Sætningen bag mig siger jo nærmest sig selv. Jeg startede med den sætning for 12 år siden, og jeg startede med udviklingslande, men I sidder her fra alle verdenshjørner. Hvis I forestiller jer et kort over jeres land, kan I sikkert forestille jer, at for hvert land på jorden, tegner I en cirkel, der indikerer, at "Dette er et land, som ingen gode lærere vil rejse til." Og samtidig med det, så er det disse lande, der skaber problemer. Vi har et ironisk problem. Gode lærere har ikke lyst til at tage hen, hvor de gode lærere er mest nødvendige.
Well, that's kind of an obvious statement up there. I started with that sentence about 12 years ago, and I started in the context of developing countries, but you're sitting here from every corner of the world. So if you think of a map of your country, I think you'll realize that for every country on Earth, you could draw little circles to say, "These are places where good teachers won't go." On top of that, those are the places from where trouble comes. So we have an ironic problem -- good teachers don't want to go to just those places where they're needed the most.
I 1999 begyndte jeg at kigge nærmere på dette problem gennem et lille eksperiment, et meget simpelt eksperiment i New Delhi. Grundlæggende indlejrede jeg en computer i en væg i et slumkvarter i New Delhi. Børnene gik knapt nok i skole. De kunne ikke engang snakke engelsk. De havde aldrig set en computer før, og de vidste ikke hvad Internettet var. Jeg tilsluttede en bredbåndsforbindelse til den - den er cirka en meter over jorden - tændte den og lod den være. Derefter bemærkede vi nogle interessante ting, som I vil få at se. Jeg gentog dette over hele Indien, og videre ud i en stor del af verden og bemærkede, at børn lærer at gøre det, de har lyst til at lære at gøre.
I started in 1999 to try and address this problem with an experiment, which was a very simple experiment in New Delhi. I basically embedded a computer into a wall of a slum in New Delhi. The children barely went to school, they didn't know any English -- they'd never seen a computer before, and they didn't know what the internet was. I connected high speed internet to it -- it's about three feet off the ground -- turned it on and left it there. After this, we noticed a couple of interesting things, which you'll see. But I repeated this all over India and then through a large part of the world and noticed that children will learn to do what they want to learn to do.
Dette er det første eksperiment vi lavede - en 8-årig dreng til højre, der lærer sin elev, en 6-årig pige, hvordan man surfer. Her er en dreng midt i den centrale del af Indien - her er det i byen Rajasthan, hvor børnene optog deres egen musik, og derefter afspillede den for hinanden, og under udførelsen, morede sig gevaldigt. Alt dette gjorde de kun 4 timer efter de så en computer for første gang. I en anden landsby i det sydlige Indien har vi nogle drenge, som har samlet et videokamera, og som prøvede at tage et billede af en brumbasse. De downloadede det fra Disney.com, eller et lignende website, 14 dage efter, at vi opsatte computeren i deres by. Så til sidst konkluderede vi, at grupper af børn kan lære at bruge computere og Internettet af sig selv, uafhængigt af, hvem eller hvor de er.
This is the first experiment that we did -- eight year-old boy on your right teaching his student, a six year-old girl, and he was teaching her how to browse. This boy here in the middle of central India -- this is in a Rajasthan village, where the children recorded their own music and then played it back to each other and in the process, they've enjoyed themselves thoroughly. They did all of this in four hours after seeing the computer for the first time. In another South Indian village, these boys here had assembled a video camera and were trying to take the photograph of a bumble bee. They downloaded it from Disney.com, or one of these websites, 14 days after putting the computer in their village. So at the end of it, we concluded that groups of children can learn to use computers and the internet on their own, irrespective of who or where they were.
