A "School in the Cloud": Kids, Computers and Learning on One's Own

A child who's never seen a computer before suddenly has one at her fingertips. She has no knowledge of the Internet and knows very little English. There are no adults around to teach her. What happens?

The answer, says Indian educator Sugata Mitra, is some extremely impressive learning. For the past 14 years, Mitra has been conducting experiments with kids and computers, showing how quickly they can become computer literate without any intervention from adults. 

Mitra, who was awarded the $1 million 2013 TED Prize this week, argues that the future of learning demands a new system in which adults merely spark children's curiosity then let them teach themselves. With a little help from computers, that is.

Mitra calls this approach "self-organized" learning. "It's not about making learning happen, it's about letting it happen," he said in a speech at the TED2013 conference in Long Beach, California, on Tuesday, where he was awarded the organization's first-ever $1 million prize. (See Mitra's full speech here.)



Mitra's experiments began in 1999, when he dug a hole in a wall between the New Delhi research center where he was teaching computer programming and the slum on the other side. He placed an Internet-connected PC in the hole, facing the slum, and left it there.

Within hours, the kids from the slum had learned how to use the computer and surf the Internet — and were teaching each other how to do it — all on their own. They also taught themselves English over time so they could do it even better.

Mitra replicated this "hole in the wall" experiment in many more locations in rural India. Hole in the wall learning stations have since spread to Cambodia and to several African countries. (The New Delhi hole in the wall project was an inspiration for the novel Q&A, which later became the Oscar-winning hit Slumdog Millionaire.)

"In nine months, a group of children left alone with a computer in any language will reach the same standard as an office secretary in the West," said Mitra, who is a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University in England.

While he does not favor direct teaching or intervention from adults, Mitra said he discovered that encouragement and admiring words from an adult — such as a grandmother would give — did help the kids in his experiments to learn better. This led to a new experiment called the "granny cloud": a community of English grandmothers who volunteer time to Skype with children across oceans and simply tell them that they're doing great.

"The granny cloud sits on the Internet," Mitra told the TED2013 audience. "If there's a child in trouble, we beam a 'gran.' She goes on over Skype, and she sorts things out."

Sugata Mitra's "SOLE Toolkit"

Mitra has developed a new model of education based on his experiments called SOLE, or self-organized learning environments. In this model, adults merely ask children big questions — "What is a soul?" "Can animals think?" — and let them learn on their own using computers and working in groups. Mashable's Chris Taylor explains SOLE this way in the article "How This Teacher Won the $1 Million TED Prize": "Give kids a computer, ask them a serious adult-level question, encourage their efforts to answer it, and stand well back."

Mitra plans to use the TED Prize money to build a "school in the cloud" — a learning laboratory where he can test out his SOLE principles and continue various experiments in self-directed learning. The school would be a physical building, likely in India, that's managed completely by cloud technology. It would be practically unmanned, Mitra said, with only one "granny" present to oversee health and safety issues. Everything else would be done via the cloud — even switching on the lights and AC, Mitra explains in this one-on-one interview with The New York Times.

Mitra has compared the school to a "safe cyber café for children," where they can connect with information and mentors online and work collaboratively with other kids. Mitra would like to see how such self-organized learning centers can be scaled globally. For now, though, the school — along with the $1 million prize that will fund it — is a testament to the wondrous innate capabilities of children. And to the tremendous appeal of a computer, even one that's just stuck in a hole in the wall.

(TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, is a global nonprofit organization devoted to "ideas worth spreading." The TED2013 conference ran this week from Monday through today. You can download the "SOLE Toolkit" from Mitra on the TED website to learn how to apply the SOLE model in your own community.)

"Growing Up Digital": A Barnard College Talk

When it comes to children and digital media, it's the content, not the medium, that matters. This was the clear message from Rosemarie Truglio, senior VP of education and research at Sesame Workshop and the speaker at "Growing Up Digital: Keeping the Human Connection," a talk held at Barnard College in New York City on February 7.

"It's not the technology, it's how we use it," Truglio said. "We've been blaming technology for years," she said — from writing itself ("Socrates said, 'Now everyone's going to read; what's going to happen to our memory?'"), to the printing press, to television, to computers. Naysayers have blamed all of these and more for corrupting us in one way or another.

