Kids need computers before teachers: Prof

An Indian professor credited as the inspiration for the hit film Slumdog Millionaire stunned an audience of education experts by suggesting many children learned better without teachers.

Professor Sugata Mitra of Newcastle University was yesterday swamped by journalists and experts at the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) here after an address described as "inspiring''.

Mitra said he preferred ``mediators'' to "teachers''. "You can be a mediator without any subject knowledge and still get a child to learn something.

"We should be teaching teachers that they are no longer required to be repositories of knowledge anymore. The knowledge is up there, everywhere.''

Mitra's "hole in the wall'' computer project in India inspired the novel Q and A, which was made in to the movie Slumdog Millionaire.

The "hole in the wall'' found chil

dren could learn from just a computer without any outside help at rates similar to children in a formal school.

"Groups of children can learn to use computers and the internet on their own irrespective of who or where they are,'' Mitra said.

"They don't need a teacher, they don't need to go to school to learn how to use a computer."

The computers had to be left in an outdoor, public space that was safe and meant for play, Mitra said.

"If you put the computers inside the school, it doesn't work, it doesn't happen.''

"The future of learning'' could be more unassisted online exploration, he said.

"We need subsidised broadband and electricity in all schools and we need self-organised learning environments as a part of timetables.

We need a curriculum that's based on questions and not on topics and we need a self-organised assessment system.''

Speaking immediately after Mitra, the co-founder of Twitter, Biz Stone said he was inspired.

"What Professor Mitra is showing us is that people will teach themselves if you give them the right settings. He has broken it down to the most elementary of things play.

We all learn by play and I think you have to really give way to the emerging, instinctual behaviour and then watch as that unfolds and then hopefully apply some structure to that.''

The WISE summit was held over three days this week and included about 1000 delegates from 120 countries.

- © Fairfax NZ News