På dette tidspunkt blev jeg mere ambitiøs og beluttede at undersøge, hvad børn ellers kan bruge en computer til. Vi startede med et eksperiment i Hyderabad i Indien, hvor jeg gav en gruppe børn - der snakkede engelsk med en stærk Telugu accent. Jeg gav dem en computer med en tale-til-tekst brugerflade, som man nu får gratis med Windows, og bad dem om at tale til den. Så når de talte til den, så skrev computeren kun sludder, så de sagde, "Men den forstår ikke hvad vi siger". Så svarede jeg, "Jeg efterlader den her i 2 måneder. Få computeren til at forstå jer." Børnene sagde, "Hvordan gør vi det." Og jeg svarede, "Det ved jeg ikke." (Latter) Og så gik jeg. (Latter) 2 måneder senere - og dette er nu dokumenteret i journalen 'Information Technology for International Development' - havde deres accenter ændret sig, og lød næsten som den neutrale britisk accent, som jeg havde lært tale-til-tekst oversætteren. Med andre ord talte de alle som James Tooley. (Latter) Så de kunne lære det af sig selv. Efter dette begyndte jeg at eksperimentere med med forskellige andre ting, som de måske kunne lære sig selv.
At that point, I became a little more ambitious and decided to see what else could children do with a computer. We started off with an experiment in Hyderabad, India, where I gave a group of children -- they spoke English with a very strong Telugu accent. I gave them a computer with a speech-to-text interface, which you now get free with Windows, and asked them to speak into it. So when they spoke into it, the computer typed out gibberish, so they said, "Well, it doesn't understand anything of what we are saying." So I said, "Yeah, I'll leave it here for two months. Make yourself understood to the computer." So the children said, "How do we do that." And I said, "I don't know, actually." (Laughter) And I left. (Laughter) Two months later -- and this is now documented in the Information Technology for International Development journal -- that accents had changed and were remarkably close to the neutral British accent in which I had trained the speech-to-text synthesizer. In other words, they were all speaking like James Tooley. (Laughter) So they could do that on their own. After that, I started to experiment with various other things that they might learn to do on their own.
Jeg modtog et interessant telefonopkald fra Colombo, fra den nu afdøde Arthur C. Clarke som sagde, "Jeg vil se hvad der sker". Og han kunne ikke rejse, så jeg tog over til ham. Han sagde to interessante ting, "En lærer, som kan erstattes af en maskine, bør erstattes". (Latter) Den anden ting han sagde var, "Hvis børn har lyst, så opstår der læring". Og det gjorde jeg ude i marken, og hver gang jeg så det, tænkte jeg på ham.
I got an interesting phone call once from Columbo, from the late Arthur C. Clarke, who said, "I want to see what's going on." And he couldn't travel, so I went over there. He said two interesting things, "A teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be." (Laughter) The second thing he said was that, "If children have interest, then education happens." And I was doing that in the field, so every time I would watch it and think of him.
(Video) Arthur C. Clarke: Og de kan bestemt hjælpe folk, fordi børn lærer hurtigt at navigere og gå ind og finde ting, som interesserer dem. Og når der er interesse, så sker der læring.
(Video) Arthur C. Clarke: And they can definitely help people, because children quickly learn to navigate the web and find things which interest them. And when you've got interest, then you have education.
Suguta Mitra: Jeg tog eksperimentet til Sydafrika. Her er en 15-årig dreng.
Sugata Mitra: I took the experiment to South Africa. This is a 15 year-old boy.
(Video) Dreng: ... nævn, at jeg spiller spil kan lide dyr, og lytter til musik.
(Video) Boy: ... just mention, I play games like animals, and I listen to music.
SM: Jeg spurgte ham, "Sender du emails?" Han svarede, "Ja, og de krydser havet". Det her er i Cambodia, på landet i Cambodia - et fjollet matematisk spil, som ingen børn vil spille i klasseværelset eller derhjemme. De ville afvise det. De ville sige, "Det er kedeligt". Hvis man efterlader det på fortovet, og alle de voksne går væk, så vil de begynde at vise hinanden, hvad de kan gøre. Det er hvad disse børn gør. De lærer at gange, tror jeg. Og over hele Indien, efter cirka to år, begyndte børn at Google deres lektier. Som et resultat har lærere rapporteret enorme forbedringer i deres engelsk - (Latter) hurtige forbedringer og andre ting. De sagde, "De er blevet dybe tænkere osv. (Latter) Og det er de virkelig. Det jeg mener er, hvis det findes på Google, hvorfor skal du så gemme det i dit hoved? Så efter de næste fire år fastslog jeg, at grupper af børn kan benytte Internettet til selv at opnå uddannelsesmæssige mål.
