How Do Mozzies See - and other big questions

A really astounding morning at Whampoa today!

My friend and fellow volunteer Hui-e and I attended TEDxSingapore a couple of weeks ago and saw a video of TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra talk about his experiments with Self Organised Learning Environments and the future of learning: http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.html

So, we tried it out at Whampoa with our 7-12 year olds. today. In a nutshell:

• Ching-Hua and Priya (both also volunteers) worked on what Mitra called the "Big" questions - aimed at piqueing kids' curiousity. The questions had to be phrased in a not too concrete manner to leave room for, well, thinking.
• We asked the kids to pick their own groups of four...one group had three because we had 11 kids today. 
• Each group selected a question from our list:
• How do mosquitoes see?
• Why's the sky blue?
• Where does petrol come from?
• Then we left them the heck alone. Kinda. Each group had a "helper" who were the only conduit to the volunteers and vice versa. So, if they had questions, the helper had to speak to an adult. If there were things the kids were unhappy with, they had to go through the helper.

I gotta tell ya - I wasn't sure where this would go. I'd been fully prepared that some kids would run around, not want to do the work, prefer to be at the playground or playing boardgames. But wow, they all got down to it.

Remember that some of these kids, several weeks ago, would rather disappear than speak in front of the class, were doing wheelies on the classroom chairs, were crawling on top of, under, on the couch. (OK, we've changed rooms since then...no chairs with wheels and no couch - we were kicked out of the other room because the group we borrowed it from needed it back.)

Our temptation, as "older and wiser people", was  to mill around and see how the kids were doing, give advice - you know...the general control freak adult behaviour we all know and love. Even the 18-year-olds volunteers from Hwa Chong Junior College were doing that - and they're not even old. So, we made a conscious effort to stay away unless approached or something was untoward. Some of us started researching the SOLE topics ourselves, and others went to watch the Mitra video.

The kids were so quiet and focused you could have knocked us over with a feather.

Forty minutes later, the kids started presenting. The presentations were informative in a few ways:
1. Almost all the kids came up front and said something - even if it was just to introduce themselves or pretend to interview the other kids to move the presso along.
2. They were all pretty much on topic
3. Almost all the groups had copied a substancial amount of content they hadn't fully understood. And when asked to explain it in their own words could, to some extent. The group of three, who did the petrol question, was particularly good. But it was still scarey how much "cut and paste without understanding content" there was.

Tellingly, as we were packing up, one of the kids said, "I think I copied the wrong information." (key word: copied)

My response, "Maybe it was the right info, you just need to be able to understand it and tell it to us in your own words."

So - that's for the next time. The key thing is, we didn't think the kids could sit down and do this - but they did. And performed beyond our expectations. There was no yelling, no complaining, no shoes were thrown. Far from it.

Content-wise, we've still a long way to go. And now that we know, and we can tune this. But what was key was that kids who're usually restless and want to go play - sat down and worked this through.

Now have additional food for thought - how do we set kids on the right direction without telling them which way to go? Maybe we'll try Mitra's Granny method: oohing and ahhing and encouragement and "hmm - can you tell me what's this about?"

Here's some of what we learned (thanks Ching Hua for leading the discussion and compilation) - and the Hwa Chong team ...on your second time as volunteers!)

1) Let the kids lead: We agreed that we want to instill in the children a sense of confidence and wonder to ask their own questions. However, we cannot expect this to happen overnight. We volunteers can facilitate leadership by providing clear objectives and presenting alternatives when needed, and then TRUSTING that the kids can figure out HOW, on their own, with time.

2) Let learning happen: From Sugata Mitra, assume that kids do not need us to teach them, they need our encouragement and our belief that they can teach themselves.

3) Be a role model: Want the kids to be engaged? Curious? To speak up? Enough said. We can do it!

Concrete actions for next week:

1) Every volunteer to contribute a question for next session. By Wednesday (class is on Saturday).

2) Next class, there should be more volunteer teams and volunteers should demonstrate alternative ways of answering and presenting questions for the children.

...so...that's it - maybe while the kids are doing their research, we adults will think of some Big Education Questions we want to look into and do our down SOLE. And we'll work the kids' feedback and thoughts as part of the presso. We learn.

 Note - want to try this at home? DO!! Downloaded the toolkit at http://www.ted.com/pages/sole_toolkit