WEBVTT

00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:04.000
Well, that's kind of an obvious statement up there.

00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:07.000
I started with that sentence about 12 years ago,

00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:10.000
and I started in the context

00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:12.000
of developing countries,

00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:15.000
but you're sitting here from every corner of the world.

00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:18.000
So if you think of a map of your country,

00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:20.000
I think you'll realize

00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:22.000
that for every country on Earth,

00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:24.000
you could draw little circles to say,

00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:27.000
"These are places where good teachers won't go."

00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:30.000
On top of that,

00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:33.000
those are the places from where trouble comes.

00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:35.000
So we have an ironic problem --

00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:37.000
good teachers don't want to go

00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:40.000
to just those places where they're needed the most.

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:43.000
I started in 1999

00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:46.000
to try and address this problem with an experiment,

00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:49.000
which was a very simple experiment in New Delhi.

00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:54.000
I basically embedded a computer

00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:57.000
into a wall of a slum in New Delhi.

00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:01.000
The children barely went to school, they didn't know any English --

00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:03.000
they'd never seen a computer before,

00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:06.000
and they didn't know what the internet was.

00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:09.000
I connected high speed internet to it -- it's about three feet off the ground --

00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:11.000
turned it on and left it there.

00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:13.000
After this,

00:01:13.000 --> 00:01:16.000
we noticed a couple of interesting things, which you'll see.

00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:19.000
But I repeated this all over India

00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:21.000
and then through

00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:23.000
a large part of the world

00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:25.000
and noticed

00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:27.000
that children will learn to do

00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:30.000
what they want to learn to do.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:32.000
This is the first experiment that we did --

00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:34.000
eight year-old boy on your right

00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:37.000
teaching his student, a six year-old girl,

00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:40.000
and he was teaching her how to browse.

00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:44.000
This boy here in the middle of central India --

00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:47.000
this is in a Rajasthan village,

00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:50.000
where the children recorded their own music

00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:53.000
and then played it back to each other

00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:55.000
and in the process,

00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:57.000
they've enjoyed themselves thoroughly.

00:01:57.000 --> 00:01:59.000
They did all of this in four hours

00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:02.000
after seeing the computer for the first time.

00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:05.000
In another South Indian village,

00:02:05.000 --> 00:02:07.000
these boys here

00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:09.000
had assembled a video camera

00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:11.000
and were trying to take the photograph of a bumble bee.

00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:13.000
They downloaded it from Disney.com,

00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:15.000
or one of these websites,

00:02:15.000 --> 00:02:18.000
14 days after putting the computer in their village.

00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:23.000
So at the end of it,

00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:25.000
we concluded that groups of children

00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:28.000
can learn to use computers and the internet on their own,

00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:30.000
irrespective of who

00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:33.000
or where they were.

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:36.000
At that point, I became a little more ambitious

00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:39.000
and decided to see

00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:42.000
what else could children do with a computer.

00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:45.000
We started off with an experiment in Hyderabad, India,

00:02:45.000 --> 00:02:48.000
where I gave a group of children --

00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:51.000
they spoke English with a very strong Telugu accent.

00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:53.000
I gave them a computer

00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:55.000
with a speech-to-text interface,

00:02:55.000 --> 00:02:58.000
which you now get free with Windows,

00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:00.000
and asked them to speak into it.

00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:02.000
So when they spoke into it,

00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:04.000
the computer typed out gibberish,

00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:06.000
so they said, "Well, it doesn't understand anything of what we are saying."

00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:08.000
So I said, "Yeah, I'll leave it here for two months.

00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:10.000
Make yourself understood

00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:12.000
to the computer."

00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:14.000
So the children said, "How do we do that."

00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:16.000
And I said,

00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:18.000
"I don't know, actually."

00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:20.000
(Laughter)

00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:22.000
And I left.

