Sugata Mitra on why children need teachers, autonomy and technology – PP117

It was a privilege and a pleasure this week to talk to world-renowned educational thinker Sugata Mitra about his work and his thoughts on an unusually wide range of educational issues. Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, England. You may well know his ‘Hole in the Wall’ experiment, which involved giving access to computers and the internet to children and seeing what happened. This led to the ‘School in the Cloud’ and Sugata won the TED Prize in 2013 for this presentation: Rather than focus exclusively on his own work, we decided to ask Sugata questions about a wide range of current educational issues and his answers were fascinating! Find out his thoughts on the future of education, Geordies, supply teachers, textbooks, high-stakes testing, teacher workload and more! Read the blog post about what he had to say. You can always contact Sugata on Twitter. Tweet of the Week Sounds like we will have a more positive report next time from Garth! @pivotalpodcast @pivotalpaul I’ve an external observation this week (Thursday). Afterwards I’ll record an entry & send it over on Friday. — Garth Smith (@GarthWSmith) May 15, 2016 @pivotalpaul @pivotalpodcast Paul, I’m loving it! I hope you’ll ‘hear’ my smile when I record it. — Garth Smith (@GarthWSmith) May 15, 2016 Become a Pivotal Podcast Special Reporter! Please send in audio reports from any event or initiative you are involved in to be featured on the podcast! Your learners are also most welcome to join in! Record a short report on your smart phone and send it in to [email protected] We want to hear your students’ view on behaviour We are looking for opinions on behaviour from children who have a strong opinion. It might be a child who has experienced difficulty and has found a new path or a child who vehemently disagrees with the way behaviour is managed. It might be a recording of a child in reflective mood or indeed in the mood to rage at the world. More details… NEW! Pivotal Education’s New App: The new app for Apple and Android devices contains everything you need to know about Pivotal as well as access to our podcasts, resources, videos and news: What would you like to hear covered in forthcoming episodes? Let us know by emailing [email protected] * Subscribe to the podcast * Listen for free every week * Send in your comments or questions * Get involved!   (Creative Commons Sound clip by Johnny Pixel Productions, Inc. – http://www.johnny-pixel.com/ http://www.freesound.org/people/jppi_Stu/ and Creative Commons image of Sugata Mitra https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sugra_mitra.jpg – This file is licensed under the