SM: And I asked him, "Do you send emails?" And he said, "Yes, and they hop across the ocean." This is in Cambodia, rural Cambodia -- a fairly silly arithmetic game, which no child would play inside the classroom or at home. They would, you know, throw it back at you. They'd say, "This is very boring." If you leave it on the pavement and if all the adults go away, then they will show off with each other about what they can do. This is what these children are doing. They are trying to multiply, I think. And all over India, at the end of about two years, children were beginning to Google their homework. As a result, the teachers reported tremendous improvements in their English -- (Laughter) rapid improvement and all sorts of things. They said, "They have become really deep thinkers and so on and so forth. (Laughter) And indeed they had. I mean, if there's stuff on Google, why would you need to stuff it into your head? So at the end of the next four years, I decided that groups of children can navigate the internet to achieve educational objectives on their own.
På dette tidspunkt modtog Newcastle universitet en stor sum penge to at forbedre skolegangen i Indien. Så Newcastle ringede og jeg sagde, "Jeg gør det fra Delhi". De svarede, "Du får ikke lov til at håndtere flere millioner af universitetets penge fra Delhi." Så i 2006 købte jeg er stor overfrakke og flyttede til Newcastle. Jeg ønskede at afprøve grænserne for systemet. Det første forsøg, jeg lavede fra Newcastle, var faktisk i Indien. Og jeg gav mig selv et umulgt mål: Kan Tamilsk-talende 12-årige børn i en sydindisk landsby lære sig selv bioteknologi på engelsk af sig selv? Jeg tænkte, at dét ville jeg udersøge. De ville få et nul. Jeg giver dem materialer. Jeg kommer tilbage og tester dem. De får et nul igen. Jeg kommer tilbage og kan sige, "Ja, vi skal bruge lærere til bestemte ting."
At that time, a large amount of money had come into Newcastle University to improve schooling in India. So Newcastle gave me a call. I said, "I'll do it from Delhi." They said, "There's no way you're going to handle a million pounds-worth of University money sitting in Delhi." So in 2006, I bought myself a heavy overcoat and moved to Newcastle. I wanted to test the limits of the system. The first experiment I did out of Newcastle was actually done in India. And I set myself and impossible target: can Tamil speaking 12-year-old children in a South Indian village teach themselves biotechnology in English on their own? And I thought, I'll test them, they'll get a zero -- I'll give the materials, I'll come back and test them -- they get another zero, I'll go back and say, "Yes, we need teachers for certain things."
Jeg indkaldte 26 børn. De kom allesammen, og jeg fortalte dem at der var noget rigtig svært stof på denne computer. Jeg ville ikke blive overrasket, hvis I ikke forstår det. Det er altsammen på engelsk, og nu går jeg. (Latter) Og så efterlod jeg dem. Jeg kom igen efter to måneder, og de 26 børn kom ind og var meget, meget stille. Jeg spurgte, "Nå, har I kigget på materialet?" De svarede, "Ja, det har vi." "Forstod i noget af det?" - "Nej, intet." Så jeg spurgte, "Hvor længe øvede I jer, før I besluttede, at I ikke forstod det?" De svarede, "Vi så på det hver dag". Jeg spurgte, "Har I gennem to måneder set på materiale, som I ikke forstår?" Så løftede en 12-årig pige hånden og sagde, bogstavelig talt, Udover at fejlagtig replikering af DNA molekyler kan give genetiske sygdomme, forstod vi ikke andet."
I called in 26 children. They all came in there, and I told them that there's some really difficult stuff on this computer. I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't understand anything. It's all in English, and I'm going. (Laughter) So I left them with it. I came back after two months, and the 26 children marched in looking very, very quiet. I said, "Well, did you look at any of the stuff?" They said, "Yes, we did." "Did you understand anything?" "No, nothing." So I said, "Well, how long did you practice on it before you decided you understood nothing?" They said, "We look at it every day." So I said, "For two months, you were looking at stuff you didn't understand?" So a 12 year-old girl raises her hand and says, literally, "Apart from the fact that improper replication of the DNA molecule causes genetic disease, we've understood nothing else."
