Our Room 13 Ted Prize lab opened on 13th Feb 2014 and all sorts of amazing and unexpected things have happened since then. “It’s not about making learning happen, it’s about letting it happen”- Sugata Mitra.
To celebrate this, Greenfield Arts were invited to the international conference for SOLE’s in Phaltan, Pune, India to experience the learning going on there, see the other 5 labs and present the work we have been doing for the past two years. It brought together educators, co-ordinators, grannies, plus parents and children to share their experiences and their learning. The delegates were from across the world including India, U.K., America, Germany, France, Dubai and Spain. It was a powerful day.
We heard from all of the co-ordinators, we shared our story of Room 13 and the impact SOLEs has at Greenfield Community College and with many other schools we work with from many different places. We heard from grannies and the children themselves, it was very touching to see them meeting in person for the first time. Katy Milne, Director of Arts and Creativity, shared our work and our students and Head Teacher David Priestley shared their thoughts in our new film, which will be posted on the blog soon, and Sugata closed the day. Professor Sugata Mitra described a new kind of comprehension that we don’t understand, about the need for new assessment systems that are continuous and more open ended. Why reading, writing and arithmetic are a lower priority and why there are new skills to focus in young people which are comprehension, communication and computation. Sugata also highlighted the need to teach the Internet as a subject, why we should understand networks and chaos theory, such as: how do stock markets work? He emphasised that we really do need teachers but how do we handle these future things?
During our time in India we visited labs in Chandrakona, Gocharan, Kalkaji, Phaltan and Korakati. Korakati is a village with 8000 people but has very little in terms of ‘modern’ facilities. The school in the cloud lab has brought the Internet and with it has opened up a whole new world of possibility for the children there. The children sang, danced and gave us handmade gifts when we arrived. They had made beautiful origami frogs and flowers that they had previously taught themselves via you tube in the SOLEs lab! Other children in labs had created their own computer programme with help from grannies, because of this you can see confidence growing in such remote places that have so little.
As part of our 2nd Birthday celebrations we have commissioned artist Nicola Golightly to create a Tiny Book of Big Questions. This is on display in Room 13 and shows the questions used so far to enhance learning. The Engine Heads, a group of young people helping our Director lead this SOLE learning, also produced a video with the help of artist Laura Degnan, which was presented at the conference, displaying their learning so far and how it is currently developing within school.
It has been a fantastic month of SOLE, learning, sharing and exploring. Katy Milne, Director of Arts and Creativity at Greenfield Arts said “I can really understand the global picture of the work we are involved in and I look forward to sharing the experiences and learning with colleagues.” It is quite incredible just how far Professor Mitra’s concept has reached and the impact it is making on people’s lives and education all over the world and it is amazing to be playing a role in that. What we don’t know attracts us, let’s create a curriculum of big questions. “It is so exciting to be 1 of 7 labs leading this innovative work”
For more information on SOLE’s and our trip visit our blog on our website: https://greenfieldarts.wordpress.com/
