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Well, that's kind of an obvious statement up there.

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I started with that sentence about 12 years ago,

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and I started in the context

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of developing countries,

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but you're sitting here from every corner of the world.

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So if you think of a map of your country,

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I think you'll realize

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that for every country on Earth,

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you could draw little circles to say,

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"These are places where good teachers won't go."

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On top of that,

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those are the places from where trouble comes.

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So we have an ironic problem --

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good teachers don't want to go

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to just those places where they're needed the most.

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I started in 1999

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to try and address this problem with an experiment,

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which was a very simple experiment in New Delhi.

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I basically embedded a computer

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into a wall of a slum in New Delhi.

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The children barely went to school, they didn't know any English --

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they'd never seen a computer before,

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and they didn't know what the internet was.

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I connected high speed internet to it -- it's about three feet off the ground --

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turned it on and left it there.

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After this,

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we noticed a couple of interesting things, which you'll see.

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But I repeated this all over India

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and then through

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a large part of the world

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and noticed

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that children will learn to do

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what they want to learn to do.

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This is the first experiment that we did --

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eight year-old boy on your right

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teaching his student, a six year-old girl,

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and he was teaching her how to browse.

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This boy here in the middle of central India --

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this is in a Rajasthan village,

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where the children recorded their own music

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and then played it back to each other

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and in the process,

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they've enjoyed themselves thoroughly.

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They did all of this in four hours

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after seeing the computer for the first time.

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In another South Indian village,

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these boys here

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had assembled a video camera

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and were trying to take the photograph of a bumble bee.

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They downloaded it from Disney.com,

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or one of these websites,

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14 days after putting the computer in their village.

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So at the end of it,

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we concluded that groups of children

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can learn to use computers and the internet on their own,

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irrespective of who

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or where they were.

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At that point, I became a little more ambitious

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and decided to see

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what else could children do with a computer.

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We started off with an experiment in Hyderabad, India,

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where I gave a group of children --

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they spoke English with a very strong Telugu accent.

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I gave them a computer

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with a speech-to-text interface,

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which you now get free with Windows,

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and asked them to speak into it.

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So when they spoke into it,

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the computer typed out gibberish,

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so they said, "Well, it doesn't understand anything of what we are saying."

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So I said, "Yeah, I'll leave it here for two months.

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Make yourself understood

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to the computer."

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So the children said, "How do we do that."

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And I said,

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"I don't know, actually."

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(Laughter)

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And I left.

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(Laughter)

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Two months later --

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and this is now documented

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in the Information Technology

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for International Development journal --

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that accents had changed

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and were remarkably close to the neutral British accent

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in which I had trained the speech-to-text synthesizer.

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In other words, they were all speaking like James Tooley.

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(Laughter)

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So they could do that on their own.

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After that, I started to experiment

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with various other things

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that they might learn to do on their own.

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I got an interesting phone call once from Columbo,

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from the late Arthur C. Clarke,

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who said, "I want to see what's going on."

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And he couldn't travel, so I went over there.

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He said two interesting things,

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"A teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be."

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(Laughter)

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The second thing he said was that,

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"If children have interest,

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then education happens."

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And I was doing that in the field,

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so every time I would watch it and think of him.

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(Video) Arthur C. Clarke: And they can definitely

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help people,

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because children quickly learn to navigate

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the web and find things which interest them.

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And when you've got interest, then you have education.

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Sugata Mitra: I took the experiment to South Africa.

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This is a 15 year-old boy.

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(Video) Boy: ... just mention, I play games

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like animals,

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and I listen to music.

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SM: And I asked him, "Do you send emails?"

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And he said, "Yes, and they hop across the ocean."

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This is in Cambodia,

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rural Cambodia --

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a fairly silly arithmetic game,

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which no child would play inside the classroom or at home.

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They would, you know, throw it back at you.

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They'd say, "This is very boring."

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If you leave it on the pavement

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and if all the adults go away,

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then they will show off with each other

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about what they can do.

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This is what these children are doing.

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They are trying to multiply, I think.

