Yesterday, I wrote about Dr. Sugata Mitra and self-directed learning.
Dr. Mitra won the one million dollar 2013 TED prize to build “The School in the Cloud,” a virtual school based on his work.
His lesson structure is called a Self-Organized Learning Environment, or SOLE, and there’s a contest to implement one and write it up in 500-1000 words. Up to three winners will get tickets (for two!) to TED Youth 2013* in November. Instructions and Guidelines and here.
Montessori elementary teachers should submit entries to this contest. Here’s why. You already run ten of these a day, concurrently. Here are the elements of the SOLE, from the guidelines:
- the adult poses a motivating question
- students choose their own groups of four
- a student is designated as “helper”—a sort of facilitator
- movement permitted
- collaboration and borrowing from other groups is permitted
- changing groups is permitted
- groups develop substantial responses to the questions and share them with the whole class
- Dr. Mitra’s work often involves groups sharing a PC and using the internet heavily, but this is not specified in the guidelines
- 40 minutes are allowed for investigations, and 10 to 20 for review
So like the Montessori elementary! Except, in Montessori:
- the motivating questions are embedded in a holistic structure and supported with brilliant charts and materials
- multiple questions are being explored by different children at any time
- groups are not limited to four
- computers and internet use are often minimized
- group roles typically emerge spontanesously
- movement and collaboration are of course permitted
- hand-on experiences, books, and student-directed visits to outside resources, (“Going Out”), are emphasized as sources
- time limits are much broader than 40 minutes, and projects may extend over several days
Dr. Mitra needs to know what we do. I know it’s an extra hour or two of work to really write it up well, but why not get credit for what we’re already doing?
The deadline is next Friday, the 12th.
Those links again:
* From their website: “TEDYouth is a day-long event for high school students — with live speakers, hands-on activities and great conversations.”