SOLE STORIES

At TED2013, TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra invited parents and educators everywhere to help kids tap into their innate sense of wonder and embark on intellectual adventures together. Have you conducted a SOLE in your school, home, or community? Submit your videos, photos, quotes, links, & stories here. Share your SOLE stories, photos, quotes, links, and videos here. Please submit your name and email (if you are open to us following up with you) at the end of your post. We won't post your e-mail. If you have any questions, please email [email protected]. Help reinvent the way kids learn and learn more about Sugata's TED Prize wish.

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Success4All has added something new to the SOLE experience. They have started to give the children and young people mystery questions disguised as QR-codes. Once the QR-code is scanned the question will be revealed, but without the vowels. As a way to slowly reveal that question and for a warm up to the session, the students will first have to add the vowels to get the question - which they will then begin to answer in the usual SOLE way.

Learn more about what Success4All is up to here: http://www.s4a.org.uk/learning-hubs-clubs/

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In late March 2014 Richmond Primary Senior School were privileged to share our SOLE session on 'What makes us human?' with Sugata Mitra via Skype at TED Talks Vancouver. This short video was created by grade 5/6 students to share their experiences of Self Organized Learning Environments and connecting to others around the world using Skype.

-Patrick O'Sullivan, @possa11

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SOLE Project as a Capstone Experience

We have launched a SOLE project with our eighth grade students that is functioning as a capstone experience. It's been fascinating to watch the students adjust to the freedom and responsibilities of the SOLE. Engagement has picked up on the part of the students. The teachers are growing as well in this environment of observing, not directing, the students. We're seeing students in a different light. The project has dedicated time each week for the remainder of the semester with presentations occurring in May. We're excited to see where the students take their learning.

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KIndergarten Start Doing SOLE!

                       Jennifer Weales, a Kindergarten teacher in my school, has been exploring the world of wonder with her class. She is working to extend the natural wonder of childhood into the classroom. The students have explored space by working through centres that help them ask questions about space. The other day a Blue Jay stopped by on the tree outside the window. The class spent some time observing and then asking questions about the Blue Jay. Why is it blue? How do birds fly?What does it eat? How does it find food in the winter? Why doesn't it fly south?  She answered their questions patiently encouraging them all the time to tell what they think.

Since September my Grade 5 class and her kindergarten class have been reading buddies. This was done to foster a comfort level among the students in both classes. In January we are going to start doing Wonder Buddies. Working together the Kindergarten and Grade 5 students will research answers to questions the Kindergartners have. We will be using SOLE as a basis for this research. The grade 5`s will lead the research, discuss the findings and prepare the Kindergarten student to speak in front of the group about the topic. In doing this their wonder will have a great audience listening to them and prepare them for more investigations on their own. 

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Sole investigation for Language Arts

8th grade Self Organizing Learning Environment.  "How could a Poem change History?" Other than the slide, the question, and the access to the internet, the teacher gave no assistance in any of their presentations.  All information was discovered independently.  

http://youtu.be/P522Gj6MiZM

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Why Classes should do SOLEs - A Persuasive Essay

This is a persuasive essay written by Princess Rebullo, a fifth grade student in Mr. Jamison's class at Lawrence Intermediate School in Lawrenceville, NJ.

Do you ever wake up in the morning and think “School again?” You go to school and talk to your best friends. Then you look around and see how you can’t talk to everybody. Self Organized Learning Environments, also known as SOLEs, are a perfect way to work and cooperate with people in your class.  They get the students’ minds thinking and learning about new questions they’ve never really thought about.

Learning and thinking more really helps your mind get going. SOLEs will help you leave your comfort zone and think outside of the box. Instead of your teacher teaching you a lesson on what the topic is about and you finding more research about it, you get a tough question and find all the information you need for it. Then we make a PowerPoint and present. SOLEs also teach us how to be confident when your speaking, and to be loud and clear.

Big questions can be hard and challenging. Sometimes when we first hear the question, you think this is really confusing, but when you start to get information you realize how easy it actually is. Hearing a big SOLE question makes you think how you never really thought before. Like say you got a question about mudfish and how they help build houses.  You think to yourself, Mudfish? What are mudfish? But as you get to research about it, you find things you've never learned before.

The last reason classrooms should do SOLEs is to communicate and cooperate with all your classmates. You will need to know each other in order to work together. That’s important because you can learn from each other. Plus you’ll be with those kids for a whole year, so you might have to learn how to collaborate with them.  

