The teacher’s job in a connected age
(via Guy Kawasaki’s blog)
Dr, Sugatra Mitra talks about his experiment involving students and how they use the internet
Well, I tried another experiment. I went to a middle-class school and chose some ninth graders, two girls and two boys. I called their physics teacher in and asked him, “What are you going to teach these children next year at this time?” He mentioned viscosity. I asked him to write down five possible exam questions on the subject. I then took the four children and said, “Look here guys. I have a little problem for you.” They read the questions and said they didn’t understand them, it was Greek to them. So I said, “Here’s a terminal. I’ll give you two hours to find the answers.”
Then I did my usual thing: I closed the door and went off somewhere else.
They answered all five questions in two hours. The physics teacher checked the answers, and they were correct. That, of itself, doesn’t mean much. But I said to him, “Talk to the children and find out if they really learned something about this subject.” So he spent half an hour talking to them. He came out and said, “They don’t know everything about this subject or everything I would teach them. But they do know one hell of a lot about it. And they know a couple of things about it I didn’t know.”
That’s not a wow for the children, it’s a wow for the Internet. It shows you what it’s capable of. The slum children don’t have physics teachers. But if I could make them curious enough, then all the content they need is out there. The greatest expert on earth on viscosity probably has his papers up there on the Web somewhere. Creating content is not what’s important. What is important is infrastructure and access … The teacher’s job is very simple. It’s to help the children ask the right questions.
The interview is online at greenstar.org
October 20th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
Sweet! The best classes aren’t about having the teacher do the talking all day, but when students get to engage one another with him/her facilitating. That said, class size matters.
October 30th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
it says the job of a teacher is ..teaching nothing
October 31st, 2006 at 6:59 am
There is an old adage about Teachers and the Teaching profession. In Sanskrit, the teacher is known as “Guru” (where etymologically, the root word “gu” means darkness or dirt and “ru” means dispeller). Ergo — Teacher == Guru == Dispeller of Darkeness.
What better way to illuminate another’s intellect than to rouse his/her curiosity and inquisitiveness?
November 30th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
As a mother of a 10 year old girl (who is asking me a lot of questions some of which I myself dont know ) this has given me a great idea.
Give her one word related to science/language each morning and see what she comes up with … on the internet.
Channel her curiosity/ time and improve her “search” technique.
Dedicated teachers are the greatest assets for the next generation.