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And all over India,

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at the end of about two years,

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children were beginning to Google their homework.

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As a result, the teachers reported

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tremendous improvements in their English --

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(Laughter)

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rapid improvement and all sorts of things.

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They said, "They have become really deep thinkers and so on and so forth.

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(Laughter)

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And indeed they had.

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I mean, if there's stuff on Google,

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why would you need to stuff it into your head?

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So at the end of the next four years,

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I decided that groups of children can navigate the internet

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to achieve educational objectives on their own.

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At that time, a large amount of money

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had come into Newcastle University

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to improve schooling in India.

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So Newcastle gave me a call. I said, "I'll do it from Delhi."

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They said, "There's no way you're going to handle

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a million pounds-worth of University money

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sitting in Delhi."

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So in 2006,

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I bought myself a heavy overcoat

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and moved to Newcastle.

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I wanted to test the limits

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of the system.

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The first experiment I did out of Newcastle

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was actually done in India.

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And I set myself and impossible target:

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can Tamil speaking

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12-year-old children

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in a South Indian village

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teach themselves biotechnology

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in English on their own?

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And I thought, I'll test them, they'll get a zero --

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I'll give the materials, I'll come back and test them --

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they get another zero,

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I'll go back and say, "Yes, we need teachers for certain things."

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I called in 26 children.

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They all came in there, and I told them

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that there's some really difficult stuff on this computer.

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I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't understand anything.

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It's all in English, and I'm going.

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(Laughter)

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So I left them with it.

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I came back after two months,

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and the 26 children marched in looking very, very quiet.

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I said, "Well, did you look at any of the stuff?"

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They said, "Yes, we did."

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"Did you understand anything?" "No, nothing."

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So I said,

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"Well, how long did you practice on it

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before you decided you understood nothing?"

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They said, "We look at it every day."

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So I said, "For two months, you were looking at stuff you didn't understand?"

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So a 12 year-old girl raises her hand and says,

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literally,

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"Apart from the fact that improper replication of the DNA molecule

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causes genetic disease,

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we've understood nothing else."

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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(Laughter)

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It took me three years to publish that.

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It's just been published in the British Journal of Educational Technology.

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One of the referees who refereed the paper said,

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"It's too good to be true,"

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which was not very nice.

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Well, one of the girls had taught herself

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to become the teacher.

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And then that's her over there.

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Remember, they don't study English.

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I edited out the last bit when I asked, "Where is the neuron?"

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and she says, "The neuron? The neuron,"

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and then she looked and did this.

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Whatever the expression, it was not very nice.

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So their scores had gone up from zero to 30 percent,

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which is an educational impossibility under the circumstances.

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But 30 percent is not a pass.

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So I found that they had a friend,

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a local accountant, a young girl,

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and they played football with her.

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I asked that girl, "Would you teach them

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enough biotechnology to pass?"

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And she said, "How would I do that? I don't know the subject."

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I said, "No, use the method of the grandmother."

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She said, "What's that?"

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I said, "Well, what you've got to do

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is stand behind them

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and admire them all the time.

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Just say to them, 'That's cool. That's fantastic.

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What is that? Can you do that again? Can you show me some more?'"

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She did that for two months.

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The scores went up to 50,

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which is what the posh schools of New Delhi,

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with a trained biotechnology teacher were getting.

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So I came back to Newcastle

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with these results

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and decided

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that there was something happening here

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that definitely was getting very serious.

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So, having experimented in all sorts of remote places,

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I came to the most remote place that I could think of.

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(Laughter)

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Approximately 5,000 miles from Delhi

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is the little town of Gateshead.

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In Gateshead, I took 32 children

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and I started to fine-tune the method.

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I made them into groups of four.

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I said, "You make your own groups of four.

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Each group of four can use one computer and not four computers."

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Remember, from the Hole in the Wall.

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"You can exchange groups.

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You can walk across to another group,

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if you don't like your group, etc.

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You can go to another group, peer over their shoulders, see what they're doing,

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come back to you own group and claim it as your own work."