(Latter)
(Laughter)
(Klapsalver)
(Applause)
(Latter)
(Laughter)
Det tog mig tre år at offentliggøre det. Det er netop blevet offentliggjort i British Journal of Educational Technology. En af de dommere, der gennemlæste det, sagde "Det er for godt til at være sandt", hvilket ikke var særlig pænt. En af pigerne havde lært sig selv at blive lærer. Det er hende derovre. Husk, de lærer ikke engelsk. Jeg rettede den sidste del og spurgte, "Hvor er neuronen?" Hun svarede, "Neuronen? Neuronen?" Og så kiggede hun og gjorde sådan her. Hvad hun end udtrykker, var det ikke rart.
It took me three years to publish that. It's just been published in the British Journal of Educational Technology. One of the referees who refereed the paper said, "It's too good to be true," which was not very nice. Well, one of the girls had taught herself to become the teacher. And then that's her over there. Remember, they don't study English. I edited out the last bit when I asked, "Where is the neuron?" and she says, "The neuron? The neuron," and then she looked and did this. Whatever the expression, it was not very nice.
Deres karakterer var steget fra 0 til 30 procent, hvilket er en uddannelsesmæssig umulighed under disse forhold. Men 30 procent er ikke bestået. Jeg fandt ud af, at de havde en ven, en lokal bogholder, en ung pige, som de spillede fodbold med. Jeg spurgte pigen, "Vil du lære dem nok om bioteknologi til at bestå?" Hun svarede, "Hvordan skal jeg gøre det? Jeg ved ikke noget om det". Jeg svarede, "Nej, brug bedstemor-metoden." Hun svarede, "Hvad er det?" Jeg svarede, "Det du skal gøre er, at stå bag dem og beundre dem hele tiden. Bare sig til dem, 'Det er fedt. Det er fantastisk. Hvad er det? Kan du gøre det igen? Kan du vise mig mere?"' Det gjorde hun i 2 måneder. Deres karakterer nåede op på 50 procent, hvilket er hvad de fine skoler i New Delhi, med en uddannet bioteknologi-lærer, opnåede.
So their scores had gone up from zero to 30 percent, which is an educational impossibility under the circumstances. But 30 percent is not a pass. So I found that they had a friend, a local accountant, a young girl, and they played football with her. I asked that girl, "Would you teach them enough biotechnology to pass?" And she said, "How would I do that? I don't know the subject." I said, "No, use the method of the grandmother." She said, "What's that?" I said, "Well, what you've got to do is stand behind them and admire them all the time. Just say to them, 'That's cool. That's fantastic. What is that? Can you do that again? Can you show me some more?'" She did that for two months. The scores went up to 50, which is what the posh schools of New Delhi, with a trained biotechnology teacher were getting.
Jeg tog tilbage til Newcastle med disse resultater og besluttede, at der skete noget her, som bestemt var blevet alvorligt. Efter at have udført eksperimenter på en masse fjerne steder, kom jeg til det fjerneste sted, jeg kunne forestille mig. (Latter) Ca. 8000 km fra Delhi ligger den lille by Gateshead. I Gateshead tog jeg 32 børn og begyndte at finjustere metoden. Jeg kom dem i grupper med fire i hver. Jeg sagde, "Lav jeres egne grupper med fire i hver. Hver gruppe med fire børn må kun bruge 1 computer og ikke fire". Husk, fra Hullet i Væggen. "Du kan skifte gruppe. Du kan gå over til en anden gruppe, hvis du ikke kan lide din gruppe osv. Du kan gå over til en anden gruppe, se dem over skulderen for at se hvad de laver, gå tilbage til din egen gruppe og sige, at I selv fandt på det." Og jeg forklarede dem, at megen videnskabelig forskning faktisk sker på denne måde.
So I came back to Newcastle with these results and decided that there was something happening here that definitely was getting very serious. So, having experimented in all sorts of remote places, I came to the most remote place that I could think of. (Laughter) Approximately 5,000 miles from Delhi is the little town of Gateshead. In Gateshead, I took 32 children and I started to fine-tune the method. I made them into groups of four. I said, "You make your own groups of four. Each group of four can use one computer and not four computers." Remember, from the Hole in the Wall. "You can exchange groups. You can walk across to another group, if you don't like your group, etc. You can go to another group, peer over their shoulders, see what they're doing, come back to you own group and claim it as your own work." And I explained to them that, you know, a lot of scientific research is done using that method.
