The Courier
news.7
Monday 17 February 2014
Mitra opens first ‘school in the cloud’ By Anna Templeton News Editor Sugata Mitra, the Newcastle academic who inspired the film Slumdog Millionaire, has opened his first ‘school in the cloud.’ The new project is based opposite the ‘hole in the wall’ where Professor Mitra put a computer 15 years ago and left it for children to use on their own. The new facility has been opened in the Government Girls School in Kalkaji, India. The project will allow children to explore and learn from each other by tapping into online mentors and resources. Mitra’s original ‘hall in the wall’ experiments began in 1999 when Mitra carved a hole in his research centre into an adjoining Delhi slum. He found that groups of children, with no prior experience or knowlof English, Last year, Mitra edge could teach themwon the TED selves to use the computer softprize which ware. awards $1 His experiment million to an led to a fundamental reassessexceptional ment of the poindividual sition of formal education. Hidden monitoring showed the benefits of what Mitra nicknamed ‘Minimally Invasive Education.’ Last year Mitra won the TED prize, which awards $1 million to an exceptional individual. “My wish is to help
design the future of learning by supporting children all over the world to tap into their innate sense of wonder and work together,” Mitra said. Professor Mitra is currently using the prize money to fund further research into his theories both in India and Tyneside. His educational research has also led to more than 100 Self-Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs) being set up. These allow children to search for answers to ‘big’ questions. It has also inspired Self Organised Mediation Environments (SOMEs), which are also known as the ‘Granny Cloud’. The Granny Cloud allows children to engage in a wide range of informal activities. Prof Mitra said: “We already know that reading comprehension is likely to improve in the children taking part in these activities, but we do not know what else might happen in the process,” he explains. “What we do know is that order emerges out of this creative chaos. “In India, we will be looking at two things – whether the children can learn to read and also search the internet accurately by themselves. If they can do this, then it’s the end of schooling as we know it.” The Kalkaji facility is the first of five new SOLEs to open in India. The primary aim of the scheme is to improve children’s reading comprehension and search skills and develop their confidence.
HEAD IN THE CLOUDS: TED-prize winning professor opens pioneering school in India His ‘hole in the wall’ project prompted imitations all over the world, and helped inspire the book Q&A by Vikas
Swarup, which in turn inspired the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire. Last year, Mitra was named as part of
the ‘CNN 10: Thinkers’, a list of the top 10 science and technology “visionaries whose ideas are shaping our future.”
Prof proposes smoke ban in cars with kids By William Ibbott
A vote was made by MPs in Parliament on Monday 10 February which addressed the issue of whether vehicle owners should be allowed to smoke in their cars with children present. If passed, the vote would stipulate a ban on such activities, forming part of the Children and Families Bill.
Alongside this, the issue of e-cigarettes and the age of car passengers, add a whole new dimension of difficulty to the proposed law. Police run the risk of wrongly apprehending drivers due to mistaking cigarettes for substitutes, while the age of passengers in the car could potentially be wrongly interpreted. Many understand that drivers will have much leeway when it comes to side-stepping
Critics say that police will find it hard to enforce because motorists will be able to shield their cigarettes from both cameras and the human eye The proposed ban, which has come under some conjecture, was disclosed by Dr. Neil Thorpe, lecturer in Transport Studies in the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences here at Newcastle University. Critics say that police will find it extremely hard to enforce because many motorists with children in their cars will be able to shield their cigarettes from both cameras and the human eye. Similarly, while front-facing cameras may be able to capture the face of the driver, identifying children at the same time in the rear of a vehicle, would remain a tougher task.
these rules if they are imposed. The proposed ban has received widespread support from over 500 healthcare professionals, who signed an open letter to Parliament in support of the ban. Some have favoured the alternative of self-enforcement: which largely involves the practice of encouraging motorists with children to give up smoking by educating them of its dangers. Many believe that simply chastening people for smoking in their cars is unlikely to prohibit them from smoking within the premises of their children in other confined spaces.