:36,864 --> 00:02:39,117
Good teachers don’t go to remote places.

42
00:02:39,117 --> 00:02:42,789
The remoter you get,
the worse primary education becomes.

43
00:02:42,789 --> 00:02:45,543
[Sugata has chosen sites
for the project in rural India...

44
00:02:45,543 --> 00:02:47,163
...and in northeast England.]

45
00:02:47,163 --> 00:02:50,441
I don't know how to build
a "School in the Cloud"

46
00:02:50,441 --> 00:02:52,496
because I have never built one.

47
00:02:53,545 --> 00:02:55,825
So, I'm trying to figure out a design

48
00:02:55,825 --> 00:02:59,485
which, really speaking, belongs
to children and is run by children.

49
00:02:59,485 --> 00:03:02,580
So, that's what's going on;
it's a great big experiment.

50
00:03:05,706 --> 00:03:08,528
Schools as we know them now are outdated.

51
00:03:09,563 --> 00:03:11,443
Teacher: As soon as I started doing it

52
00:03:11,443 --> 00:03:13,933
and seeing the buzz
and the enjoyment of the kids,

53
00:03:13,933 --> 00:03:17,936
it made me look at my lessons differently,
and the role of a teacher differently.

54
00:03:17,936 --> 00:03:21,659
Less talking at the front
and more handing it over to the children.

55
00:03:23,595 --> 00:03:25,937
Girl: I really like it
because it's independent,

56
00:03:25,937 --> 00:03:27,927
and you get to work with your friends.

57
00:03:27,927 --> 00:03:31,337
SM: Korakati may or may not be different
from the schools of England,

58
00:03:31,337 --> 00:03:33,537
but that's what we are going to look for.

59
00:03:33,791 --> 00:03:36,505
The idea is to have
a complete glass front

60
00:03:37,005 --> 00:03:38,439
to a building here

61
00:03:38,439 --> 00:03:40,764
and a large screen for a full size

62
00:03:40,764 --> 00:03:43,236
Skyped-in mediator.

63
00:03:43,443 --> 00:03:46,443
Boy: Teachers will teach us from London
using the Internet.

64
00:03:50,927 --> 00:03:53,821
Woman: All I ever really wanted
to know about computers

65
00:03:53,821 --> 00:03:55,362
was how to turn them off.

66
00:03:56,707 --> 00:03:57,865
Hi!

67
00:03:57,865 --> 00:03:59,863
Hello Raveen. Hello [unclear].

68
00:03:59,863 --> 00:04:01,442
How nice to see you.

69
00:04:02,122 --> 00:04:03,472
Look what I made.

70
00:04:03,662 --> 00:04:06,248
Can you see what this is?
Whoo!

71
00:04:06,248 --> 00:04:07,887
(Laughter)

72
00:04:07,889 --> 00:04:09,587
Boy: English is spoken everywhere.

73
00:04:09,587 --> 00:04:13,334
If I learn it from childhood,
then when I grow up

74
00:04:15,634 --> 00:04:17,391
Woman: You help a child to the point

75
00:04:17,391 --> 00:04:19,231
where if he wants to know something

76
00:04:19,231 --> 00:04:22,001
he knows where to look for it,
and how to look for it.

77
00:04:22,001 --> 00:04:25,713
SM: More affluent children have people
who will help them to learn anyway.

78
00:04:25,713 --> 00:04:27,863
But it's children in desolate areas

79
00:04:27,863 --> 00:04:30,993
who really desperately need
to know how to learn,

80
00:04:31,593 --> 00:04:33,533
and I know that the Internet does that.

81
00:04:34,082 --> 00:04:37,314
Learning itself is actually
an emergent phenomenon

82
00:04:37,431 --> 00:04:39,766
like a hive or a thunderstorm.

83
00:04:39,766 --> 00:04:43,719
It's not about making learning happen;
it's about letting it happen.

84
00:04:44,337 --> 00:04:46,719
[School in the cloud]

85
00:04:46,719 --> 00:04:48,739
(Applause)

86
00:04:59,560 --> 00:05:01,230
I made a project.

