Sugata Mitra
Encyclopedia
Prof. Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education
, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK. He is best known for his Hole in the Wall
experiment, and widely cited in works on literacy and education. He is also Chief Scientist, Emeritus, at NIIT
.
Mitra has been described as a polymath
by the University of London, as his 30 years of research spans a wide range of disciplines.
After earning a Ph.D. in Solid State Physics from the Indian Institutes of Technology
(IIT), Delhi, he went on to research energy storage systems - first at the Centre for Energy
Studies in the IIT, and later at the Technische Universität, Vienna
. This resulted in a new design for zinc-chlorine batteries that is now in use by the military (A design for zinc-chlorine batteries. S. Mitra, Journal of Power Sources, 8, 359-367 (1982) USA).
His interests in the flow of electricity
through biological systems, a consequence of his Ph.D. research on exciton
dissociation in organic semiconductor
s, led on to a seminally speculative paper on why the human sense organs are located where they are (A correlation between the location and sensitivity of human sense organs. A.K. Banerjee and S. Mitra, Spec. Science and Technology, 5, (2), 141 (1982) Australia).
His interest in computer networking led him towards the emerging systems in printing in the 1980s. He set up India’s first local area network based newspaper publishing system in 1984 and went on to predict the desktop publishing industry (Compositors that compute, S. Mitra, Computers Today, May 1985, India). This in turn led to the invention of LAN based database publishing and he created the “Yellow Pages” industry in India and Bangladesh.
and is credited with more than 25 inventions in the area of cognitive science
and education technology. He was conferred the prestigious Dewang Mehta
Award for Innovation in Information Technology in the year 2005.
His interest in the human mind
once again led him into the areas of learning
and memory
and he was amongst the first in the world to show that simulated neural network
s can help decipher the mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease
(The effect of synaptic disconnection on bi-directional associative recall. S. Mitra , Proc. IEEE/SMC Conf., Vol.1, 989, 1994 USA).
He was among the first people to invent "voluntary perception recording" (a continuously variable voting machine) and a hyperlink
ed computing environment, several years ahead of the Internet
. (Voluntary perception analysis - a new measurement device. S. Mitra, Media and Technology for Human Resources Development, Oct. 1989, India and Imaginet - An associative, non-linear, multimedia storage and retrieval system. S. Mitra and Ajay Magon, Multimedia Computer and Communications (INFOCOM ’92), Tata McGraw Hill pp20-30, (1992), Bombay, India).
Mitra’s work at NIIT created the first curricula and pedagogy
for that organisation, followed by years of research on learning styles
, learning devices, several of them now patented, multimedia and new methods of learning.
Since the 1970s, Professor Mitra’s publications and work has resulted in training and development of perhaps a million young Indians, amongst them some of the poorest children in the world.
Some of this work culminated in an interest in early literacy, and the Hole in the Wall experiments.
created within a wall in a slum
at Kalkaji, Delhi
and children were allowed to use it freely. The experiment aimed at proving that kids could be taught by computers very easily without any formal training. Sugata termed this as Minimally Invasive Education
(MIE). The experiment has since been repeated at many places, HIW has more than 23 kiosks in rural India. In 2004 the experiment was also carried on in Cambodia
. His interests include Education
, Remote Presence, Self-organising systems, Cognitive Systems, Physics and Consciousness.
This work demonstrated that groups of children, irrespective of who or where they are, can learn to use computers and the Internet on their own using public computers in open spaces such as roads and playgrounds.
His publication was judged the best open access publication in the world for 2005 and he was awarded the Diwang Mehta Award for innovation in IT that year.
The Hole in the Wall experiment left a mark on popular culture. Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup
read about Mitra's experiment and was inspired to write his debut novel Q & A, which later became the movie Slumdog Millionaire
.
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK. He is best known for his Hole in the Wall
Hole in the wall
Hole in the wall may refer to:Places*Hole-in-the-Wall, Seaham Harbour, County Durham, England*Hole-in-the-Wall, Herefordshire, England*Hole in the Wall Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada...
experiment, and widely cited in works on literacy and education. He is also Chief Scientist, Emeritus, at NIIT
NIIT
NIIT Limited is a global computer education company. The company is listed on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange of India. The company provides training for individuals, enterprises, schools and colleges. It has its presence in 40 countries worldwide.In 2004 , NIIT was...
.
Mitra has been described as a polymath
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
by the University of London, as his 30 years of research spans a wide range of disciplines.
Early scientific work
Starting with molecular orbital computation in the 1970s, Mitra discovered that the structure of organic molecules determine their function more than the constituent atoms (Crystal structure sensitivity of the band structure of organic semiconductors. S.C. Mathur and S. Mitra, Journal of Phys.C Solid State, 12, (2) (1979) UK).After earning a Ph.D. in Solid State Physics from the Indian Institutes of Technology
Indian Institutes of Technology
The Indian Institutes of Technology are a group of autonomous engineering and technology-oriented institutes of higher education. The IITs are governed by the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961 which has declared them as “institutions of national importance”, and lays down their powers, duties,...
(IIT), Delhi, he went on to research energy storage systems - first at the Centre for Energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
Studies in the IIT, and later at the Technische Universität, Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. This resulted in a new design for zinc-chlorine batteries that is now in use by the military (A design for zinc-chlorine batteries. S. Mitra, Journal of Power Sources, 8, 359-367 (1982) USA).