00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:24.000
(Laughter)

00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:27.000
Two months later --

00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:29.000
and this is now documented

00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:31.000
in the Information Technology

00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:33.000
for International Development journal --

00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:35.000
that accents had changed

00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:38.000
and were remarkably close to the neutral British accent

00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:41.000
in which I had trained the speech-to-text synthesizer.

00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:44.000
In other words, they were all speaking like James Tooley.

00:03:44.000 --> 00:03:46.000
(Laughter)

00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:48.000
So they could do that on their own.

00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:50.000
After that, I started to experiment

00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:52.000
with various other things

00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:54.000
that they might learn to do on their own.

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:57.000
I got an interesting phone call once from Columbo,

00:03:57.000 --> 00:03:59.000
from the late Arthur C. Clarke,

00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:01.000
who said, "I want to see what's going on."

00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:04.000
And he couldn't travel, so I went over there.

00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:06.000
He said two interesting things,

00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:11.000
"A teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be."

00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:13.000
(Laughter)

00:04:13.000 --> 00:04:15.000
The second thing he said was that,

00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:17.000
"If children have interest,

00:04:17.000 --> 00:04:20.000
then education happens."

00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:22.000
And I was doing that in the field,

00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:24.000
so every time I would watch it and think of him.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:27.000
(Video) Arthur C. Clarke: And they can definitely

00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:29.000
help people,

00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:31.000
because children quickly learn to navigate

00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:34.000
the web and find things which interest them.

00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:37.000
And when you've got interest, then you have education.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:40.000
Sugata Mitra: I took the experiment to South Africa.

00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:42.000
This is a 15 year-old boy.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:45.000
(Video) Boy: ... just mention, I play games

00:04:45.000 --> 00:04:48.000
like animals,

00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:51.000
and I listen to music.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:53.000
SM: And I asked him, "Do you send emails?"

00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:56.000
And he said, "Yes, and they hop across the ocean."

00:04:57.000 --> 00:04:59.000
This is in Cambodia,

00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:02.000
rural Cambodia --

00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:05.000
a fairly silly arithmetic game,

00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:07.000
which no child would play inside the classroom or at home.

00:05:07.000 --> 00:05:09.000
They would, you know, throw it back at you.

00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:11.000
They'd say, "This is very boring."

00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:13.000
If you leave it on the pavement

00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:15.000
and if all the adults go away,

00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:17.000
then they will show off with each other

00:05:17.000 --> 00:05:19.000
about what they can do.

00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:21.000
This is what these children are doing.

00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:24.000
They are trying to multiply, I think.

00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:26.000
And all over India,

00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:28.000
at the end of about two years,

00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:31.000
children were beginning to Google their homework.

00:05:31.000 --> 00:05:33.000
As a result, the teachers reported

00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:35.000
tremendous improvements in their English --

00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:39.000
(Laughter)

00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:41.000
rapid improvement and all sorts of things.

00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:44.000
They said, "They have become really deep thinkers and so on and so forth.

00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:47.000
(Laughter)

00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:49.000
And indeed they had.

00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:51.000
I mean, if there's stuff on Google,

00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:54.000
why would you need to stuff it into your head?

00:05:55.000 --> 00:05:57.000
So at the end of the next four years,

00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:00.000
I decided that groups of children can navigate the internet

00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:03.000
to achieve educational objectives on their own.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:05.000
At that time, a large amount of money

00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:07.000
had come into Newcastle University

00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:10.000
to improve schooling in India.

00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:13.000
So Newcastle gave me a call. I said, "I'll do it from Delhi."

00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:15.000
They said, "There's no way you're going to handle

00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:18.000
a million pounds-worth of University money

00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:20.000
sitting in Delhi."

00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:22.000
So in 2006,

00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:24.000
I bought myself a heavy overcoat

00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:26.000
and moved to Newcastle.

00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:29.000
I wanted to test the limits

00:06:29.000 --> 00:06:31.000
of the system.

00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:33.000
The first experiment I did out of Newcastle

00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:35.000
was actually done in India.