87
00:05:02,440 --> 00:05:03,760
I made a project for TED.

88
00:05:03,760 --> 00:05:07,516
The way it works is that they tell you
what to do with the money if you get it.

89
00:05:08,962 --> 00:05:10,632
So I made out a project.

90
00:05:10,632 --> 00:05:14,542
The project was that I would build
seven laboratories.

91
00:05:16,222 --> 00:05:18,292
Seven learning laboratories.

92
00:05:18,762 --> 00:05:23,153
Five of them would be in India,
and two would be in England.

93
00:05:25,048 --> 00:05:26,908
What sort of labs?

94
00:05:26,908 --> 00:05:31,098
Well, for that, you need to know
what happened before

95
00:05:31,098 --> 00:05:32,778
which I won't go over,

96
00:05:32,778 --> 00:05:36,727
but what happened in the 15 years
before the TED prize

97
00:05:37,748 --> 00:05:41,628
was that I was able to figure out
something which all of you know

98
00:05:41,628 --> 00:05:44,388
and all of you figure out
for yourselves in 2 minutes.

99
00:05:44,978 --> 00:05:48,012
Which is that if you have a question

100
00:05:49,168 --> 00:05:52,894
you no longer need to ask
a human being for an answer.

101
00:05:54,272 --> 00:05:57,802
There is something out there
which can tell you what the answer is.

102
00:05:58,702 --> 00:06:00,392
What is it out there?

103
00:06:01,062 --> 00:06:03,212
The Internet of course,
we call it the Cloud.

104
00:06:04,867 --> 00:06:07,710
To me it's the first non human,

105
00:06:09,737 --> 00:06:12,357
conscious and intelligent entity

106
00:06:12,897 --> 00:06:14,757
that we have encountered.

107
00:06:15,098 --> 00:06:19,303
We always thought that aliens
will land from other planets

108
00:06:20,146 --> 00:06:23,796
and they will be green with long legs
and round eyes.

109
00:06:24,744 --> 00:06:26,984
It turned out
it was not going to be like that.

110
00:06:28,476 --> 00:06:32,276
The alien entity is made up
of four billion people,

111
00:06:33,382 --> 00:06:36,703
but it is not a person, it's a thing.

112
00:06:38,416 --> 00:06:42,506
You can ask that thing anything,
and it tells you what you want to know.

113
00:06:43,667 --> 00:06:47,977
Given that situation,
what happens to children and education?

114
00:06:50,570 --> 00:06:52,686
There are reports
from all around the world

115
00:06:52,686 --> 00:06:56,377
that children are not asking
questions to people.

116
00:06:57,474 --> 00:07:00,254
Or at least if they have to ask
a question to a person,

117
00:07:00,254 --> 00:07:02,944
they do that after they've asked
their phones.

118
00:07:05,124 --> 00:07:09,601
Children don't want to learn
how to multiply, divide, add and subtract.

119
00:07:10,646 --> 00:07:13,964
Because they say they already know
how to do that.

120
00:07:13,964 --> 00:07:16,127
It's done with phones.

121
00:07:16,964 --> 00:07:21,129
Children don't want
particularly to learn to read

122
00:07:22,491 --> 00:07:26,839
because they say there are things
that can read out things to them,

123
00:07:27,551 --> 00:07:29,501
even if they don't know how to read.

124
00:07:31,215 --> 00:07:34,744
At the moment,
they don't like to write by hand

125
00:07:34,744 --> 00:07:36,370
because they want to know

126
00:07:36,370 --> 00:07:38,970
why they should learn
how to write by hand.

127
00:07:38,970 --> 00:07:41,813
Will they ever do it
in the rest of their lives?

128
00:07:42,500 --> 00:07:46,407
So, what happens in a world
where reading, writing and arithmetic

129
00:07:46,407 --> 00:07:49,640
are treated in such a cavalier manner?

130
00:07:51,281 --> 00:07:53,901
I wanted to experiment with that world.

