This case study is from India. This was done by an Indian It company called NIIT (National Institute of information technology).As an experiment, this was immensely successful one and it took a form of a joint venture between NIIT and International Finance Corporation. This joint venture is now known as Hole-in-the-Wall Education Ltd (HiWEL).
As an experiment, it was started by Sugata Mitra, a computer engineer and founder of the Hole in the Wall, in New Delhi. In 1999, he with his colleagues dug a hole in the wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi and the NIIT office where Mitra worked. A highly powerful computer with interest connectivity was installed. A hidden camera was also installed to film the activity around the area. The experiment observed that the slum kids started playing around with the computer and in the process learnt the how to use a new technology, go online, work with an unknown language, English and most importantly how to teach others what they have learnt.
In the following years the experiment was replicated in many other parts of India, urban and rural, with similar results, challenging some of the key assumptions of formal education. The Hole-in-the-Wall project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mitra, who's now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University (UK), calls it "minimally invasive education."
According to Linux Journal, "Education-as-usual assumes that kids are empty vessels who need to be sat down in a room and filled with curricular content. Dr. Mitra's experiments prove that wrong."
This experiment reflects Paulo Freire’s Educational Pedagogy where self-learning and creativity is emphasized and not the “Banking system” of the top-down-classroom set up.
This experiment demonstrated that children can self-instruct in the absence of any supervision. Presence of curiosity and peer-interest is all it required. This experiment also demonstrated the self-organization amongst children who haven’t had any formal education, and their ability to self-learn a new technology, a new language and a new way of exploring things.
In other words, this experiment provided an effective alternative to the conventional primary education methodologies practiced, not so successfully in India. The significance of this experiment becomes high considering the results of the experiment in which students not only started learning the application of a new technology like that of a PC but also learnt new words of a foreign language, English through browsing. The interviews of the students showed that sheer sense of exploration and curiosity motivated them to learn about new websites where we could learn the meaning of the unknown words they explored on the PC while browsing. Hence the experiment not only provided an effective learning platform, it also worked to narrow the huge digital divide.
A small sample sized survey demonstrated that more remote a area in terms of geography or socio-economic access, lower the quality of education. Therefore the experiment was conducted to serve the remote areas. Besides the experiment observed that there was no co relation between the quality of education and factors such as lack of infrastructure, size of the classrooms, lack of electricity and so on. But it observed that teachers in remote schools wanted to move outside of these areas into more urbane and metropolitan areas. This meant that teachers are not motivated enough to teach where they were teaching and that probably caused the lower levels of education.
This experiment was carried out in many parts of India, which is characterized by multi ethnicity, multi linguistic, and diversity in geography, socio economic conditions and races.
In all places the results were similar. Within minutes, children figured out how to point and click. By the end of the day they were browsing. With access and opportunity, the children quickly taught themselves the rudiments of computer literacy. It was observed that children in addition to playing games on the PC, they regularly visited news sites and used tools such the paint tool for drawing.
After the first set of successful experiments, this educational way was used with special emphasis on girl-child in rural communities. Computer kiosks were installed with special efforts to encourage girls to use them. This was immensely successful as well, as girls, given the permission and opportunity rushed to explore and learn trough computers.
The experiment was mostly conduced in slums and marginalized neighborhoods where primary education could not reach or could not work, for whatever reasons.
One of the fascinating aspect of the experiment was the way slum children negotiated with an unknown language, English, in which the computer applications were written. They were unable to pronounce the words correctly but made the correct usage of the words on the computer screen by continuously playing with it and watching the results. This reflects the building of theory through practice in the adaptation of participatory methodology.
Children called the cursor, sui, which in hindi means needle and they didn't call the hourglass symbol the hourglass because they had never seen an hourglass before. They called it the damru, which is Shiva's drum (Hindu god of Creation) as it looked bit like that.
According to the founder of this experiment, "If cyberspace is considered a place, then there are people who are already in it, and people who are not in it ... I think the hole in the wall gives us a method to create a door, if you like, through which large numbers of children can rush into this new arena. When that happens, it will have changed our society forever."