00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:38.000
And I set myself and impossible target:

00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:41.000
can Tamil speaking

00:06:41.000 --> 00:06:43.000
12-year-old children

00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:46.000
in a South Indian village

00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:48.000
teach themselves biotechnology

00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:50.000
in English on their own?

00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:53.000
And I thought, I'll test them, they'll get a zero --

00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:55.000
I'll give the materials, I'll come back and test them --

00:06:55.000 --> 00:06:57.000
they get another zero,

00:06:57.000 --> 00:07:01.000
I'll go back and say, "Yes, we need teachers for certain things."

NOTE Paragraph

00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:03.000
I called in 26 children.

00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:05.000
They all came in there, and I told them

00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:07.000
that there's some really difficult stuff on this computer.

00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:10.000
I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't understand anything.

00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:13.000
It's all in English, and I'm going.

00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:15.000
(Laughter)

00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:17.000
So I left them with it.

00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:19.000
I came back after two months,

00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:21.000
and the 26 children marched in looking very, very quiet.

00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:24.000
I said, "Well, did you look at any of the stuff?"

00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:26.000
They said, "Yes, we did."

00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:29.000
"Did you understand anything?" "No, nothing."

00:07:29.000 --> 00:07:31.000
So I said,

00:07:31.000 --> 00:07:33.000
"Well, how long did you practice on it

00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:35.000
before you decided you understood nothing?"

00:07:35.000 --> 00:07:38.000
They said, "We look at it every day."

00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:40.000
So I said, "For two months, you were looking at stuff you didn't understand?"

00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:42.000
So a 12 year-old girl raises her hand and says,

00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:44.000
literally,

00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:48.000
"Apart from the fact that improper replication of the DNA molecule

00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:50.000
causes genetic disease,

00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:52.000
we've understood nothing else."

NOTE Paragraph

00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:54.000
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:07:54.000 --> 00:08:01.000
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:04.000
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:06.000
It took me three years to publish that.

00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:09.000
It's just been published in the British Journal of Educational Technology.

00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:12.000
One of the referees who refereed the paper said,

00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:15.000
"It's too good to be true,"

00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:17.000
which was not very nice.

00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:19.000
Well, one of the girls had taught herself

00:08:19.000 --> 00:08:21.000
to become the teacher.

00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:23.000
And then that's her over there.

00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:33.000
Remember, they don't study English.

00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:49.000
I edited out the last bit when I asked, "Where is the neuron?"

00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:51.000
and she says, "The neuron? The neuron,"

00:08:51.000 --> 00:08:54.000
and then she looked and did this.

00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:57.000
Whatever the expression, it was not very nice.

NOTE Paragraph

00:08:57.000 --> 00:09:00.000
So their scores had gone up from zero to 30 percent,

00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:03.000
which is an educational impossibility under the circumstances.

00:09:03.000 --> 00:09:06.000
But 30 percent is not a pass.

00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:08.000
So I found that they had a friend,

00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:10.000
a local accountant, a young girl,

00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:12.000
and they played football with her.

00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:14.000
I asked that girl, "Would you teach them

00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:16.000
enough biotechnology to pass?"

00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:18.000
And she said, "How would I do that? I don't know the subject."

00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:20.000
I said, "No, use the method of the grandmother."

00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:22.000
She said, "What's that?"

00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:24.000
I said, "Well, what you've got to do

00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:26.000
is stand behind them

00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:29.000
and admire them all the time.

00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:31.000
Just say to them, 'That's cool. That's fantastic.

00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:34.000
What is that? Can you do that again? Can you show me some more?'"

00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:36.000
She did that for two months.

00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:38.000
The scores went up to 50,

00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:40.000
which is what the posh schools of New Delhi,

00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:43.000
with a trained biotechnology teacher were getting.

NOTE Paragraph

00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:45.000
So I came back to Newcastle

00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:47.000
with these results

00:09:47.000 --> 00:09:49.000
and decided

00:09:49.000 --> 00:09:51.000
that there was something happening here

00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:54.000
that definitely was getting very serious.