131
00:07:54,771 --> 00:07:59,110
The idea was to create facilities
for children, which have the Internet,

132
00:08:00,929 --> 00:08:03,959
and the children can go in
and do what they like

133
00:08:03,959 --> 00:08:07,249
without any supervision,
or without any teachers.

134
00:08:09,179 --> 00:08:11,620
We could have presence there

135
00:08:11,969 --> 00:08:15,349
but it would come out of the Internet
over Skype, from somewhere,

136
00:08:16,262 --> 00:08:17,692
if the children wanted to.

137
00:08:18,600 --> 00:08:22,570
I work with children in the age group
of about 8 to 13 years old.

138
00:08:25,289 --> 00:08:28,589
They love speaking to adults over Skype,

139
00:08:31,589 --> 00:08:35,729
particularly adults who are retired
school teachers and people like that.

140
00:08:37,290 --> 00:08:38,422
I asked them,

141
00:08:39,622 --> 00:08:41,944
"Why do you like this so much?
Do you like it?"

142
00:08:41,954 --> 00:08:43,547
"Yes, we love it."

143
00:08:43,547 --> 00:08:45,634
"Why do you like this so much?"

144
00:08:45,634 --> 00:08:48,469
They said, "You know what?
We can switch them off."

145
00:08:48,469 --> 00:08:50,048
(Laughter)

146
00:08:55,608 --> 00:08:58,456
What I did after February, 2013

147
00:08:59,538 --> 00:09:03,731
was to first look for places,
and then start building.

148
00:09:05,634 --> 00:09:10,768
The seven labs are built to cover
from the really remote areas,

149
00:09:13,944 --> 00:09:15,134
such as areas

150
00:09:16,254 --> 00:09:20,679
without electricity, without healthcare,
without schooling,

151
00:09:21,508 --> 00:09:23,760
nothing really, just the wild,

152
00:09:24,978 --> 00:09:27,978
through to middle class England

153
00:09:27,978 --> 00:09:30,377
and all the ones in between.

154
00:09:31,698 --> 00:09:34,070
So, the seven have all been built now;

155
00:09:34,770 --> 00:09:38,332
I finished opening the last one
just this month.

156
00:09:39,072 --> 00:09:40,384
The very first one

157
00:09:40,384 --> 00:09:43,531
was opened in November, 2013

158
00:09:47,616 --> 00:09:49,758
the same year that I got the prize.

159
00:09:49,908 --> 00:09:52,518
You see over there, a picture of that lab.

160
00:09:53,398 --> 00:09:56,078
It's in a town called
Killingworth, England.

161
00:09:56,674 --> 00:09:59,314
It's actually situated inside a school.

162
00:09:59,734 --> 00:10:02,684
The school is called
George Stephenson High School.

163
00:10:03,513 --> 00:10:05,902
It's very close
to George Stephenson's home,

164
00:10:05,902 --> 00:10:09,072
you know the guy who built
the first working steam engine.

165
00:10:11,052 --> 00:10:12,442
In Killingworth

166
00:10:14,976 --> 00:10:16,358
- this is a room -

167
00:10:17,210 --> 00:10:21,914
it just looks like a nice lounge
with computers and an Xbox.

168
00:10:27,923 --> 00:10:29,973
The teachers when I built it said,

169
00:10:29,973 --> 00:10:32,073
"Sugata, this is a bit too much.

170
00:10:32,073 --> 00:10:35,543
Do you have any idea of what
they're going to do with that Xbox?

171
00:10:35,543 --> 00:10:38,713
They are going to do nothing else,
except play with the Xbox."

172
00:10:39,749 --> 00:10:42,169
So I said,
"That's our challenge, isn't it?"

173
00:10:42,169 --> 00:10:45,029
If you have gone in there
to teach geography

174
00:10:45,619 --> 00:10:47,929
and students are playing with the Xbox,

175
00:10:48,649 --> 00:10:52,016
it means geography
is more boring than the Xbox.

176
00:10:53,395 --> 00:10:57,545
Then, we should really look at geography
and chuck it from the curriculum

177
00:10:58,064 --> 00:11:00,864
or put it into the Xbox somehow.