(Latter)
(Laughter)
(Klapsalver)
(Applause)
Børnene kom entusiastisk hen til mig og sagde, "Hvad skal vi lave?" Jeg gav dem 6 GCSE (basisniveau) spørgsmål. Den første gruppe, den bedste, løste alting på 20 minutter. Den dårligste gjorde det på 45 minutter. De brugte alt, hvad de kendte til - nyhedsgrupper, Google, Wikipedia, Ask Jeeves, osv. Lærerne sagde, "Er dette dyb læring?" Jeg sagde, "Lad os prøve. Jeg kommer tilbage om to måneder, Vi giver dem en skriftlig prøve - ingen computer, ingen snak med andre, osv." Gennemsnitsscoren, da de havde computere og de andre grupper, var 76 procent. Da jeg lavede eksperimentet, da jeg lavede testen, efter to måneder, var scoren 76 procent. Der var en fotografisk hukommelse hos børnene, formentlig fordi, de har diskuteret med hinanden. Et enkelt barn foran en computer gør ikke sådan. Jeg har andre resultater, som er næsten utrolige, med scorer som hele tiden stiger. Fordi lærerne siger, at efter øvelsen er overstået, så fortsætter børnene med at Google.
The children enthusiastically got after me and said, "Now, what do you want us to do?" I gave them six GCSE questions. The first group -- the best one -- solved everything in 20 minutes. The worst, in 45. They used everything that they knew -- news groups, Google, Wikipedia, Ask Jeeves, etc. The teachers said, "Is this deep learning?" I said, "Well, let's try it. I'll come back after two months. We'll give them a paper test -- no computers, no talking to each other, etc." The average score when I'd done it with the computers and the groups was 76 percent. When I did the experiment, when I did the test, after two months, the score was 76 percent. There was photographic recall inside the children, I suspect because they're discussing with each other. A single child in front of a single computer will not do that. I have further results, which are almost unbelievable, of scores which go up with time. Because their teachers say that after the session is over, the children continue to Google further.
I Storbrittanien spurgte jeg efter britiske bedstemødre efter mit uklare eksperiment. I ved, britiske bedstemødre er handlekraftige. 200 meldte sig øjeblikkeligt frivilligt. (Latter) Aftalen var, at de skulle give mig en time af deres tid på nettet derhjemme en dag om ugen. Og det gjorde de så. Og gennem de sidste to år, har de modtaget mere end 600 timers undervisning over Skype, ved at bruge det, mine elever kalder Bedste-skyen. Bedste-skyen sidder derovre. Jeg kan sende dem til den skole, jeg ønsker.
Here in Britain, I put out a call for British grandmothers, after my Kuppam experiment. Well, you know, they're very vigorous people, British grandmothers. 200 of them volunteered immediately. (Laughter) The deal was that they would give me one hour of broadband time, sitting in their homes, one day in a week. So they did that, and over the last two years, over 600 hours of instruction has happened over Skype, using what my students call the granny cloud. The granny cloud sits over there. I can beam them to whichever school I want to.
(Video) Lærer: Du kan ikke fange mig. Sig det. Du kan ikke fange mig.
(Video) Teacher: You can't catch me. You say it. You can't catch me.
Børn: Du kan ikke fange mig.
Children: You can't catch me.
Lærer: Jeg er honningkagemanden.
Teacher: I'm the gingerbread man.
Børn: Jeg er honningkagemanden.
Children: I'm the gingerbread man.
Lærer: Udmærket. Vældig fint...
Teacher: Well done. Very good ...
SM: Tilbage i Gateshead fordyber en 10-årig pige sig i hinduisme, på 15 minutter. Ting, som jeg intet ved om. To børn ser en TED Talk. Før ville de være fodboldspillere. Efter at have set 8 TED Talks vil han være Leonardo da Vinci.
SM: Back at Gateshead, a 10-year-old girl gets into the heart of Hinduism in 15 minutes. You know, stuff which I don't know anything about. Two children watch a TEDTalk. They wanted to be footballers before. After watching eight TEDTalks, he wants to become Leonardo da Vinci.