00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:58.000
So, having experimented in all sorts of remote places,

00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:01.000
I came to the most remote place that I could think of.

00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:03.000
(Laughter)

00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:07.000
Approximately 5,000 miles from Delhi

00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:09.000
is the little town of Gateshead.

00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:12.000
In Gateshead, I took 32 children

00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:15.000
and I started to fine-tune the method.

00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:18.000
I made them into groups of four.

00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:20.000
I said, "You make your own groups of four.

00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:23.000
Each group of four can use one computer and not four computers."

00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:26.000
Remember, from the Hole in the Wall.

00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:28.000
"You can exchange groups.

00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:30.000
You can walk across to another group,

00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:32.000
if you don't like your group, etc.

00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:35.000
You can go to another group, peer over their shoulders, see what they're doing,

00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:38.000
come back to you own group and claim it as your own work."

00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:40.000
And I explained to them

00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:43.000
that, you know, a lot of scientific research is done using that method.

NOTE Paragraph

00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:45.000
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:50.000
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:54.000
The children enthusiastically got after me and said,

00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:56.000
"Now, what do you want us to do?"

00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:59.000
I gave them six GCSE questions.

00:10:59.000 --> 00:11:01.000
The first group -- the best one --

00:11:01.000 --> 00:11:03.000
solved everything in 20 minutes.

00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:06.000
The worst, in 45.

00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:08.000
They used everything that they knew --

00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:10.000
news groups, Google, Wikipedia,

00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:12.000
Ask Jeeves, etc.

00:11:12.000 --> 00:11:15.000
The teachers said, "Is this deep learning?"

00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:17.000
I said, "Well, let's try it.

00:11:17.000 --> 00:11:19.000
I'll come back after two months.

00:11:19.000 --> 00:11:21.000
We'll give them a paper test --

00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:23.000
no computers, no talking to each other, etc."

00:11:23.000 --> 00:11:25.000
The average score when I'd done it with the computers and the groups

00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:27.000
was 76 percent.

00:11:27.000 --> 00:11:29.000
When I did the experiment, when I did the test,

00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:32.000
after two months, the score

00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:35.000
was 76 percent.

00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:37.000
There was photographic recall

00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:39.000
inside the children,

00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:42.000
I suspect because they're discussing with each other.

00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:44.000
A single child in front of a single computer

00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:46.000
will not do that.

00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:48.000
I have further results,

00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:50.000
which are almost unbelievable,

00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:52.000
of scores which go up with time.

00:11:52.000 --> 00:11:54.000
Because their teachers say

00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:56.000
that after the session is over,

00:11:56.000 --> 00:11:59.000
the children continue to Google further.

NOTE Paragraph

00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:01.000
Here in Britain, I put out a call

00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:03.000
for British grandmothers,

00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:05.000
after my Kuppam experiment.

00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:07.000
Well, you know,

00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:09.000
they're very vigorous people, British grandmothers.

00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:11.000
200 of them volunteered immediately.

00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:13.000
(Laughter)

00:12:13.000 --> 00:12:16.000
The deal was that they would give me

00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:18.000
one hour of broadband time,

00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:20.000
sitting in their homes,

00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:22.000
one day in a week.

00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:24.000
So they did that,

00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:26.000
and over the last two years,

00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:28.000
over 600 hours of instruction

00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:30.000
has happened over Skype,

00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:33.000
using what my students call the granny cloud.

00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:36.000
The granny cloud sits over there.

00:12:36.000 --> 00:12:39.000
I can beam them to whichever school I want to.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:45.000 --> 00:12:47.000
(Video) Teacher: You can't catch me.

00:12:47.000 --> 00:12:50.000
You say it.

00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:53.000
You can't catch me.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:53.000 --> 00:12:56.000
Children: You can't catch me.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:56.000 --> 00:12:59.000
Teacher: I'm the gingerbread man.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:01.000
Children: I'm the gingerbread man.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:01.000 --> 00:13:03.000
Teacher: Well done. Very good ...

