Beyond the Hole in the Wall: Discover the Power of Self-Organized Learning

by Sugata Mitra

In 1999, educator Sugata Mitra and his colleagues cracked open a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed a networked PC, and left it there for the local children to freely explore. What they quickly saw in their “Hole in the Wall” experiment was that kids from one of the most desperately poor areas of the world could, without instruction, quickly learn how the PC operated. The children also freely collaborated with each other, exploring the world of high-tech online connectivity with ease. It was the dawning of Mitra’s introduction to self-organized learning, and it would shape the next decade of his research. This important update on Mitra’s groundbreaking work (which provided the inspiration for the Oscar-winning film “Slumdog Millionaire”) offers new research and ideas that show how self-directed learning can make kids smarter and more creative. He also provides step-by-step instruction on how to integrate it into any classroom. It’s an important lesson that could reshape our schools and reinvigorate our educational system. With a foreword by Nicholas Negroponte, founder of both MIT’s Media Lab and the One Laptop per Child Association.