178
00:11:01,916 --> 00:11:05,461
You can't tell the children:
"We will take away your Xbox

179
00:11:06,046 --> 00:11:09,674
and put you into school
to do other things."

180
00:11:12,023 --> 00:11:16,068
That's not the right way to engage
children's attention.

181
00:11:17,043 --> 00:11:19,553
So here is a picture
of what happens in there.

182
00:11:20,216 --> 00:11:23,096
As you can see
there are five children in the corner

183
00:11:23,096 --> 00:11:25,087
researching something or the other,

184
00:11:25,087 --> 00:11:27,251
and there is one on the Xbox.

185
00:11:27,251 --> 00:11:30,221
If you give them something
interesting enough to do,

186
00:11:30,231 --> 00:11:33,194
they don't, actually
play Xbox all the time;

187
00:11:34,001 --> 00:11:36,011

it was our misconception.

188
00:11:37,795 --> 00:11:39,895
Here is more of Killingworth.

189
00:11:39,895 --> 00:11:43,566
What they do in there is called
the self-organized learning environment.

190
00:11:44,824 --> 00:11:49,067
It's very simple, take five computers
and take twenty children.

191
00:11:50,454 --> 00:11:54,079
Put them in there; ask them a question.

192
00:11:54,714 --> 00:11:57,828
The question has to be an interesting one,

193
00:11:59,054 --> 00:12:00,932
what we call a "Big Question."

194
00:12:02,054 --> 00:12:03,734
What's a big question?

195
00:12:05,004 --> 00:12:09,238
It can be all kinds,
but let me give you an example:

196
00:12:12,849 --> 00:12:17,343
A big question could be,
"Can trees think?"

197
00:12:21,099 --> 00:12:25,954
If you give that question to children,
they first will mutter with each other,

198
00:12:25,954 --> 00:12:28,954
"Trees, they can't."
"Maybe they can." "I don't know."

199
00:12:28,954 --> 00:12:31,534
Then you just leave them alone
and you say,

200
00:12:31,534 --> 00:12:35,784
“I don’t know the answer either,
but why don't we look for it? "

201
00:12:36,164 --> 00:12:39,584
And this will happen,
what you see on the screen.

202
00:12:40,176 --> 00:12:43,865
About 30 or 40 minutes later
they will come back to you,

203
00:12:44,736 --> 00:12:47,901
not with childish observations;

204
00:12:49,116 --> 00:12:51,977
they will come back
with the nature of thought,

205
00:12:51,977 --> 00:12:54,905
with the latest advances in biology, etc.

206
00:12:55,605 --> 00:12:59,276
That's called the self-organized
learning environment.

207
00:12:59,826 --> 00:13:02,802
Here is one that we did
in Kalkaji, New Delhi.

208
00:13:05,058 --> 00:13:09,867
It has on the wall a Skyped-in mediator
as you can see, and it's a girls school.

209
00:13:12,694 --> 00:13:15,344
The girls couldn't speak
any English, to start with.

210
00:13:15,344 --> 00:13:18,248
We opened it in February, 2014.

211
00:13:21,184 --> 00:13:23,607
I put in a team of observers

212
00:13:24,477 --> 00:13:27,798
to measure their
beginning levels of English,

213
00:13:28,260 --> 00:13:30,284
which was close to zero, and then I said,

214
00:13:30,284 --> 00:13:33,779
"We will measure every two months or so."

215
00:13:35,154 --> 00:13:36,819
After about three days,

216
00:13:36,819 --> 00:13:40,381
I was talking to this mediator
that you see on the screen, over Skype,

217
00:13:41,728 --> 00:13:44,414
I was asking,
"How is it going there?"

218
00:13:44,414 --> 00:13:46,744
She said, "Very nice.
Those girls are really nice.

219
00:13:46,744 --> 00:13:50,274
One of them said to me,
'When are you coming next?' "

220
00:13:50,854 --> 00:13:53,764
I said, "In what language
did she say that?"

221
00:13:54,584 --> 00:13:56,804
The mediator said, "In English."