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:11.000
SM: Back at Gateshead,

00:13:11.000 --> 00:13:13.000
a 10-year-old girl gets into the heart of Hinduism

00:13:13.000 --> 00:13:15.000
in 15 minutes.

00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:18.000
You know, stuff which I don't know anything about.

00:13:21.000 --> 00:13:23.000
Two children watch a TEDTalk.

00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:25.000
They wanted to be footballers before.

00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:27.000
After watching eight TEDTalks,

00:13:27.000 --> 00:13:30.000
he wants to become Leonardo da Vinci.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:33.000
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:36.000
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:38.000
It's pretty simple stuff.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:40.000
This is what I'm building now --

00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:43.000
they're called SOLEs: Self Organized Learning Environments.

00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:45.000
The furniture is designed

00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:48.000
so that children can sit in front of big, powerful screens,

00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:51.000
big broadband connections, but in groups.

00:13:51.000 --> 00:13:54.000
If they want, they can call the granny cloud.

00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:56.000
This is a SOLE in Newcastle.

00:13:56.000 --> 00:13:58.000
The mediator is from Pune, India.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:01.000
So how far can we go? One last little bit and I'll stop.

00:14:01.000 --> 00:14:04.000
I went to Turin in May.

00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:08.000
I sent all the teachers away from my group of 10 year-old students.

00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:12.000
I speak only English, they speak only Italian,

00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:14.000
so we had no way to communicate.

00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:17.000
I started writing English questions on the blackboard.

00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:20.000
The children looked at it and said, "What?"

00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:22.000
I said, "Well, do it."

00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:25.000
They typed it into Google, translated it into Italian,

00:14:25.000 --> 00:14:27.000
went back into Italian Google.

00:14:27.000 --> 00:14:30.000
Fifteen minutes later --

00:14:37.000 --> 00:14:40.000
next question: where is Calcutta?

00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:45.000
This one, they took only 10 minutes.

00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:52.000
I tried a really hard one then.

00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:55.000
Who was Pythagoras, and what did he do?

00:14:57.000 --> 00:14:59.000
There was silence for a while,

00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:01.000
then they said, "You've spelled it wrong.

00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:04.000
It's Pitagora."

00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:10.000
And then,

00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:12.000
in 20 minutes,

00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:14.000
the right-angled triangles began to appear on the screens.

00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:17.000
This sent shivers up my spine.

00:15:17.000 --> 00:15:19.000
These are 10 year-olds.

00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:35.000
Text: In another 30 minutes they would reach the Theory of Relativity. And then?

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:37.000
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:46.000
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:48.000
SM: So you know what's happened?

00:15:48.000 --> 00:15:50.000
I think we've just stumbled across

00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:52.000
a self-organizing system.

00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:54.000
A self-organizing system is one

00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:56.000
where a structure appears

00:15:56.000 --> 00:15:59.000
without explicit intervention from the outside.

00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:02.000
Self-organizing systems also always show emergence,

00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:04.000
which is that the system starts to do things,

00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:06.000
which it was never designed for.

00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:08.000
Which is why you react the way you do,

00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:11.000
because it looks impossible.

00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:14.000
I think I can make a guess now --

00:16:14.000 --> 00:16:16.000
education is self-organizing system,

00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:18.000
where learning is an emergent phenomenon.

00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:20.000
It'll take a few years to prove it, experimentally,

00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:22.000
but I'm going to try.

00:16:22.000 --> 00:16:25.000
But in the meanwhile, there is a method available.

00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:28.000
One billion children, we need 100 million mediators --

00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:30.000
there are many more than that on the planet --

00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:32.000
10 million SOLEs,

00:16:32.000 --> 00:16:35.000
180 billion dollars and 10 years.

00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:38.000
We could change everything.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:40.000
Thanks.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:51.000
(Applause)