Snow Day Assignment Week#7 (Due Monday)

I found this video to be fascinating really. The fact that Mitra was able to get children to work together in order to learn on their own was truly amazing, but what really was incredible about the entire process was the fact that they did not even speak English. Young children, in the middle of the jungle with virtually no resources and very little technology, were able to work together to figure out how to browse on a computer. Not to mention that practically none of the children had even seen a computer in their life. What Mitra presented about the children going from 0 to 30% on a test on DNA replication is truly revolutionary. If a group of small children in a jungle with no English background are able to make those kind of improvements over just a span of 9 months, there is really no limit as to what children all across America are able to do with the technology we have. The two major question that Mitra raised were very interesting and at the same time somewhat frightening: Are we heading towards a future where knowing is obsolete? And: In the future do we not need to go to school at all? Both are great questions, and often something that crosses my mind just because of the crazy technology advances that occur now on a year-to-year basis. After seeing the video of the kids in Australia working together as a group to form a presentation and hearing about the “hole in the wall” experiment, there is no doubt in my mind that learning is becoming more and more independent. Kids are able to use the immense technology we have and work together in order to enhance their learning. However, while kids are becoming more independent in their learning, I still believe that one major concept we have learned about in this course can never die: REINFORCEMENT. Kids will always need a teacher or instructor to provide feedback and positive and negative reinforcement. No matter how much our technology increases, reinforcement will always be a major key to provide kids with the knowledge that they are doing well and to provide them with feedback. That was the whole idea behind Mitra’s Granny Cloud, having someone there to assist with their learning through the technology that is being used. As far as adjustments that have to be made to the current educational system today, I am still convinced that the quality of our instructors and teachers is the key component and will always be the main key. Our technology will always be improving and advancements will continue to be made. However, without quality teachers our kids can only go so far, and that’s the difference to improving the kids score on the DNA replication tests to a passable grade above 30%.

I found this video very interesting. Mitra had some very good points and ideas that he presented about the educational system and possible new ways of learning. As we advance in anything things need to be adjusted and tweaked to fit the times. Through some of his research he found out that children at young ages that cannot speak any english found ways to learn the answers to the tough questions they were presented with. Almost all of these children have never been exposed to a computer when he decided to leave one in there presence. Within a month of leaving these children figured out how to play games and speak partial english. They didnt have a teacher to teach these things. They learned on their own because it was something that was presented as a challenge. I think Mitra and his research proved that the human mind can utilize all of the resources it has available to get the desired and needed answers. When the advancement of todays education system, children may be able to learn on their own time. Important subjects and topics and be taught and self learned through a passion and desire to understand. I think that if some changes were made now the future students would be able to learn what they need to but not in the traditional ways we are all used to. I feel that if you give a human a problem to solve their brain can process the proper routes in order to solve it with all the resources they have available. The future of education could cut back on traditional ways of learning and incorporate new ways and ideas that would better suit this generation. Throughout all his studies each place he put a computer he children figured out the questions he was asking without assistance. When we learn today it seems like its people of higher educations telling us the facts rather than letting us learn the facts by our own methods and research. This makes all the difference. When someone offers you knowledge and information compared to when you are wanting your own knowledge and information it makes a big difference on how driven people are. Motivation plays a big role in this. Also using reinforcement factors after the students learn on their own could go a long way. Teaching kids to work together toward a common goal or solved problem teaches them several skills that are important in the real world. Being told what to remember so you can be tested on it later like Mitra said shuts the brain off because it feels like an attack. Many new ideas and ways of learning could be utilized based on Mitras studies.

