Today I attended a fantastic conference organised by Geneva International school (the oldest in the world if you're interested).
It was great, the coffee and lunch were lovely too.
I was especially interested in the speech by this guy, Sugata Mitra. he described his "hole in the wall" experiment where he placed a couple of computers in an Indian slum.
He discovered that, left to their own devices, children learnt both computer skills and the necessary English in order to use the computer.
Acording to Sugata the secret is to get the kids to work in groups, and especially, for the teacher to go away.
An interesting idea to bring up in front of two hundred odd teachers, but I for one can definitely see his point.
His other great idea was The Granny cloud, a project where people in England (I don't think you really have to be a granny) give up one hour a week to teach and support kids in schools around the world, using skype.
It's strange to find a talk that would effectively put me out of a job, so motivating, but I did.
I do feel education could be doing so much more, so differently for our kids. Do we really need so much rote learning when the answers a click away?
I especially feel our methods of testing knowledge are outdated, when in a job ( apart from at an interview perhaps) do you need to spew out random facts in the same way as a formal exam?
The conference also dealt with another question, should we be educating our children so they can find a job? If so, what should we be teaching them? And if not, then why are we teaching them?
Or are teachers just glorified babysitters, and is school just somewhere safe to park the kids during the day?
What do you think we should be teaching our children, and how?
