The Yearn to Learn

The desire to learn is something that all teachers strive for all of their students to reach. Today, as Sugata Mitra stated, kids spend all day on their cell phone and dread grabbing their backpack full of books to class. The fun in learning and going to school slowly fades away as children grow up. I know that explains me exactly.  So what are teachers suppose to do to get the joy of learning back? Sugata Mitra made some excellent points in his speech called “Build a School in the Cloud.”

Today we take advantage of all the technology that is at our fingertips daily. I know I have my cell phone on me constantly and if I didn’t have it at work I would be lost and out of touch. It’s hard to take a step back from our world and realize not everyone around the world has all of these opportunities and barely know how to work a computer. For us, the internet has become so easy to use and you can get the answer at the drop of a hat. In the experiment done by Sugata, the children in the poor communities didn’t even know what a computer was, but they had enough curiosity and desire to learn it that they figured it out on their own.  This makes me think that people who have less are definitely more appreciative of things and want to learn as much as they can.

Relating this whole experiment to school and learning was amazingly done. When Suganta brought these hole in the wall computer to different parts of the countries they were only in English. Could you imagine someone switching your cell phone to Chinese and you have to figure out how to get back to that screen? I would be so frustrated and not try to learn the language by any means, but try to memorize how they got there. For these kids though, learning English was their only option because this computer was so new and different to them they wanted to learn everything they could. This in itself shows the great point he also mentioned which was, “It’s not about making learning happen, it’s about letting it happen.” This sentence really stood out to me because a lot of teachers need to sit back and allow this. If you give students something as simple as a question they have no idea what the answer could possibly be, then they need to research and learn themselves. You have to let them branch off and get the information they need so they can understand it on their own terms. This is exactly the idea Suganta had with giving the kids a computer with DNA and chemistry charts and diagrams and had young eight year old explain what that is better than he could. It is about allowing kids to learn on their own with positive reinforcement and guidance which also was given through an older friend, also known as the grandmother approach of subtly asking questions and giving positive reinforcement.

The biggest thing that I took from his speech was that sometimes you need to just sit back and let the kids answer. You want to be a teacher who teaches your students how to become efficient on their own. You want to be able to give them the confidence to go out and find the answer on their own and learn how to research and enjoy doing it. Like Suganta said, we don’t want to be spare parts to a computer, but we want to help design the future of learning. We don’t want schools to no longer exist because the internet tells us everyone we need to know instantaneously. We need critical thinkers who are going to work hard and be able to do things on their own without having to rely on technology for everything. I know the future isn’t looking like technology is going away, but we don’t want our whole life to rely on a quick fix. We need to never give in to that and continue yearning to learn as much as we can.