222
00:13:58,968 --> 00:14:03,538
When I sent my research team in
after a month to measure the level,

223
00:14:04,638 --> 00:14:08,275
she reported that was too late;
it's done already.

224
00:14:08,822 --> 00:14:10,999
I've never seen anything
happen so quickly,

225
00:14:10,999 --> 00:14:13,189
so I went to Delhi to ask the girls.

226
00:14:13,189 --> 00:14:16,047
I said, "How did you do that so fast?"

227
00:14:16,655 --> 00:14:19,315
They gave me an answer
which was quite astonishing.

228
00:14:19,767 --> 00:14:22,767
They said, "You know that woman
who comes on the TV screen?

229
00:14:22,767 --> 00:14:25,429
She doesn't understand
anything other than English."

230
00:14:25,808 --> 00:14:27,453
(Laughter)

231
00:14:27,911 --> 00:14:29,552
It's as simple as that.

232
00:14:32,185 --> 00:14:35,342
This is a little town called
Newton Aycliffe in England.

233
00:14:37,129 --> 00:14:40,538
If you remember the map,
it's in Northeast.

234
00:14:41,567 --> 00:14:43,560
This school is called Greenfields,

235
00:14:44,540 --> 00:14:47,625
and we have a School in the Cloud there.

236
00:14:48,370 --> 00:14:52,236
What they have done is
they made one of their walls glass.

237
00:14:53,550 --> 00:14:58,211
On the other side, is a typical
English green country side.

238
00:15:00,498 --> 00:15:04,188
Inside they put in astro turf,
so when you enter the room

239
00:15:04,188 --> 00:15:06,731
suddenly you feel as though
you are outside

240
00:15:06,731 --> 00:15:08,811
because of the turf merging in.

241
00:15:08,811 --> 00:15:12,877
They put park benches, gas lamps,
and things like that

242
00:15:13,681 --> 00:15:16,383
and a few computers scattered in there.

243
00:15:17,983 --> 00:15:23,191
So, the children come into the room,
and when you leave them alone -

244
00:15:23,805 --> 00:15:26,589
when you do self-organized
learning environment,

245
00:15:26,739 --> 00:15:30,096
you, the teachers,
don't stay there; you go out -

246
00:15:30,593 --> 00:15:33,333
so, you start the session, and you go out,

247
00:15:33,812 --> 00:15:37,802
and from the other side
which is also glass you can observe them.

248
00:15:40,730 --> 00:15:43,526
Once, very recently in Greenfields,

249
00:15:43,820 --> 00:15:48,798
a group of 8 year olds were sent
into the room by their teacher,

250
00:15:49,810 --> 00:15:53,080
the teacher said -
we often do this in SOLEs -

251
00:15:53,080 --> 00:15:54,510
we say to the children,

252
00:15:54,510 --> 00:15:56,840
"For the next 45 minutes,

253
00:15:56,840 --> 00:15:59,497
I can't talk to you,
you can't talk to me."

254
00:15:59,840 --> 00:16:01,738
There is no communication.

255
00:16:01,738 --> 00:16:05,276
You are on your own,
and there is the big question.

256
00:16:05,552 --> 00:16:07,155
So, she did that.

257
00:16:08,264 --> 00:16:12,096
These 8 year olds were doing things.

258
00:16:14,018 --> 00:16:16,238
After a while - remember what she said?

259
00:16:16,238 --> 00:16:18,588
"You can't talk to me,
and I can't talk to you."

260
00:16:19,020 --> 00:16:22,426
After a little while one of them
came up to the glass window,

261
00:16:22,426 --> 00:16:28,136
he had a piece of paper in his hand,
and he held it up, on it were the words

262
00:16:28,146 --> 00:16:29,936
"Help! We are stuck."

263
00:16:30,268 --> 00:16:31,885
(Laughter)

264
00:16:33,911 --> 00:16:36,531
She didn't say,
"You can't communicate with me,"

265
00:16:36,531 --> 00:16:39,279
she said, "You can't talk to me."