This was a very mind-opening presentation. I conditionally agree with this man that we need to look at changing our education system. His research is very interesting, however we need to do much more research first.
One issue that I have was actually just raised in one of my other classes last night. We discussed how technology is beginning to eliminate the art of face-to-face conversation, just like email killed the art of letter-writing. I inferred that my other professor was advocating for the elimination of technologies like cell phones. However, we know that it is impossible to just set things like that aside. However, she did make a very good point that we can't just ignore that there is a problem when most young people stuff their faces into a screen and put headphones in their ears because they lack the skills to engage in a conversation.
So, the solution may lie in the idea of a revolution where we as a world society decide to re-structure things for the better. We need to address social rules for the use of technology. However, any time you upset -or even question- the status quo, you upset MANY people in the process, all for different reasons. One example is the fact that we are all essentially slaves to the big corporations and the 1%. These people need us to keep spending our money exactly how we spend it now so they can keep making a profit off of us and keep us under their control. Any time there is the threat of a radical change, the 1% pour billions of dollars into brainwashing people to be afraid of changing the status quo. They convince people that it is a grassroots movement that's based on religious freedom or some bullshit like that, and get people all riled up.

Although people get upset about change for reasons other than the brainwashed reasons of big business. I attended a meeting with two external reviewers who wanted feedback on UNI's Psychology department, and I think I made one of them angry. I basically brought up some of the issues that the man talks about in this video...I mentioned some things I wish our school would focus on more, and how I liked the way that the University of Stirling in Scotland taught Psychology. Instead of being an unbiased researcher, she argued with me, saying that the school where she worked doesn't do things like the "European education system." She dismissed my concerns even though they were hired specifically to find out what the students' concerns are about their major field.

This is the first time that we have really been able to legitimately question the modern education system, because we are finding that there may be better alternatives.
I still think that a physical school environment teaches things like social skills, that can't necessarily be substituted online. However, our education system is inefficient, and doesn't necessarily reach kids. Generally kids learn things once they develop the mental capacity to learn them, and it is not fair for teachers to take the credit for making kids smarter when essentially they're doing it on their own.

I think that if we could get around the major problems like big business and other people with interests in protecting the status quo, we as a society need to come together and agree on how we can restructure not only the education system, but society as a whole, to make life better for all humans.

MKH
The video was very interesting. It’s surprising to think that schools were originally created to produce people to be a part of this “machine”. Now, schools are still doing the same function, but the “machine” no longer exists. The speaker questions the future of education if the basic functions of schooling are no longer relevant to a “machine” that no longer exists.
The children were given a computer, not told what it was, or how to use it. Eight hours later, the children had figured out how to use the computer, and how to teach each other how to use the computer. It reminds me of some adults who complain that they had no idea how to use the internet, but their young elementary school children could not only browse the computer, but know how to use the internet to find what they wanted.
He also experimented with a speech to text program where the people would practice their English pronunciation in order to improve their English and to improve their job opportunities.
The children using the DNA system surprised me completely. It was shocking that in two months the children had improved on the system. The young 12 year old girl using the program knew how to describe how neurons communicate.
The educational system for the future, instead of continuously preparing them to be a part of something that no longer exists, we let them be more hands on and try to figure out a problem without adult guidance. I recall a quote from “Beavis and Butthead” that Mr. Anderson states about how men work. He says “Don’t show a man how to do something. Tell him what to do and let him surprise you with his ingenuity”. This quote is surprisingly relevant to what Mitra was talking about in the video. The children were completely unaware what a computer was, or how to use it, but give them some time with it, and they’ll eventually figure it out and even be able to teach their peers. They also figured out the DNA program. I believe that these examples show that children are much more capable of taking responsibility for their own education than we previously realized.
The future of learning could be that instead of trying to memorize facts and regurgitate them for an exam, we let children figure out how something works, what causes a phenomenon, etc. and let them amaze us with what they can figure out. Again, "Don't show a man what to do...Tell him what to do and let him surprise you with his ingenuity"...

The information in this video, in short, was that children can self-organize and teach themselves if you give them the tools (even if the tools you give them are in a foreign language). I think that one of the changes we can make in our existing educational system is to allow for more self-organizing learning.

Obviously, children are capable of a lot more than we have been allowing them to do in our school systems. There should be more opportunities for children to work together, without the help of the teacher, to learn. Perhaps we could have a SOLE day. One day per week where the children answer a question like “What happens to the air we breathe?” Then they could present the findings to the teacher, and he/she could offer the encouragement that was deemed so crucial in this video.
This relates to what we’re learning in behavior modification because the encouragement the children receive is reinforcement for them. Should they be reinforced for simply trying to understand the material? Or should they be reinforced only when they show progress? Perhaps we could provide encouragement for everyone who attempts to learn, and provide additional reinforcers for those that show outstanding improvement. It could be something simple like letting them lead the lunch line. Maybe each child could be given their own SOLE so they can work on it at home if they wish.

