

Turning Kids from India's Slums into Autodidacts - grellas
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704584804575645070639938954.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_11_1

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kiba
Anybody who is an autodidact in this day and age automatically have the upper
hand even if they do little bit of it everyday. I think that little bit of 30
minutes learning something everyday eventually adds up into something huge.

For example, I am getting my first web service running though without a
payment processor. Eventually, I'll figure out billing.

I learned how speculation works, how to short sell, and learn technical
trading terms like resistances, supports, amongst other things through osmosis
learning. I spent 6 dollars and learned how markets _really_ work.

Through debate attrition and conceding every single time that I was wrong, I
learned tremendously about economics.

I learned about the concept of open source, the hackerdom subculture, was an
early adopter of Mozilla Firefox before I started programming.

Now, I am an early adopter and experimenter with cryptocurrency, something
that come right out of a Neal Stephenson novel. I don't know if it succeed,
but it's going to be a crazy ride.

I am experimenting with microtransaction business models via selling my own
artworks. On top of it, do it _copyfree_.

Of course, I am 19, a typical youngster hacker-wannabe.

~~~
smokinn
Billing these days is very easy if you're willing to pay a little more to
outsource all the hard parts.

If you can code just download the paypal nvp sample code for something like
website payments pro and you can easily have a clean, professional looking (no
handing off to a third party site) billing system in a couple of hours.

~~~
sliverstorm
_a clean, professional looking (no handing off to a third party site) billing
system_

Strangely enough, I really appreciate paying with paypal sometimes _because_
of the hand-off.

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maheshs
His TED Talks

1\.
[http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_t...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html)

2\.
[http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_educa...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html)

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stretchwithme
Great article. The greatest thing you can do is give someone the desire and
the means to find their own answers.

Of course, we are born with exactly that anyway, so maybe we just need to
answer every question, help when it is asked, and avoid messing them up.

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jdietrich
I met Dr Mitra a couple of years ago, in relation to the first Hole in the
Wall experiments.

What struck me at the time was that he seemed to be quite mad. He seemed
effervescent with novelty, full of grand and strange ideas about the future of
education. At the time, he was working on a 'robot teacher' platform based
around a radio-controlled model, a webcam and an IP control interface. He
seemed quite confident that the next big thing in his work would be some sort
of robotic telepresence, capable of moving around the classroom and performing
simple tasks to completely supplant the need for a local teacher. The 'granny
cloud' is the product of a long succession of _very_ odd experiments.

It got me thinking about the so-called 'Nobel syndrome' - the tendency for
newly appointed Nobel laureates to make controversial statements about fields
unrelated to their own. Perhaps a certain detachment from reality is necessary
to make real progress. Perhaps academia needs to be an ivory tower, perhaps
it's for the best that scientists often have little sense of the practical
applications of their work. Thinking about my own work, I'm considering
instituting my own Googleesque 20% time and allocating a specific part of my
working hours to a project that I believe has no commercial relevance
whatsoever.

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sandGorgon
Somehow it reminds me of Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age>).

 _The Primer is intended to intellectually steer its reader toward a more
interesting life, and grow up to be an effective member of society. The Primer
also reacts to its owners' environment and teaches them what they need to know
to survive and grow._

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bh23ha
Some times when I think about what it would be like to be stupefyingly rich, I
think about all the money super rich people have given universities. And then
I think the real way to make a HUGE difference would be to start a huge self-
learning thing.

It would be _like_ a university except it would really be up to the students
to learn what ever and how much ever of it they wanted, and the autodidact-
versity would just provide the venue and the books and the internet
connection.

I also think that any certification that comes out of this process would be
there only if a student wants it. And the student would decide what level of
certification they care to try and get. And much like a Ph.D. thesis defence,
a committee would take an adversarial position to the student and if the
student successfully defends what they've learned, they would get a shiny
certificate of some kind.

Or maybe all will just hinge on a student contributing something to human
knowledge by publishing a scientific paper which gets _cited_ by someone. Only
if your paper got cited do get the right to call yourself a... something what
ever.

Something like that.

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MarinaMartin
Anyone know how to sign up as a SOLE volunteer? Ironically, I cannot seem to
find the answer via a web search.

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stretchwithme
Maybe someone at Mitra's Hole in the Wall education project can help. Here's
the contact info:

<http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/contactus.aspx>

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ajays
FTA: "In 2006, Dr. Mitra moved to England, became a professor of educational
technology at Newcastle University,. . . "

This saddened me. Now, don't get me wrong: he's free to move whereever he
feels like; I'm not upset at him. But it would nice if the smartest people in
developing countries didn't move to cushy western universities/think-tanks,
and stayed where they grew up to enrich everyone around them.

~~~
tomjen3
Why should he stay behind? What does he owe to the people of the state of
India? If already gave them far more than they would get from most of the poor
people.

~~~
deepu_256
It is not about owing anything to the people of India. It is about owing
himself the pleasure and satisfaction of making his homeland - the place where
he was born and the place where he grew up - a better place.

~~~
tomjen3
He grew up on Earth. He is making it a better place. Why settle with just
improving India? Why not the world.

~~~
ajays
Simple: because India is a developing country? It needs all the help it can
get?

