Can unsupervised children learn difficult concepts?

Looks like it is too much to ask anyone to watch a 20 minute video. Sorry.

Maybe I'll watch it again and try to start a discussion of the subject without requesting twenty minutes of everyone's time.

I'll think about it.

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@Diane,

Very interesting. But I am very skeptical. I watched much of the video and it is interesting. But it goes against other research that shows the failure of computer based learning.

One question is how to make sure the "mid-kids", that is the majority of kids who aren't super motivated or assertive, learn. In a classroom the natural state of things is for a few very bright and strong-willed students to dominate the classroom. They end up doing all of the work and their ideas are the ones that get tested. Obviously this is not a good thing for the majority of class (and not surprisingly this is one of the reasons that girls do better in gender segregated classrooms).

A good teacher recognizes this and part of creating an effective learning environment is setting up a classroom culture where everyone takes parts. Kids aren't going to do this naturally.

This might be valuable to a small number of exceptional kids, but humans evolved to learn in social groups.

I would like to know if his experiments have been critiqued.

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@maxdancona,

Your question is, of course, one of the first things I should have looked into.

I'll put a paragraph from the transcript here to encourage posters less brave than you to at least read how Dr. Sugata conducted his study.

Quote:

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.

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First, there are several issues here that should be separated. There is no question that having kids work together to solve a problem is often a very productive learning experience. Computers can certainly be a part of this. But so can well designed paper-based activity.

There is nothing you can do on a computer that you can't do with paper based materials. When I was a kid, we played a stock purchasing game in class that involved us checking portfolios of real stocks in newspapers that we got each day. We were very interested because it was set up as a competition. The fact we were using real data from a real newspaper was also cool. We learned quite a bit of math, and a little business and other things as well.

One thing a computer can do really well is keep a kids attention. But (from my experience as a parent as well as a teacher) things that grab a kids attention are not the things with the deepest educational value.

And, don't forget, that just 60 years ago television was the exciting new technology that would open the world to kids, revolutionize education and make kids eager to learn on their own.

There are no magic gimmicks in education. Education works when society values it enough to support it. If society is unwilling to make a real investment in the human activity of education, not even the latest electronic gadgets will save it.

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@maxdancona,

I just read an article about a twenty one year old chess genius who goes by his own mind versus the many who learn chess now by computer. Complicated, as he looks at that too, but he seems to have a more plasticity with his nicely lazy mind. I don't mean that as mocking, as I think plastic nicely lazy is a good thing.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/03/21/110321fa_fact_max

He was a poor student..

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

Your statement says it all as far as most teachers are concerned. It represents what every teacher I've ever known has adopted as their philosophy of teaching.

Quote:

There are no magic gimmicks in education. Education works when society values it enough to support it. If society is unwilling to make a real investment in the human activity of education, not even the latest electronic gadgets will save it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugata_Mitra

This is a critique of Dr. Sugata's program:

http://www.thebrokeronline.eu/en/Online-discussions/Blogs/Janelle-Ward/A-critique-of-Hole-in-the-Wall-HiWEL

. In your conclusion, you mention the 'double-edged sword' between autonomous learning and the intervention of mediators. What do you think is the best way forward, for HiWEL and similar projects?

I don’t think it is possible to not have mediators in such projects. I also think it is important to acknowledge that autonomous learning is deeply limited and that institutions such as schools have an important role in learning. That said, HiWEL and other such projects take on the role of a laboratory of ideas where they can serve as standing reminders of what we can do with new technologies, and what children are truly capable of. So it is important to have alternative learning venues that schools can learn from, and thereby improve themselves.

For more information about Dr. Arora's work and for contact information, see her website.
[/quote]

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@ossobuco,

Jo, did you watch the video or read the transcript?

Max has gone straight to the topic. I wish other posters would do the same.

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@Diane,

No, I never saw a link for the video you are suggesting we all watch.