I believe that foreign language should be taught at an early age (it is no secret that this is much more effective than learning a foreign language in the adult years). Perhaps the students could be taught the basics of a foreign language, and then leave them to their own devices on a SOLE in that foreign language.

I feel like children are very eager to learn, whereas adults are sort of lazy about it. Most of us don’t care to learn anything if we don’t think we can USE it. I’m not sure if the SOLE would be as effective on college students, and I’m not sure if Mitra has tested this at all. We need to keep in mind that if we’re replacing the entire K-12 system, we need to also consider the college system. The way that this behavior modification class is run allows for quite a bit of self-directed learning. For example, the blog we did for Thursday allowed us to research any topic we wanted and learn whatever we wanted about it. I think this class is the closest thing I have seen, at the college level, to what Mitra is talking about. I think it would have to be gradually added to the current school system because I doubt any school is going to agree to just fire all of its teachers and let children teach themselves with computers. Mitra said that he wanted schools to send him back the data about how effective this method of learning was. We would need to teach the teachers how to collect this data, and make sure that they were all collecting data in a similar way with similar standards. This also indicates that more research is needed on this new concept of learning. I don’t think it would be wise to completely eliminate our current school system just yet. I think it should be integrated and studied further. Perhaps then it can replace our current system.

Mitra’s experiment was fascinating. I found it remarkable that Mitra could place a computer in the wall, in an impoverished area and watch them learn. These young children never had seen or heard anything on this computer before, were able to teach themselves. The study was replicated in a variety of different areas around India. It proved that once children were given the right tools they are able to teach themselves. This study shows that significant changes could be made to education to improve our system.

Mitra found that the children became frustrated when they couldn’t understand the language or what it was asking them, but if they had simple encouragement from someone, they learned better. He placed a “grandmother” figure behind the students and their only job was to say, “Oh wow! How’d you do that?” otherwise known as positive reinforcement. Positive enforcement as we have discussed in past classes, is more effective than punishment. Simple encouragement is the key. Creativity has been lost in our society. In the past there had been times where creativity needed to be shut down to survive, such as during World War II. Now we need to move creativity from the category of threat to pleasure, and boost creativity.

These ideas can be used in the classroom. Teachers need to offer opportunities for children to be creative. In classrooms they need to ask questions that can’t be answered with simple things discussed in class. As Mitra discussed in the video, if you give them a piece of the information and ask them to figure out the rest they will come up with something far beyond their years. As the children are working through the problem, positive reinforcement comes into play. The teachers must positively reinforce the students by praising them, as the grandmother would do to motivate them to figure it out. Learning isn’t about making it happen, it is about letting it happen.

I've taken 4 Spanish courses and passed with an A. (three in high school one in college) To be completely honest my Spanish today is pathetic. But I have a dear friend from Cordoba, Argentina who speaks perfect English now although he is the only bilingual member of his family. He said he barely passed English in high school. When I first found him five years ago he barely spoke any English at all and was playing the same online video game as me. He had some questions about the game play, but because my Spanish was so terrible, and his English was equally laughable, I had trouble trying to figure out what he wanted to say. After several months of game play I ran across him once again. This time he typed perfect English. I was truely amazed! I asked him what he did to learn English so fast and he said he used google translator and an English-Spanish dictionary to look up the meanings of words and after seeing many many English sentences he figured out the basic sentence structure. He confessed that although he could now type English he couldn't speak it so I convinced him to get on a team-speak device and practice saying English words with me. Within a few weeks he was speaking clear English and today he works for the same gaming company that hosts the game on which we met, something he could not do if he hadn't learned to speak fluent English. While he was looking up words on his own and practicing pronounciation with his peers I was taking another Spanish course at Buena Vista University. Today he makes fun of me, in English, at how truely terrible my Spanish is. He told me that I needed to stop taking traditional courses and that he would return the favor on team-speak and practice Spanish with me.