But whether it's TV sets or iPads, these are simply tools, Truglio said. It's what we do with them that's important. "You could watch really bad television, or you could watch really good television," she reminded listeners in a packed lecture hall. The same is true of using apps, games and other digital products made for kids.

The talk was part of the Barnard Center for Toddler Development's 40th anniversary celebration. By a show of hands, most in the audience were parents of toddlers. Others included teachers, students and preschoolers' parents.

Truglio made the case that not all kids' apps are created equal by demonstrating some popular preschool apps from Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind "Sesame Street" (you might know it by its former name, the Children's Television Workshop). She walked through several features she said parents should look for in apps: A section of parent tips that extend the learning. The ability to customize the learning experience (you might want to shut off Grover's voice, say, and use your own). True assessment of your child's progress. (The majority of app "trackers" for parents only tell you the frequency with which your child does something, Truglio said, such as play with the letter "F." "They are not assessing learning," she warned.)

And watch out for apps that make it easy for kids to run up your credit card in the app store, she said. In Sesame Workshop apps, links for making purchases are in a parents section only and are protected by "baby gates" — extra confirmations that prevent kids from clicking back to app stores and buying willy-nilly. (For more on what makes a good app, see Sesame Workshop's best practices for designing touchscreen content for preschoolers, released in December.)

Another key point that Truglio drove home: Use digital tools with your child. Toddlers especially, who are learning language, need to hear adults' open-ended questions and descriptive language, she said. "When you take quality content and you put it on an interactive medium, and then you stir it around with parent-child interaction, you get better results than if your child is just by him- or herself interacting with the game."

Audience questions at the end ran the gamut: Where can I find good ratings for apps online? How do you instill good habits from the get-go and preempt addiction to Facebook, et al, later? How much time should a 4-year-old be allowed to spend on a digital device? And from one parent whose young son is obsessed with watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, "What do you think of Mickey Mouse?"

Truglio's answers? Look to Common Sense Media and KinderTown for solid app ratings; model appropriate behavior with your own devices, avoiding addiction yourself; screen time should not exceed one and a half to two hours a day (and this includes all screen time); and the child is learning something from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, which is about problem-solving. "It's not a bad show. He's going to be OK," Truglio reassured this parent. "I would like him to watch Big Bird a little bit more, but he'll be OK."

2012 Was an Interesting Year

It's February 2013, and this marks the launch of "The Digital Child," a hub of news, resources and information on children and digital media. Before 2012 gets too far behind us, here's a round-up of some of the big news, studies and other developments of the year.

Kids' Tablets Explosion

If it seemed like there was a new made-for-kids tablet out each time you turned around, it's probably because there was. It was the year of the kid tablet — from the Toys "R" Us Tabeo, with its Hello Kitty and Angry Birds accessory cases, to the Fuhu Nabi Jr. (shown) for the preschool and kindergarten set, equipped with a "baby monitor" video camera for parents. Kid tablets tend to be plastic, easy-to-grip for tiny hands and rubber-edged for extra durability. They come with an array of parental controls but a price tag not that much less than some adult versions (many are in the $150-$200 range). 

Children's Technology Review offered this in-depth report on the market in December, analyzing and reviewing tons — and tons — of kid tablets. ConsumerReports.org also lab-tested and kid-tested five popular 7-inch Android kid tablets in December. And see these reviews from Forbes. Expect much more news and reviews this year as the tablets-for-tots market explodes.

Study: Apple's App Store Heavily Targets Young Children

Speaking of exploding... over 80% of the top-selling paid educational apps in Apple's iTunes App Store now target children, a January study by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop found. Of these apps, a whopping 72% target preschoolers. And it's a fast-growing market. An addendum to this study, from the summer, zoomed in on Apple's App Store's games category (which has an entire section devoted to kids, unlike its education category). It found that a full 56% of games apps target the toddler/preschooler set — by far the most popular age group. And almost a third of games apps (32%) make "some sort of educational claim," stating a learning objective. All of the apps making such claims target preschoolers and toddlers. 