Or if I did, I missed it.

I read stuff on education at least every two weeks and that is not my field.

On the initial question, sure.

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@Diane,

Ok, I didn't watch the video.

Will back out of this.

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@Diane,

Bookmark

[video put on my hi-speed list]

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This reminds me of Maria Montessori's philosophy of learning styles and education:

Quote:

The Montessori method is an approach to educating children based on the research and experiences of Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori (1870–1952). The Method arose in the process of her experimental observation of young children given freedom in an environment, leading her to believe by 1907 that she had discovered "the child's true normal nature." [1] Based on her observations, she created an environment prepared with materials designed for their self-directed learning activity.[2] The method itself aims to duplicate this experimental observation of children to bring about, sustain and support their true natural way of being.[3]

Applying this method involves the teacher viewing the child as having an inner natural guide for his/her own optimal self-directed development.[4] The teacher's role of observation sometimes includes experimental interactions with children, commonly referred to as "lessons," to resolve misbehavior or to show how to use the various self-teaching materials that are provided in the environment for the children's free use

1 Reply

@aidan,

They are kind of similar Aidan, but with a very important difference. Montessori is far from unsupervised learning.

In Montessori, the teacher (an adult) has a very important role to play. The teacher acts as a guide. The teacher observes the child carefully and prepares lessons and challenges that will direct the students in their development.

The idea that students can motivate themselves in learning has merit. The idea that they can do this without the guidance of a skilled adult teacher does not.

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I haven't watched the video either, sorry. If it's captioned, I will when I have a chance.

From reading this so far I see a fatal flaw, though. We were just talking the other day about kids and computers. Sozlet just started texting and within an hour or so had explored all of the corners of the software (TextFree) and was doing all kinds of complicated things. We were talking in general about how kids really get computers in a way that adults don't. Much of it is intuitive -- it makes sense to kids -- but adults tend to have a lot of blocks. We were talking about why that is -- probably something about most adults having experience with earlier-generation computers where you could do something wrong much more easily and you had to be more careful. Most everyone has the horror story of hitting the wrong key and something precious going missing, forever.

In the last 10 years or so (?), though, it's much harder to mess up on computers -- you can just kind of go for it and it will likely work out.

So I think to a lot of adults this sounds more impressive than it really is. ("Wow, they figured out how to UPLOAD A PICTURE? I still have problems with that!!") I'm not sure it's a rigorous test of unsupervised learning, or that it's actually that difficult of a concept. (If you put a bunch of kids on a snowy slope with a bunch of sleds, and they've never seen sleds before, I bet some of them will be using them to slide down the snowy slope before long.)

All of that said, I think that peer tutoring and mixed age-group learning is very valuable.

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@sozobe,

It is captioned, and there is a transcript on the right.

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I agree that this is a limited idea that won't be effective without the help and guidance of teachers. Still, the fact that the poorest, least educated students can teach themselves how to use a computer, shows that teachers can get in the way of a child's creativity. In the U.S., the poorest school systems tend to attract the poorest teachers. Without allowing the children to define their own attitude toward learning by taking control of what they are doing, and allowing them to discover the incentive to learn on their own, they will continue to do the same old thing, glazed eyes, very little attention span and very little self control.

Another part of this program that I found encouraging what that parents started taking an interest--another serious problem in the poorest schools.

I admit to being impressed where I, perhaps, shouldn't be, but one of my passions is to change the system that allows rich school districts to keep all their riches to themselves, leaving poor districts to fend for themselves in the face of unimaginable hardships. This type of learning might be a way to make up some of the disparity between rich and poor.

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@Diane,

OK, I read the transcript!

I am more positive about the whole thing now.

I think the groups of children are important, and also the granny cloud. Cool research though.

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@sozobe,

Soz, thank you for reading the whole transcript.

The granny cloud is cool, isn't it?

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Can unsupervised children learn difficult concepts?

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