I found Mitra's video very inspiring because it shows that with modern resources people can learn anything they want. This is very depressing for me as a college student who has outrageous and looming loans for my education. On a good note this is evidence that there is still hope for my Spanish to improve without paying UNI! I really do think that the current educational system is a good way to insure that adults can continue to work feeding capitalism, and that the children all learn the same basic things without running the streets. I am not saying that public schooling is bad, but I think, like Mitra says it is very outdated. I think individual strengths and weaknesses should be addressed. I think students at an early age should get to pursue their own interests and the teachers should be more like encouragers and oversears of that process. I was so busy trying to fulfill a certain amount of this subject and that subject in highschool that I had no idea what I really wanted to go to college for, but I could have told a college recruiter a lot about U.S. History, how to write a paper in MLA or APA format, I could recite most of the bones in the human body from head to toe, and I could tell you about basic science. But NONE of that is all that relevant to the long road its taken me to continue working on a B.A. in Psychology and I really wish I would have had more time to explore what I wanted to learn at an earlier age. I'm not sure how to change a system that is so structured already other than to continue spreading the word that humans can learn a lot when they are inspired to do it on their own, and that better learning can occur without traditional lectures.

This video really made me assess my education and how well I learned from going to school. Some parts of the video I really liked and thought were very good points. I was very surprised to learn that children who were just given a computer (and in a different language even!) were able to learn very complicated information. I have always thought that teachers were needed in order to teach the information to students. However not all my teachers throughout my educations were good at teaching or giving information. In those classes I had to teach myself and actually did quite well because I was forced to learn the information on my own. I also agree with him on test taking, I always get nervous for tests and I definitely think it affects how I preform on the test. Some people just aren't good test takers and sadly this can hurt their grade. By taking off the pressure of getting good grades and preforming well on tests, I think students would be more excited and relaxed about learning and therefore learn not because they have to but because they want to. When you actually want to do something chances are you’re going to do better on it. I also agree with his idea that encouraging students is a big part of helping them learn. When we feel threatened, like when punishment is looming over our heads, we tend to not function well. Like Dr. M has mentioned school is often about being punished. If we could make our schools more rewarding and encouraging I think we could make students like school, and maybe even make school and learning more enjoyable.
The changes I think we could make would be to use other methods to assess how much an individual has learned. This would be in place of tests or exams. Maybe they could try to teach someone else the lesson and what they have learned. I find that I really know something when I can explain or describe it to others. I’m not sure that getting rid of all teachers is such a good idea, but I think teachers could learn to use encouragement rather than punishment to help an individual grow. Maybe there could be less teachers and students could work more with each other, so that if one child is confused on a topic most likely another child understands that topic and can fill in the blanks. By working with each other they could also brain storm and share the knowledge they understand best, letting others in the group fill in what they don’t know. If there is something the entire group doesn't understand that is when a teacher could step in and help out.

I thought this video was great. I have thought for a while now that the way of teaching that is used nowadays is old and needs to be updated. I personally have always been a hands on learner which is not how schools teach so growing up although I was smart and in advanced placement classes my school grades did not reflect that. I thought first seeing this assignment that this was going to be a boring video but found that wasn't the case and ended up re-watching the video. I found the video very inspiring to what learning can be in the future. Unfortunately I think that this will take a long time for change unless we can come together to make a stand for it. Today even from kindergarten everything you learn is by trying to memorize things, instead of being able to interact and teach yourself like they do in the video. Learning and testing in schools today is an aversive situation that people don't like. If kids are able to learn by doing or interacting with some encouragement they may like learning instead of dreading it like most people do. Including behavior modification techniques like using reinforcement instead of punishment I think that it would make things less stressful for kids. I hope that one day changes can be made to advance and change schooling in America.

