Greenfield Arts at Greenfield Community College is the proud host of the SOLE Room 13 space, one of 7 in the world. We work with Greenfield Community College students and Professor Sugata Mitra, who won the TED prize in 2013 to explore self-organised learning.
Professor Mitra recently visited the space to see how our ground-breaking research was getting on. Two local primary schools visited to take part in SOLE sessions, Byerley Park Primary and Etherley Lane Primary, Professor Sugata and he gave them a real challenge and asked an A Level Humanities question! “Explain why traditional measures of economic activity such as GDP do not reflect the quality of life in a country.”
Byerley Park have been taking part in SOLE’s sessions with us for over 9 months and the group were asked what they think of Self Organised Learning and how it works for them, saying “it’s all about trust”.
Greenfield is one of two schools in the UK (the other is George Stephenson High School in North Tyneside), alongside five other sites in India, that is part of the on-going research over the next three years into how children learn using the Internet in groups, called SOLE. (Self-Organised Learning Environments)
TED Prize 2013 winner Professor Mitra set up his first ‘hole in the wall’ experiment 15 years ago, knocking through a wall in his office to install a computer which was freely accessible to the adjoining slum. It was an instant hit with groups of Indian street children, who learnt how to use the computer and Internet by themselves.
He launched our new learning space in February 2014, funded through his 2013 TED Prize. Designed to be very different to a normal classroom, the room has an ‘outdoor feel’ – including artificial grass – and unusual seating and decoration to make it an attractive and social space to spend time in.
If you, your school, college or workplace would like to take part in a SOLE session in our Room 13 please contact Greenfield Arts on 01325 379048 or info@greenfield-arts.co.uk
