CURIOSITY DRIVEN EDUCATION

Historical perspective, new strategy, people making a difference, powerful idea, technology trends

By Thomas Frey, January 27, 2011; Level of Difficulty **
WATCH, LISTEN AND CONSIDER
The child driven education    http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education

QUESTIONS

Read as far as “Understanding the Word Stream” and answer the question:

1.       What conclusion can we draw from the experiments that Arthur C. Clark conducted in India?

2.       It is implied in this section that the teacher should be replaced by a machine if……………………..

Read “Understanding the Word Stream” and answer the question:

3.       What is the basic paradox expressed in this section concerning the information people are exposed to?

Read “The Cost of Words” and answer the question:

4.       What conclusion can be drawn from the information provided in this section?

Read “Are Colleges Pricing Themselves out of Existence” and answer the question:

5.       In what two ways are nonschool organizations considered superior to college classes?

Read “When Inertia Ends” and answer the question:

6.       In what respect are colleges and the newspaper world compared in this section?

Read “Curiosity Driven Education” and answer the question:

7.       The writer predicts that a lot of learning will take place on the internet. What are the two reasons why he makes this claim?

Read “More on the Hole in the Wall Experiment” and answer the question:

8.       What are the two reasons why students succeed in learning in Mitra’s experiment?

Read “Final Thoughts” and answer the last question:

9.       The text ends with the following sentence: “We do it by creating systems that empower our curiosity”. What does “it” refer to in this sentence?

WRITING TASK

It is now time for you to express your “final thoughts”. Write a reaction essay evaluating the views expressed in this text. Your teacher will discuss the text with you first and help you with planning.

CURIOSITY DRIVEN EDUCATION /KEY

The text is a little gem expressing some rather radical views on education with some undeniably strong arguments. The text is not hard lexically but the questions are real careful reading questions and the writing task is challenging. The reason is that summarizing a text like this for the second paragraph of the essay will be no mean feat.

1.       Students driven by curiosity will learn more, learn faster than when they were confronted with subjects of low interest.

2.       The machine arouses more interest in the students because interest is the most important motivating force in education.

3.       Although formalized education constitutes only 1% of information we are exposed to, it is considered far more valuable.

4.       The value of a university is now totally out of sync with…

5.       They present information in comprehensible formats for far less money; They are doing a far better job of matching the curiosity of the learner with the subjects and experts they are interested in.

6.       In terms of how good they are at meeting the demands of the emerging hyper-individualized, curiosity driven consumer.

7.       It is curiosity driven; It is designed round the two way flow of information.

8.       Students have near photographic recall; They are learning together at a time when their curiosity has been peaked.

9.       Removing the constraints and incentivizing people to build on a hunch with the remote…