His interests in the flow of electricity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...
through biological systems, a consequence of his Ph.D. research on exciton
Exciton
An exciton is a bound state of an electron and hole which are attracted to each other by the electrostatic Coulomb force. It is an electrically neutral quasiparticle that exists in insulators, semiconductors and some liquids...
dissociation in organic semiconductor
Semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...
s, led on to a seminally speculative paper on why the human sense organs are located where they are (A correlation between the location and sensitivity of human sense organs. A.K. Banerjee and S. Mitra, Spec. Science and Technology, 5, (2), 141 (1982) Australia).
His interest in computer networking led him towards the emerging systems in printing in the 1980s. He set up India’s first local area network based newspaper publishing system in 1984 and went on to predict the desktop publishing industry (Compositors that compute, S. Mitra, Computers Today, May 1985, India). This in turn led to the invention of LAN based database publishing and he created the “Yellow Pages” industry in India and Bangladesh.
Education and cognitive science
Mitra is a leading proponent of Minimally Invasive Education. He has a PhD in PhysicsPhysics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
and is credited with more than 25 inventions in the area of cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
and education technology. He was conferred the prestigious Dewang Mehta
Dewang Mehta
Dewang Mehta was the head of NASSCOM from 1991 to 2001. He is credited with a large portion of India's momentous rise as a "software giant".-Biography:...
Award for Innovation in Information Technology in the year 2005.
His interest in the human mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
once again led him into the areas of learning
Learning
Learning is acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.Human learning...
and memory
Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
and he was amongst the first in the world to show that simulated neural network
Neural network
The term neural network was traditionally used to refer to a network or circuit of biological neurons. The modern usage of the term often refers to artificial neural networks, which are composed of artificial neurons or nodes...
s can help decipher the mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease also known in medical literature as Alzheimer disease is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death...
(The effect of synaptic disconnection on bi-directional associative recall. S. Mitra , Proc. IEEE/SMC Conf., Vol.1, 989, 1994 USA).
He was among the first people to invent "voluntary perception recording" (a continuously variable voting machine) and a hyperlink
Hyperlink
In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks...
ed computing environment, several years ahead of the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. (Voluntary perception analysis - a new measurement device. S. Mitra, Media and Technology for Human Resources Development, Oct. 1989, India and Imaginet - An associative, non-linear, multimedia storage and retrieval system. S. Mitra and Ajay Magon, Multimedia Computer and Communications (INFOCOM ’92), Tata McGraw Hill pp20-30, (1992), Bombay, India).
Mitra’s work at NIIT created the first curricula and pedagogy
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
for that organisation, followed by years of research on learning styles
Learning styles
Learning styles are various approaches or ways of learning. They involve educating methods, particular to an individual, that are presumed to allow that individual to learn best. Most people prefer an identifiable method of interacting with, taking in, and processing stimuli or information...
, learning devices, several of them now patented, multimedia and new methods of learning.
Since the 1970s, Professor Mitra’s publications and work has resulted in training and development of perhaps a million young Indians, amongst them some of the poorest children in the world.
Some of this work culminated in an interest in early literacy, and the Hole in the Wall experiments.
Hole in the Wall
In an experiment conducted first in 1999, known as Hole in the Wall (HIW) experiments in children’s learning. In the intial experiment, a computer was placed in a kioskKiosk
Kiosk is a small, separated garden pavilion open on some or all sides. Kiosks were common in Persia, India, Pakistan, and in the Ottoman Empire from the 13th century onward...
created within a wall in a slum
Slum
A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...
at Kalkaji, Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
and children were allowed to use it freely. The experiment aimed at proving that kids could be taught by computers very easily without any formal training. Sugata termed this as Minimally Invasive Education
Minimally Invasive Education
Minimally Invasive Education is a term used to describe how children learn in unsupervised environments. It was derived from an experiment done by Sugata Mitra while at NIIT in 1999 often called The Hole in the Wall....
(MIE). The experiment has since been repeated at many places, HIW has more than 23 kiosks in rural India. In 2004 the experiment was also carried on in Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
. His interests include Education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
, Remote Presence, Self-organising systems, Cognitive Systems, Physics and Consciousness.
This work demonstrated that groups of children, irrespective of who or where they are, can learn to use computers and the Internet on their own using public computers in open spaces such as roads and playgrounds.
His publication was judged the best open access publication in the world for 2005 and he was awarded the Diwang Mehta Award for innovation in IT that year.
The Hole in the Wall experiment left a mark on popular culture. Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup
Vikas Swarup
Vikas Swarup is an Indian novelist and diplomat who has served in Turkey, the United States, Ethiopia, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Japan, best known for his novels Q & A and Six Suspects.-Early life:...
read about Mitra's experiment and was inspired to write his debut novel Q & A, which later became the movie Slumdog Millionaire
Slumdog Millionaire
Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 British epic romantic drama adventure film directed by Danny Boyle, written by Simon Beaufoy, and co-directed in India by Loveleen Tandan. It is an adaptation of the novel Q & A by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup...
.
External links
- Hole in the wall official website
- The Hole in the Wall Experiment, TED Talks 2007
- The Child-Driven Education, TED talks 2010
- The Hole in the Wall, a documentaryDocumentary filmDocumentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
about the experiment - Press release about Dewang Mehta Award
- HIW: Kids learn computer by themselves: An interview with Dr Mitra published in a HindiHindiStandard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
webzine. - Personal profile at Newcastle University
- Wiki referenced during Ted Talks