The Rise of Interest based Learning
Its been two years since I first wrote about Learning Without Teachers, and now Sugata Mitra is sharing compelling stories involving peer instruction, that should lead educators at all levels to re-think what it means to teach.
Mitras most recent research seems to validate an approach that forgoes 1:1 computing, in favour of a strategy that limits access to learning tools. In a wide range of settings, with diverse populations of learners, Mitra has married the use of communications technology to interest-based learning, and the early results have been stunning, even if counterintuitive.
Do you believe that this peer to peer approach affirms recent developments in professional learning? Does it validate project-based approaches to learning? Might it support equipping a classroom with an On Demand Ecosystem?
Sugata Mitra speculates that "Education is a self organising system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon..." and he is committed to researching this contention. Whether or not we agree, Mitras work provides an unspoken challenge: How do you assess the effectiveness of the tools and learning strategies that you employ?
download file now
