Self-Organized Learning Environments - A Conversation with Professor Sugata Mitra

Prof. Sugata Mitra is Professor Emeritus at NIIT University, India. He retired in 2019 as Professor of Educational Technology and Principal Research Investigator in the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK. In 2012, he was Visiting Professor for the MIT Medialab in Massachusetts, US.

In 1999, Sugata began the now world-renowned ‘Hole in the Wall (HIW)’ experiment, when a computer was embedded within a wall in an Indian slum at Kalkaji, Delhi and children were allowed to freely use it. The experiment aimed at proving that kids could be taught computers very easily without any formal training. Sugata termed this as Minimally Invasive Education (MIE). The experiment has since been repeated in many places around the world.

Sugata is the recipient of many awards from India, the UK, USA and many other countries in the world and has conducted research that has pushed the boundaries of many disciplines including electrical engineering, medicine and computer science.

He has a PhD in Physics and is credited with more than 25 inventions in the area of cognitive science and educational technology. He was conferred the prestigious Dewang Mehta Award from the Government of India for Innovation in Information Technology in 2003. Amongst many other awards, he was also awarded the 1 million dollar TED Prize in 2013.

In 2006, Sugata invented Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs), now in use throughout the world. In 2009, he created the Granny Cloud, of teachers who interact with children over the Internet.

Since the 1970s, Professor Mitra’s publications and work has resulted in training and development of perhaps a million young Indians, amongst them some of the poorest children in the world.

Sugata published hundreds of ground-breaking academic papers, and in 2019 pulled many of his ideas together into his book, The School in the Cloud: The Emerging Future of Education.

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Twitter: @sugatam

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