266
00:16:39,531 --> 00:16:41,781
I thought that was clever thinking.

267
00:16:43,503 --> 00:16:45,943
Here is another view of Greenfields.

268
00:16:47,635 --> 00:16:48,819
Another one.

269
00:16:50,065 --> 00:16:52,152
Chandrakona in Bengal,

270
00:16:53,682 --> 00:16:55,792
it's a pretty remote area.

271
00:16:57,252 --> 00:17:00,409
If you can think of the map of India

272
00:17:00,812 --> 00:17:05,657
think of the eastern side,
the side close to Burma and Thailand.

273
00:17:07,842 --> 00:17:10,002
This is somewhere there.

274
00:17:11,739 --> 00:17:14,645
In Chandrakona we have this structure

275
00:17:16,405 --> 00:17:18,495
and we built a School in the Cloud.

276
00:17:19,405 --> 00:17:23,515
The parents came there;
they are all farmers and they said,

277
00:17:23,925 --> 00:17:25,855
"What are we supposed to do here?"

278
00:17:25,855 --> 00:17:28,595
I said, "You are supposed
to send your children here."

279
00:17:28,595 --> 00:17:30,156
They said, "What for?"

280
00:17:30,885 --> 00:17:33,771
I said, "They learn things here."

281
00:17:34,505 --> 00:17:38,221
They pointed to the computers and said,
"From those TV screens?"

282
00:17:38,405 --> 00:17:41,275
I said, "They are not TVs,
they are computers".

283
00:17:41,625 --> 00:17:44,175
And they said,
"Well, isn't that the same thing?"

284
00:17:44,175 --> 00:17:46,025
I said, "No, not quite"

285
00:17:46,845 --> 00:17:50,054
They said, "Who will teach them?"

286
00:17:50,735 --> 00:17:53,425
I said, "They will teach themselves".

287
00:17:53,945 --> 00:17:57,545
"How can they?"
I said, "They will use the Internet."

288
00:17:58,205 --> 00:18:00,145
"What's the Internet?"

289
00:18:01,955 --> 00:18:03,933
Where do you go from there?

290
00:18:06,458 --> 00:18:08,888
This is what it looks like inside.

291
00:18:09,256 --> 00:18:12,716
If you can see it,
you will see it at the far end

292
00:18:14,556 --> 00:18:18,355
an Australian gentleman
who talks to the children.

293
00:18:19,676 --> 00:18:22,645
I hate to think
what will happen to their accents,

294
00:18:22,935 --> 00:18:25,055
but otherwise they love him.

295
00:18:25,055 --> 00:18:26,585
(Laughter)

296
00:18:27,454 --> 00:18:30,429
In Chandrakona, three months later

297
00:18:31,988 --> 00:18:35,188
there's a tall, slim, young girl there.

298
00:18:39,783 --> 00:18:43,043
I have visited the place and she said,
"We really love this place."

299
00:18:43,251 --> 00:18:44,811
I said, "For what?"

300
00:18:45,805 --> 00:18:48,535
She said, "You can find out
all sorts of things here."

301
00:18:49,465 --> 00:18:52,325
I said, "Like what?
What are you finding out today?"

302
00:18:52,325 --> 00:18:56,534
She said, "We were taught in school
that plants are green

303
00:18:58,715 --> 00:19:00,825
because they have chlorophyll.

304
00:19:00,825 --> 00:19:05,186
And they have chlorophyll
to process light in order to make energy.

305
00:19:07,356 --> 00:19:09,656
I've come here to find out

306
00:19:09,656 --> 00:19:14,510
why chlorophyll has to be green
and not blue, yellow or red.

307
00:19:16,996 --> 00:19:18,421
Do you know?"

308
00:19:18,746 --> 00:19:23,226
I said, "No, I have no idea
why it has to be green."

309
00:19:24,186 --> 00:19:26,656
She said, "Ok, we will figure it out."

310
00:19:28,750 --> 00:19:29,863
Three months.

311
00:19:31,614 --> 00:19:33,714
That's a view of the inside again.