Critique of the case study
Hole in the wall as an educational methodology used a communicative tool like a personal computer and its applications to solve a very basic but a major social problem in the developing world. In this case study, access of communication and its tools have created a revolutionary way to reach and serve the unserved.
The case demonstrated a use of participatory methodology and Freirian pedagogy, which emphasized on creativity, self organization and curiosity as important tools of learning. It demonstrated that remoteness, both in terms of geography and socio economic conditions affects the quality of education. This remoteness was being looked at one of the major reasons of lack of penetration of education, a major social void particularly amongst the marginalized communities and its children. This experiment, by the way of a computer and internet, provided filler for such a void. What worked for this case is the nature of children to play and in the process learn. Computers acted like a good toy for them and it provoked them to fiddle round with it.Thus arousing their curiosity about what it does. Secondly, absence of any supervision from any adults at the site of learning also helped them to self organize and self instruct. This gave them confidence and created sustainability in their tendency to learn. Learning was not only acquired but was also replicated as children taught one another , what they learned themselves. This led to diffusion of education and easily overcame the problems of absence of good teachers or retention of good teachers, infrastructure and maintenance of infrastructure in rural India’s educational landscape. I think the strength of the case is that it depended on the ability of the marginalized community to learn and gain from the opportunity made available to them. Simplicity of the experiment and its exhaustive documentation through filming also helped t o understand the dynamics of the marginalized community, its adaptation of a new technology as an educational tool, learning curve of the communities, challenges they faced and the dyamics of their learning.
This experiment however seemed to be dependent on the group dynamics. In other words, for the experiment to work the way it did, it was important that children came in groups at the site of the PC-internet, and learnt together. In the absence of the group, individual children would not be able to learn because the experiment depended on peer interest and group learning. I view it as both, an advantage and a disadvantage. Advantage because this promotes team -leaning amongst the children and encourages to them not only to learn but also continuously teach and share their learning. This builds educational solidarity. Disadvantage, however, is that child tend to learn from others what others teach him/her. This may not necessarily be of what they are interested in and would want to pick Also, it is possible that the first child who approaches the PC kiosk, learns certain things and then teaches to other what he has learned, thus spreading his perspective of that learning .Thus narrowing the scope of other learning available. But at the same time, I believe that such an disadvantage can be easily overcome by more collaborative attempts like that of attaching a formal learning session at the site. This session can be facilitated by children themselves. This would not only build leadership but would also enhance the purposefulness of the learning in a given context. Since this experiment is carried our mostly in marginalized areas, I would recommend that there are also attempts to reach out to the adults of the area which are not the target audience of the experiment. In fact adults are prevented to be at the site of PC-internet kiosks by way of physical low-ceiling installed at the site under which only children of certain height can stand and use the machine. I think by taking into loop the adults, it will help to deepen the impact of this experiment. Adults are an important component of any community especially in relation to children-development. In many cases, adults control children’s mobility and their engagements. It will, therefore be useful to not only have adults included in this experiment by way of sharing existing tools with them but also make new additions in the experiment to cater the needs of the community and its adults.
Also this experiment is primarily intends to support the primary education amongst the marginalized groups. It is therefore also needed that a long term vision of the education is embedded in the experiment. What happens when children of the community learn enough of the computers being installed? What next? Educational needs are dynamics and therefore how can this system be made dynamics? Also, it is needed to co-relate the learning through computer with the change in socio-economic conditions of the community and know the results. Other support systems such as connecting the children to higher schools once they have acquired the primary goals of education, availability of jobs and creation of bridges to such jobs for the marginalized, chalking out the need of specific learning and expected results and making it known to the rural communities are some of the very important aspects to truly empower the communities.
Hole- in- the- wall started as an effective and creative way to impart education but its potentially can only be fully realized if it receives the necessary support system both from the non-government agencies and government programs operational in the communities. Also it needs a constant focus to ensure that through education rural communities reach a socio-economic change and get empowered. Merely imparting education in the absence of other support system may pose a risk of educational tool like this acting like a video game which could amuse but not empower.
No comments:
Post a Comment