Hole in the wall gang
By Andy Marks
Knocking a hole through the wall of your workspace and putting a computer in the opening, with the screen facing outwards, could be construed as a case of losing the plot. Especially when the hole is facing wasteland in New Delhi where kids play. In the case of Indian academic Sugata Mitra, it was in fact a case of genius, not madness.
Children from the nearby slum were surfing the web and playing computer games within hours despite never having used a computer and the keyboard being in a foreign language, English. Mitra’s hole-in-the-wall experiment to see whether unschooled children would teach themselves to use a computer if left to their own devices, was underway and the emerging results were startling.
The idea was inspired by Mitra’s four year old son, who quickly demonstrated he was more tech-savvy than his dad, when the family got their first home computer in the mid-80s. After glowingly reporting his son’s abilities to friends, he found out that their children too were grasping new technology at a rapid rate.
This was in the late nineties and when Mitra published a paper on his results, the World Bank took notice and gave him £1.1m to repeat and roll out his experiment. Within five years he had expanded the project to 23 sites around India. From Stock, 6,000m up in the Himalayas, to urban Mumbai, to an island in the Ganges where, to safeguard from crocodiles, terminals had to be turned away from the water, thousands of children have now been given the chance to use a PC, and develop skills and confidence.
Commenting on the initial success of the project, Mitra, who is now Professor of Educational Technology at the University of Newcastle, reported “At the end of five years the (local) schools started reporting that their English, maths and science scores were all going up.” Such is the success of hole-in-the-wall computers, there are now about 600 of them around the world.
This remarkable story doesn’t end there. For Mitra’s idea was the inspiration for multi-Oscar winning movie Slumdog Millionaire. Vikas Swarup, author of Q&A on which the movie was based, publicly acknowledges Mitra’s work as his inspiration. Mitra thanked Swarup for the acknowledgement and said “I loved the film, but I told him my dream is to see a Slumdog Nobel Laureate not a Slumdog Millionaire.”
If you have seen a great way of learning on the streets, please let your fellow VivaCity sages know below.
Follow that cloud!
By Andy Marks
Heads in the clouds. You may have seen them. Clutching a pen and a copy of The Cloud Collector’s Handbook. Wearing the badge. A more relaxed demeanor compared to the hoards of city hustlers bobbing and weaving past them. In the last VivaCity post we were reminded of just how wonderful it is to stop and stare. Clearly members of the Cloud Appreciation Society www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/ already know this.
You might think that most people don’t like clouds, but the society believes this is one-sided, prejudiced, even uncalled for. They even go so far as to say ‘together we’ll fight the sun fascists and their obsessions with blue-sky thinking’. One might assume that the Cloud Appreciation Society is a very British thing given the nation’s obsession with the weather and a climate that can often dampen the spirits. But no. Whilst originating in Britain, when we last looked the society’s 18,000+ members lived in 76 countries around the world.
The Society’s achievements are impressive. There are many thousands of stunning cloud pictures on their website, two books on the subject published by their founder, and they have recently found a new cloud which is awaiting verification by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization. They have even sanctioned the world’s first Cloud Bar, an official cloud spotting area complete with reclining seats, cloud menus to identify formations, and swiveling mirrors to reflect different parts of the sky.
When you stop and think about it or better still stop and stare, clouds really are graceful, beautiful, enchanting creatures, transient and misunderstood. So the next time you look up in wonder, you will know you are not alone in your appreciation, and maybe the cloud that mesmerized you is on it’s way to work it’s magic for someone else.
What would be your prefect tune to watch the clouds go by? Let us know below and soon we will have a VivaCity cloud appreciation playlist.
Looking is free
By Andy Marks
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:
No time to turn at beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
Leisure by W. H. Davies
VivaCity folk love this wonderful verse as it confirms the value of noticing the world around us in real time.
It was penned by William Henry Davies in 1911, a long time before we became an urban planet. Whether you are a city dweller or a country bumpkin, it’s sentiment is still startlingly relevant and emotive today. Before becoming one of the most popular poets of his time, Davies was in fact a tramp, which may have helped give him such a clear and glorious insight in to the ability to observe.
If you have stopped and stared at something interesting in the city recently, do let your fellow VivaCity starers know below.
VivaCity spin-off movement for a cheerier future:
More chairs on the streets – random chairs, portable chairs, occasional chairs, benches where people fall in love, places to read and leave books (see Look at that book go! below and www.bookcrossing.com). We need more places to sit where don’t have to buy a coffee.