Education is always growing and changing but looking at education as obsolete is never something that I thought would cross my mind. Ever. As a college student, this video made me re-think my college attendance of a waste of time. If you stop and think about learning today, we have so many learning tools at our disposal it’s almost sick. Anything we need to know we can look it up using the internet, research it using various books that have been archived in libraries, ask friends or other people we know through communication using phones, etc. We have almost every single resource at our fingertips yet we do not use them. It was very interesting to learn the actual statistics behind a learning curve today. If children in a very remote part of India can learn about DNA replication in a matter of months when they didn’t even know English, why do we need to pay for an education?
How this pertains to class is the principle of reinforcement. As in the video, Mitra shows a picture of the brain and how when receiving punishment we shut down and therefore do not learn. Learning today should not involve exams; these are seen as punishment. Instead we should view learning as the product of educational self-organization. If you allow the process of education to self-organize then learning emerges; we should guide learning rather than force it. It was demonstrated in various classrooms that given the proper framework, any child or person is able to learn a wide variety of different things no matter the perplexity as along as enough time is allowed. We already have the tools to learn and we know what it takes, now let’s sit back and design the future of learning to something that is more applicable to today’s world. After all we don’t want to be spare parts for an old outdated computer system.

I found the work in which Mirta presents in the video to be extremely interesting and really got me to thinking about how our education system currently works and different ways in which changes could potentially be made to enhance our current idea of education. Mirta makes such a strong point that our education system currently works with the way in which our society used to run hundreds of years ago, which doesn’t exactly work anymore with the fast pace society we live in today. In order to keep up with the demands of our society, its about time to make a change in how we look at education. In the video, Mirta shows different situations in which children learn on their own with the facilitation of a so called teacher whose job is to guide the children in their learning, allowing for the children to essentially teach themselves. What this method of teaching does is change the behaviors in which teachers teach and students learn. I feel that if children are encouraged to change their behaviors to where they learn things on their own would lead to outstanding consequences where children would be positively reinforced, both internally and externally and would then create a greater interest for learning new skills, tasks, and information. Simple changes in the classroom setting such as the situations presented in Mirta’s presentation would make dramatic impacts on our education system, such as allowing children to develop their own answers to specific questions and simply asking them to solve different task by thinking outside the box. These different situations open a whole new path for students to learn more than what is just presented in our text books, but to learn problem solving, and critical thinking skills that are applicable to real world situations. With these changes, I feel our education system would not only benefit in the long run, but would also being to make dramatic changes to our society today.

I agree with Mitra in his idea of children self-learning and organizing when given a question. I think self- teaching is an excellent way to learn because each child knows how they learn best and can accommodate the material in a way that they can understand. Not all children however can learn required material solely on their own. In Mitra’s experiments, he brought up the need for encouragement or reinforcement. Mitra stated that with simple comments such as “how did you do that, I couldn’t have figure that out”, “that’s amazing”, “good job” and so forth is desirable to the children thus encourages the frequency of the target behavior of learning. I think to integrate Mitra’s idea into our education system, teachers should learn to reinforce children rather than punish. By utilizing reinforcement versus punishment learning becomes less aversive to students and their desire for knowledge increases. With the reinforcing praises, schools should use an intermittent reinforcement schedule meaning praise should not occur after every time the students emit a desirable behavior.

Another way schools can reinforce students could be using a token economy. If our schools use the self-teaching style that Mitra suggests, teachers could give each student or group a star after they find the answer to a question. Then after 20 stars the student or group could receive a prize. Something Mitra discovered that I found interesting was that simply placing a computer in an environment sets the antecedent for learning. Perhaps another way our schools can integrate Mitra’s findings to prepare ourselves for the future is by setting an antecedent that encourages learning. An example is learning stations. Many students are forced to learn material that they have no interest in however it may be more appealing for students to have somewhat of a choice in what they learn. So if a classroom is learning about weather, a teacher could set up a variety of stations that teach the students different aspects of weather. The students can then choose what stations they want to visit. This is more hands on and feels less forced for students therefore they may become more interested and more willing to learn.

Overall I agree with Mitra’s ideas of modifying education through self-teaching. The only problem I find with his ideas is that it may cause children to become too reliant on technology. I think the best way for students to learn is to integrate Mitra’s ideas of self-teaching with a traditional teaching.