(Latter)
(Laughter)
(Klapsalver)
(Applause)
Det er rimelig simpelt.
It's pretty simple stuff.
Det er, hvad jeg bygger på nu. De bliver kaldt SIMs: Selvlærende Indlærings Miljøer Møblerne er udformet, så børnene kan side foran store kraftige skærme med kraftige internetforbindelser, men i grupper. Hvis de vil, kan de ringe til Bedste-skyen. Her er et SIM i Newcastle. Mægleren er fra [uklart] i Indien.
This is what I'm building now -- they're called SOLEs: Self Organized Learning Environments. The furniture is designed so that children can sit in front of big, powerful screens, big broadband connections, but in groups. If they want, they can call the granny cloud. This is a SOLE in Newcastle. The mediator is from Pune, India.
Så hvor langt kan vi gå? Et eksempel mere, og så stopper jeg. Jeg tog til Torino i maj. Jeg sendte alle lærerne væk fra min gruppe af 10-årige elever. Jeg kan kun engelsk, de kunne kun italiensk,® så vi kunne ikke kommunikere. Jeg begyndte at skrive engelske spørgsmål på tavlen. Børnene kiggede på det og sagde, "Hvad?" Jeg sagde, "Gør det." De skrev det på Google og oversatte det til italiensk, og gik ind på den italienske Google. 15 minutter senere... Næste spørgsmål: Hvor ligger Calcutta? Denne gang tog det kun 10 minutter. Så prøvede jeg prøvede en rigtig svær en. Hvem var Pythagoras, og hvad lavede han? Der var stilhed et øjeblik, og så svarede de, "Du har stavet det forkert. Det er Pitagora." Og så, efter 20 minutter, begyndte de retvinklede trekanter at dukke op på skærmen. Det gav mig kuldegysninger. Dette er 10-årige. Tekst: Om 30 minutter ville de nå til Relativitetsteorien. Og hvad så derefter?
So how far can we go? One last little bit and I'll stop. I went to Turin in May. I sent all the teachers away from my group of 10 year-old students. I speak only English, they speak only Italian, so we had no way to communicate. I started writing English questions on the blackboard. The children looked at it and said, "What?" I said, "Well, do it." They typed it into Google, translated it into Italian, went back into Italian Google. Fifteen minutes later -- next question: where is Calcutta? This one, they took only 10 minutes. I tried a really hard one then. Who was Pythagoras, and what did he do? There was silence for a while, then they said, "You've spelled it wrong. It's Pitagora." And then, in 20 minutes, the right-angled triangles began to appear on the screens. This sent shivers up my spine. These are 10 year-olds. Text: In another 30 minutes they would reach the Theory of Relativity. And then?
(Latter)
(Laughter)
(Klapsalver)
(Applause)
SM: Ved I, hvad der skete? Jeg tror, vi er faldet over et selvorganiserende system. Et selvorganiserende system er et, hvor en struktur fremkommer uden eksplicit indblanding udefra. Selvorganiserende systemer viser også altid fremkomst, dvs. systemet begynder at gøre ting, som det ikke er designet til. Hvilket er grunden til, at I reagerer som I gør, fordi det virker umuligt. Jeg tror, jeg kan komme med et gæt. Uddannelse er et selvorganiserende system, hvor læring er et fremkommende fænomen. Det kommer til at tage et par år at bevise det, eksperimentalt, men jeg vil gøre forsøget. Men i mellemtiden er der en mulighed. En milliard børn, vi mangler 100 millioner mæglere - der er mange flere end det på vores planet - Ti millioner SIMs, 180 milliarder dollars og ti år. Vi kan ændre alt.
SM: So you know what's happened? I think we've just stumbled across a self-organizing system. A self-organizing system is one where a structure appears without explicit intervention from the outside. Self-organizing systems also always show emergence, which is that the system starts to do things, which it was never designed for. Which is why you react the way you do, because it looks impossible. I think I can make a guess now -- education is self-organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon. It'll take a few years to prove it, experimentally, but I'm going to try. But in the meanwhile, there is a method available. One billion children, we need 100 million mediators -- there are many more than that on the planet -- 10 million SOLEs, 180 billion dollars and 10 years. We could change everything.
Tak.
Thanks.
(Klapsalver)
(Applause)