312
00:19:34,771 --> 00:19:39,504
Here is our most remote area;
it's called Korakati, also Eastern India;

313
00:19:39,995 --> 00:19:42,229
it's where the Ganges meets the sea.

314
00:19:43,719 --> 00:19:45,227
It has nothing there;

315
00:19:45,227 --> 00:19:47,987
there's no electricity,
no healthcare, no schools.

316
00:19:48,667 --> 00:19:51,447
I won’t say nothing -
they have Bengal tigers,

317
00:19:52,087 --> 00:19:53,467
(Laughter)

318
00:19:53,947 --> 00:19:57,987
and hooded cobras and lots of children.

319
00:20:00,467 --> 00:20:03,274
It took some building,
but I built that one.

320
00:20:03,577 --> 00:20:07,543
It's solar powered, it has a tower
which is 45 ft high.

321
00:20:09,251 --> 00:20:10,911
I couldn't get the Internet,

322
00:20:10,911 --> 00:20:14,407
I had a receiver and kept raising it
on bamboo poles,

323
00:20:14,407 --> 00:20:19,240
at 45 ft above ground,
we now got 8 megabits per second 3G.

324
00:20:22,497 --> 00:20:26,245
3G met the stone age in there.

325
00:20:29,742 --> 00:20:32,892
In Chandrakona,
the sessions are intermittent

326
00:20:32,892 --> 00:20:35,232
because of all sort of problems.

327
00:20:36,971 --> 00:20:40,214
The cables run on the ground,

328
00:20:40,751 --> 00:20:44,421
the Internet cables that connect
all the computers together.

329
00:20:44,421 --> 00:20:47,831
If you have seen those cables,
they are kind of cream colored.

330
00:20:49,507 --> 00:20:54,460
I had to remove them
and lift them up, somewhere,

331
00:20:55,247 --> 00:20:59,551
because there is a very pale, thin snake

332
00:21:00,327 --> 00:21:05,909
which can change its color to the color
of the Internet cable and sleeps there.

333
00:21:08,260 --> 00:21:10,040
A bit of a strange problem,

334
00:21:10,040 --> 00:21:12,790
you don't get these problems
in schools usually.

335
00:21:12,790 --> 00:21:14,160
(Laughter)

336
00:21:16,478 --> 00:21:18,818
The Internet comes and goes.

337
00:21:20,168 --> 00:21:22,908
The children walk for three miles
to come to school

338
00:21:23,181 --> 00:21:25,996
and find there is no Internet
and walk back three miles.

339
00:21:26,471 --> 00:21:28,971
Naturally they are not
very happy about it.

340
00:21:29,481 --> 00:21:31,351
But in the middle of all this,

341
00:21:32,221 --> 00:21:37,611
what they do is to find games,
download them and play them.

342
00:21:39,630 --> 00:21:42,360
Somehow they are able
to get to that point.

343
00:21:43,012 --> 00:21:46,503
I asked them what a web page was recently,

344
00:21:47,977 --> 00:21:50,462
and they thought for a while.

345
00:21:50,462 --> 00:21:54,225
They said, "It's made
by someone who is not here,

346
00:21:55,032 --> 00:22:00,274
someone very far away who sends it
somehow over those things

347
00:22:01,092 --> 00:22:04,024
which look like the cream colored snakes."

348
00:22:04,268 --> 00:22:05,742
(Laughter)

349
00:22:07,018 --> 00:22:10,138
This is the latest of the areas.
I don't have a picture of it.

350
00:22:10,138 --> 00:22:12,448
It's a hexagonal, our best structure.

351
00:22:13,481 --> 00:22:17,626
In there, the studies are just beginning.

352
00:22:19,111 --> 00:22:23,371
It took a lot of time to build,
and it cost close to a million dollars,

353
00:22:24,402 --> 00:22:26,472
but there are a thousand children,

354
00:22:27,751 --> 00:22:31,981
thousand very interesting children
added to the Cloud.

355
00:22:33,508 --> 00:22:34,733
Thank you.

356
00:22:35,040 --> 00:22:37,100
(Applause)