This video was interesting. I especially enjoyed the part about the grandmas from Britain and how Mitra used them as a sort of unconditional reinforcement for emitting the critical thinking skills that natural derive from their own brains to solve a problem a majority of people believe that they cannot do. On that note, these children thoroughly impressed me with their ability to adapt and learn without any formal training-- just a computer in a hole in a wall. If they can learn that quickly with no formal training, the training that students experience in well developed countries, should be able to propel them further into the society of industrialization and technology.

I believe that this is a good example of a social learning experiment and how we affect people without even knowing it. One child has a certain set of skills and another child has a different set of skills and when they work together they can come up with the answer. Our schools should use a social learning technique more often. I also feel with this option, children would learn better because they are learning from each other and are not continuously pushed and prodded by teachers that expect them to all mold to the stereotypical model derived from the early British Empire.

There is also the common goal of making sure children each have a computer, the knowledge to use one, and an education that can get them far in life. Mitra has an awesome goal and I truly hope he masters it. If he does I can see those countries that are so far behind the developed countries marching forward with their own leadership. A leadership that can hopefully keep hunger and sickness from spreading and take it into their own hands to educate everyone on not only academia but also medical and first aid practices.

With his work, Mitra proves that it does in fact take a village to raise a child. Once raised, that child will hopefully have the capabilities to then show how they as a generation can inherit the earth and create a better life for themselves; one that their parents and grandparents before them could only dream off—all with they help of the Grannies from Britain :).

This video presented many intriguing ideas and really made me think about the learning process. He makes a great point in describing how learning takes place right now. However, he also asks if this type of learning will prepare individuals for the future. The future workplace and society is going to be so much more advanced that only those who have been taught to learn in a specific manner will survive. The experiments he conducted about the whole in the wall was very fascinating to me. It made me realize the learning capacity human beings possess. By using a trial and error method and organizing their thoughts, the children were able to learn how to utilize the computers. Mitra poses the idea that learning and our school systems will gradually evolve. Based on his findings, he believes that students solely need to be presented with a question to elicit a specific type of target behavior. By question will give students an opportunity to emit the target behavior (learning) and will be positive/negatively reinforced and/or punished by the consequences. By presenting only questions, students may be more inclined to learn rather than just be lectured to. It makes me wonder how informal schools will be in the future. While this type of evolutionary learning may be beneficial in adapting to the future, there still must be order and structure to acquire necessary results and be efficient. It will be interesting to see what the next 20 years look like.

This video was very eye opening for some new ideas to improve the future of learning. The hole in the wall experiment was very interesting because it just showed that telling the kids that they could do whatever they wanted they were very open to that idea and started to learn how to do things on their own. Also, having the 22 year old lady stand behind them and ask them things like what is that, can you show me how to do that helped the kids to look further into it and learn exactly how to work the things on the computer and also be able to explain it on their own how to do something. When learning how to work the computer on their own they are being positively reinforced because they are learning it on their own as well as they are able to explain how to do something to others so they are getting the opportunity to feel good about learning something on their own and successfully explain it to others. If they are simply told to do whatever they want they are likely to take advantage of that because some individuals like to learn on their own rather then be lectured on how something works and so on. It is hard to tell what the future of learning will be like because I think that we need to do more of the self learning but also have structure because helping someone in the right direction may be easier for them then just being pushed to do it on their own. Another thing that Mitra stated was the thing called SOLE which was self organized learning environment which is broadband+collaboration+encouragement and admiration which is what I saw in this video like when the hole in the wall experiment was done and when the lady was talking to the children in the computer screen and they were encouraged when they repeated back correctly what she had said. I think that this idea would be successful and I think it will be a part of the future learning experience.