FTC Warning: Privacy Woes Over Kids' Apps

With so much "app-tivity" geared toward the very young, can we soon expect an "app-lash"? In light of some looming privacy concerns, it's very possible. In December, the Federal Trade Commission outlined many troubling concerns over privacy and children's apps in its report "Mobile Apps for Kids: Disclosures Still Not Making the Grade." It was the FTC's second recent survey of the privacy disclosures and practices of children's apps (their first report was released in February 2012). Both surveys showed that app developers and stores are not providing parents information about the data being collected on their kids, who they're sharing it with and how it is being used. Parents, take note. Find the full FTC report here.

New Ratings: Got Learning Potential?

In April, Common Sense Media beta-launched a new rating system for kids' digital media to help parents and teachers find the more worthy products. The nonprofit organization rates websites, apps and video games as "Best for Learning," "Good for Learning," "Fair for Learning," or "Not for Learning." It is easy to search products by media type, title, age and the ratings themselves.

Panel: "Baby Brains and Video Games"

An expert panel held by New America NYC shed some light on a range of issues surrounding little ones and digital media last March. They discussed the latest research and outlined common concerns adults have about young minds and digital devices. One strong message was that content does matter. As panelist Rosemarie Truglio, senior VP of education and research for Sesame Workshop, put it, "Just because something is interactive does not necessarily make it educational." A lively Q&A followed the panel discussion. 

Some 2012 Articles Worth Reading:

"Educational Apps Alone Won't Teach Your Kid To Read", Slate, December 13, 2012
Adult-child interaction is still the most important factor in teaching literacy, write Lisa Guernsey and Michael Levine. They are two authors of the new report "Pioneering Literacy in the Digital Wild West", which analyzed apps and e-books that promise to help kids learn to read. The report found that the most popular ones tend to focus only on very basic literacy skills without addressing higher-level skills such as vocabulary development and comprehension. "At its best, the technology complements the work of trained teachers and parents," they write. "It doesn’t replace it." Guernsey is the director of the Education Initiative at the New America Foundation (and was a panelist on the above-mentioned "Baby Brains" panel). Levine is executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.

"Is Technology Sapping Children's Creativity?", The Washington Post, September 13, 2012
Early childhood development expert Nancy Carlsson-Paige reminds adults exactly how young children learn: "through direct play and hands-on experiences with people, with materials, and in nature," she writes. She discusses the importance of playing in the three-dimensional world and using good ol' fashioned open-ended materials like blocks, play-dough, sand and water. She also asks if when we quiet our kids with little screens, "are they missing out on the chance to feel, to argue, to sit in silence, to listen, to be?" (P.S.: Carlsson-Paige is also the mother of actor Matt Damon — and a former neighbor of the author of this blog, from the blogger's own early childhood.)

"Sunday Dialogue: How Children Play", The New York Times, June 30, 2012

Another interesting discussion about children's learning, this one from The New York Times' "Letters" section. In a letter responding to an earlier article, "Wasting Time Is New Divide in Digital Era", about how children and families in different socioeconomic strata use technology, Sarah Chumsky, a children’s media researcher, outlines the benefits of digital media for children. Readers respond, rather passionately. One challenge from a Waldorf School teacher, for example: "Watch your children while they are engaged with media of any kind. Look at their faces and their limbs. Then watch them while you are reading their favorite book or playing a game, or while they are on a swing. Then decide for yourself what is most benefiting your child’s deepest developmental needs."

"What Happens When Toddlers Zone Out With an iPad?", The Wall Street Journal, May 22, 2012
"In many ways, the average toddler using an iPad is a guinea pig," writes Ben Worthen — since scientific studies on the effects of such devices on toddlers' development can take three to five years, and iPads are not even yet three years old. Worthen discusses what pediatric neuroscientists and researchers have to say on the subject. He also documents what happened when his own toddler son started using an iPad (which he doesn't let him use anymore).

"Can Your Preschooler Learn Anything From an iPad App?", Slate, May 2, 2012
Another piece by Lisa Guernsey, veteran reporter and director of the Education Initiative at the New America Foundation — this one adapted from her March 2012 book, Screen Time: How Electronic Media — From Baby Videos to Educational Software — Affects Your Young Child. She discusses, among other things, the importance of apps and games that allow kids "open-ended" exploration and discovery, and the woeful lack of such products on the market today.