World is changing rapidly along with the evolution of technology. With the use of technology we are trying to make the world a better place to live and explore. Prof Sugata Mitra’s vision to produce seven Schools in the Cloud to help children from anywhere. They can learn and explore themselves at their fingertips. The penultimate learning lab was supposed to be open on 3 December 2014 in Phaltan, a small town in Maharashtra, India. It is the first Newcastle University in the Cloud lab to be situated in a school where English is just trained as a topic along with all the others. “In a place where conversations are purely in the mother-tongue, imagine using the Internet where the whole thing is in English – that’s what it’s like for these children,” says Dr Suneeta Kulkarni, Research Director for School in the Cloud.
when granny cloud was first introduced at Pragat Shikshan Sanstha (PSS) in September 2013, the children were very reserved and nervous about doing a reading test in English but according to dr kulkarni everything got changed after six months and the same students strolled in with their heads high refusing to talk in Marathi. Many lessons learnt from building the other Schools in the Cloud have been taken into account through this construction, including the glass windows stopping at eye-level. The children have been given a free hand with the furniture, choosing bright colours of red and yellow tables with green chairs. The tables are also lower than previously and the chairs are sturdier. With five tables and one large screen, there is also more room to move around and an entire class of 30 or more can be accommodated at once.
The School in the Cloud involves SOLES (self organized learning environments) fuelled by big, child-focused questions. One of the Grannies , Lorraine Schneiter, who has been a big part of these children’s lives most Thursday mornings for the past year was virtually present at the launch. Lorraine who lives in south spain has a strong connection to India as she was born to an English mother and an Indian father and brought up in india till the age of twelve. Many of her relatives are still living near to the lab and she is quite happy to teach these young minds.