I found this video to be extremely interesting. I like that he suggests our style of learning may become obsolete. It makes complete sense that if you raise the question and step back that people could figure out almost anything they wanted to. It was interesting to see how children from villages that had no technology whatsoever could figure out how to use a computer and describe how it works without being taught by someone. I think the best way of learning is to figure things out yourself, at least for me. If I figure things out myself I am more likely to remember the information and will use it in my future compared to reading it in a text book or sitting and listening to a professor lecture. Although his experiments have proven that people are capable of learning on their own I believe that we will always need some sort of reinforcement to continue to learn on our own. Knowing that we are going down the right path will help people expand on their thinking and possibly come up with several ways to answer the question. The more reinforcement we get, whether it be negative or positive, will point us in the right direction and achieve our goals. I think that his idea of raising the question and letting people figure things out for themselves is a great idea because you can use this style with almost any subject as long as you have someone there to acknowledge that you are on the correct path. If we would look more into his hypothesis I believe this style of learning would be extremely beneficial to our society today and for years to come.

This video was very interesting to me. I thought his research with the hole in the wall was very intriguing. I was amazed at how much (without any instruction) the kids could learn. In two months, the children scored 30% about DNA from learning on their own. Then it jumped to 50% when an older person was there encouraging them. I was also amazed that the children learned English from the hole in the wall. They did it on their own. This reminded me of the curiosity of children. They were interested in the computer and were motivated to learn how to use it and at the same time, they learned English. The video talked about SOLE (Self Organizing Learning Environment). One of the criteria was encouragement. I feel encouragement is a type of reinforcer. So installing measures of encouragement in classrooms would help students learn better. I also feel that with the ever growing field in technology, internet access has become much easier. So as technology grows, schools should also grow with it. For example, at my former high school, each classroom is being equipped with iPads. They will be accessible to the students. This provides different ways of learning. With the iPads, they can explore new topics given to them by the teachers, or even search something that doesn't make sense to them. I also think that if teachers were more encouraging and acted more like moderators, young students would be able to learn better if given the freedom to learn which ever way they want. Like in the video where the teacher asked what happened to the air when we breathe, the students found the answers on their own. So if education keeps up with the growing technological world, effective learning will happen.

When I realized this was assignment had to do with watching a TED video, I automatically was excited to see what it was about. I have always enjoyed the unique ideas from TED presentations. This video was about his own work with children from around the contents learning with computers. I agree with the speaker about how the future of learning needs to change. While search engines are at the tips of our fingers, anything and everything we need or want to know can be done in less then 2 min. With math such as statistics we have created computer programs to be able to do what would have taken half an hour to do, do it in a matter of seconds.
I am still unsure about the speakers plans to create a school that revolves around what he calls the cloud. My concern is for this method is how would the student change in interactions with each other could this method change how these individuals communicate with one another and others?
I will however agree with the speaker that more computers in schools with low income or in small villages is a good idea to help the individuals learn how to read, speak, and use a computer.
One section of the video that stood out to me was how he explains exams as a punishment and how they where needed in the empire age. It makes complete sense how exams can be viewed as a punishment and how changing that into a reinforcement can better education and learning of students of the future.

After watching this video and thinking about what Mitra was saying, I think we can take this information and understand that we need to give students the opportunity to research a topic and educate themselves in different ways other than PowerPoint’s that list facts and having them write them down. Take this class for example, we are asked to find news articles that relate to the topic we are learning about and discuss how the article illustrates what we are learning. Applying what we learn to real life situations is so much more effective then just memorization and writing things down to forget them twenty minutes later.

After watching this TED video, I realized what learning is all about and what now consider “learning” is a primitive system of forced “knowing”. Mitra’s talk on our current education system and how it is obsolete seemed absurd at first. But as I continue to watch the video I started to understand how his idea of a self-learning community that works on WIFI, collaboration, and encouragement is how pathway of learning should be striving for. Exams and grades are more like barriers to many of us instead of being a learning tool. Based on this video, I believe there are certain steps we can take as a society that is preparing for the future of mankind to make sure that we as human beings don’t fall into the same category of schools. We must make sure we don’t become obsolete. One of the step is definitely to implement Mitra’s idea of SOLE which stands for Self-Organized Learning Environment. This idea of letting learning happen is a look into the future and the proof is how well this worked when Mitra took his SOLE around the world to test it in schools.