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And I explained to them

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that, you know, a lot of scientific research is done using that method.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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The children enthusiastically got after me and said,

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"Now, what do you want us to do?"

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I gave them six GCSE questions.

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The first group -- the best one --

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solved everything in 20 minutes.

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The worst, in 45.

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They used everything that they knew --

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news groups, Google, Wikipedia,

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Ask Jeeves, etc.

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The teachers said, "Is this deep learning?"

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I said, "Well, let's try it.

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I'll come back after two months.

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We'll give them a paper test --

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no computers, no talking to each other, etc."

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The average score when I'd done it with the computers and the groups

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was 76 percent.

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When I did the experiment, when I did the test,

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after two months, the score

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was 76 percent.

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There was photographic recall

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inside the children,

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I suspect because they're discussing with each other.

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A single child in front of a single computer

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will not do that.

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I have further results,

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which are almost unbelievable,

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of scores which go up with time.

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Because their teachers say

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that after the session is over,

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the children continue to Google further.

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Here in Britain, I put out a call

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for British grandmothers,

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after my Kuppam experiment.

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Well, you know,

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they're very vigorous people, British grandmothers.

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200 of them volunteered immediately.

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(Laughter)

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The deal was that they would give me

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one hour of broadband time,

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sitting in their homes,

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one day in a week.

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So they did that,

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and over the last two years,

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over 600 hours of instruction

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has happened over Skype,

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using what my students call the granny cloud.

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The granny cloud sits over there.

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I can beam them to whichever school I want to.

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(Video) Teacher: You can't catch me.

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You say it.

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You can't catch me.

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Children: You can't catch me.

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Teacher: I'm the gingerbread man.

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Children: I'm the gingerbread man.

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Teacher: Well done. Very good ...

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SM: Back at Gateshead,

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a 10-year-old girl gets into the heart of Hinduism

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in 15 minutes.

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You know, stuff which I don't know anything about.

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Two children watch a TEDTalk.

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They wanted to be footballers before.

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After watching eight TEDTalks,

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he wants to become Leonardo da Vinci.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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It's pretty simple stuff.

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This is what I'm building now --

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they're called SOLEs: Self Organized Learning Environments.

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The furniture is designed

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so that children can sit in front of big, powerful screens,

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big broadband connections, but in groups.

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If they want, they can call the granny cloud.

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This is a SOLE in Newcastle.

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The mediator is from Pune, India.

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So how far can we go? One last little bit and I'll stop.

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I went to Turin in May.

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I sent all the teachers away from my group of 10 year-old students.

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I speak only English, they speak only Italian,

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so we had no way to communicate.

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I started writing English questions on the blackboard.

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The children looked at it and said, "What?"

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I said, "Well, do it."

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They typed it into Google, translated it into Italian,

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went back into Italian Google.

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Fifteen minutes later --

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next question: where is Calcutta?

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This one, they took only 10 minutes.

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I tried a really hard one then.

339
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Who was Pythagoras, and what did he do?

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There was silence for a while,

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then they said, "You've spelled it wrong.

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It's Pitagora."

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And then,

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in 20 minutes,

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the right-angled triangles began to appear on the screens.

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This sent shivers up my spine.

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These are 10 year-olds.

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Text: In another 30 minutes they would reach the Theory of Relativity. And then?

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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SM: So you know what's happened?

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I think we've just stumbled across

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a self-organizing system.

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A self-organizing system is one

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where a structure appears

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without explicit intervention from the outside.

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Self-organizing systems also always show emergence,

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which is that the system starts to do things,

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which it was never designed for.

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Which is why you react the way you do,

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because it looks impossible.

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I think I can make a guess now --

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education is self-organizing system,

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where learning is an emergent phenomenon.

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It'll take a few years to prove it, experimentally,

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but I'm going to try.

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But in the meanwhile, there is a method available.

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One billion children, we need 100 million mediators --

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there are many more than that on the planet --

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10 million SOLEs,

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180 billion dollars and 10 years.

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We could change everything.

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Thanks.

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(Applause)