Reaching for the cloud

ROOM 13, at Greenfield Community College, in Newton Aycliffe, could not be more different to a stereotypical school classroom. Instead of uniform rows of wooden desks pointing at a blackboard, it has been designed to encourage youngsters to interact, socialise and share ideas.

The room, located in the school’s community and arts centre, is carpeted in artificial grass and features large windows, funky colourful furniture and light installations, including clouds and rabbits.

Glass walls and garden furniture help to create an “outdoor feel”, while the latest IT equipment offers the chance to connect and communicate with people across the world.

Welcome to the School in the Cloud, where no one gets into trouble for passing notes.

The £30,000 project was led by Katy Milne, director of arts and creativity at Greenfield, and funded by Newcastle University education specialist Professor Sugata Mitra, who devised the School in the Cloud concept.

Prof Mitra is a pioneer of self-organised learning environments (Sole). He believes that children can teach themselves, and each other, if motivated by curiosity and their peers.

Within a Sole, children are set questions or problems and then left alone to come up with solutions, drawing on the internet and each other to formulate the best answers.

Tools such as Skype, an online facility that allows users all over the world to communicate face-to-face, also come into play.

“The School in the Cloud is learning at the edge of chaos,” says Prof Mitra. “This is a community, place and experience that enable us to discover and explore children’s learning as a self-organising system.

“Our hope is for children to be prepared for the future because they are confident and curious problem solvers who, by tapping into global networks, can work together to use technology and find solutions to big questions.”

Prof Mitra was chief scientist at Indian company NIIT when he started his “hole-in-thewall”

experiments 15 years ago.

He began by knocking a hole through the wall of his office to offer the street children in the adjoining slum free access to a computer. It was an instant hit with the youngsters, who learnt how to use the computer and the internet by themselves. This led to further experiments in more remote locations and helped shape a new way of learning – minimally invasive education – as well as inspiring the film Slumdog Millionaire.

THE idea was given further momentum with the launch of Granny Cloud in 2009.

Despite its name, Granny Cloud is not associated to gender or age, but rather a caring, grandmother-like approach. It allows children to interact online with people across the world who can offer support, encouragement and a different perspective based on their own knowledge and experience. It was originally set up following a plea for retired schoolteachers to communicate with children in India via Skype, but its reach is now much broader.

Last year, Prof Mitra received the Technology Entertainment Design award in recognition of his achievements. This included a £600,000 prize to pursue his dream of creating spaces for youngsters to explore and learn on their own.

Greenfield Community College, George Stephenson High School, in Killingworth, North Tyneside, and five schools in India, were all selected for a share in the funding.

“After six months of hard work, I am thrilled it has all come together,” says Ms Milne.

“The fact so many people have come along to support us today and have said such positive things is so encouraging.

“It is wonderful to be part of such an exciting project and to involve the wider community, as well as Greenfield students.”

Year 11 pupils Becca Lowes, 15, Aicha Karsik, 16, and Victoria Pinner, 16, were among the first to take advantage of Room 13. The girls were asked to look for links between their GCSE English literature text, Animal Farm, by George Orwell, and the Russian Revolution. As well as each other and the internet, the pupils could turn to a Spanish cloud granny, who was familiar with the text and set additional questions to help them fully explore the topic.

“We really enjoyed it and we learnt a lot too,”

says Aicha. “I think the fact we have done the research ourselves will make it easier to remember.

It was great to be able to share information with the other groups too.”

Becca adds: “The room looks amazing and it has a calming effect. In a normal classroom, if the teacher leaves the room often the class will stop doing their work and just chat. In here, that doesn’t happen. You are free to walk around and talk to each other, but you are still working.”