SOLEs aren't just big questions.  They’re also a way to work and get to know people, and find strategies to answer complex questions. Throughout the process you can also find the way you learn best. I encourage you to try and do SOLEs in your classroom!

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Eric at Jenkins Middle School conducted this SOLE with his 12-14 year olds. His question: How could a poem change history?

"Students were given three days, 50 minute classes, and were allowed to use computers and smart phones or tablets.

"Many students simply googled the question. However, this moved many into research about what a poem is, the history of the word itself, and the nature of poetry in general. Some moved quickly into their own interests when they discovered that songs are poetry set to music."

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Expanding the SOLE Community

Thank you for sharing and helping expand the SOLE Community, Trina! We hope as you expand your blog, you continue to post here, and use #TEDSOLE. Stay tuned for updates at ted.com/prize.

"Having read about SOLE and already being a believer in child directed/inquiry learning, I have committed to do SOLE work with my 2 boys (aged 6 and 8) this school year as a home learning initiative (we are in New Zealand so our year starts in February)

As a part of this, they want to blog about their SOLE work and share it with children in other parts of the world via the blog, skype etc... and hopefully start conversations with others which may lead to even more exciting places than they can get to on their own and truly help them become world wide, motivated learners.

So if you are interested in following our journey, we will be using expanding our blog site we created for our trip to the USA last year at tozontour.wordpress.com and I would love you hear from anyone (home or school) either through there or here..."

-Trina, New Zealand

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I am proud to share with you that I have conducted my first SOLE session successfully at my centre.

  The 1st topic I tried: Can animals think?

Emily Lai

Selangor, Malaysia 

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History of Numbers

I've been using SOLE explorations with a small class of 4th and 5th graders.  The theme of the class is to find out where our numbers came from.  Last class they had an especially successful SOLE on Babylonian numbers.  Not only did they discover how the base 60 system works.  They also found out that the Babylonians could predict eclipses and that we don't yet know how they watered the Hanging Gardens.

Some students are taking the class because they are super interested in learning more about math.  Others are taking it more because their parents signed them up for it.  One girl, Emily, in the latter group was clearly reluctant to attend the first day.  By the middle of the very first SOLE session she was a leader in one of the groups.  Another student exclaimed at one point, "Emily is figuring it out and then she will explain it to us!"

Another really interesting result of the self-organization was their reaction to one student who had not been as focused as the others during the first exploration.  He watched panda videos and one point instead of researching about Chinese numbers.  The group excluded him and gave him a hard time.  This resulted in him working extra hard during the second day we did SOLE to show the rest how focused he could be.  I love this method because the group keeps each other on task while at the same time developing social skills.

The questions we've used so far:

How did ancient Chinese people do math?  (this led them into mistakenly thinking a modern multiplication algorithm was from ancient China, but they learned so much in figuring out how the algorithm worked that I still declare it a success!)

Who were the Babylonians and how did they write numbers?

Where and when did people start using Hindu-Arabic numerals?

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Adapting the SOLE Method for adult learners

Peter Palme of Switzerland adapted to SOLE method with adult learners. He found that research was more accelerated in a group, and that “learning is high, fun, engaged, integrating, interactive and allows to get into a subject quickly.” He also observed that groups with both experts and non-experts on subjects helped each group learn better. For the experts, it was a helpful exercise to have to explain things in an easily digestible way.

Peter Palme, Switzerland

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The interaction of kids and technology seems to be feared by parents and teachers alike because of the "unknown" factor. Even myself, as someone who is a confident technology user, felt unsure about allowing 7-8 year olds to roam the Internet freely. We were quickly presented with a handful of teachable moments - how to tell if something online is an advertisement, how to ask new questions to find the answer to a bigger question, and when to ask an adult for help - all valuable lessons!

I chose this picture because this particular group was able to explain everything they had written very well, demonstrating their understanding, and were nearly breathless with excitement when teaching the class about gravity afterwards.

Megan Bacchus

Guelph, Canada

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In this SOLE video, Maria Zapata asks the Colegio publico La navata why the sun exists. 

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School in the Cloud Launch in Newcastle

Launch of the first of seven "School in the Cloud" labs in Newcastle. Thank you to George Stephenson High School!

Photo via Anna Verghese

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Thanks to Antonella Broglia of TEDxYouth @ Madrid for sharing this great SOLE video!

In this video, SEK El Castillo school teacher Jorge Moreno asks the big question: "Can you kill a goat by staring at it?" 

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SOLE Method in Action

"There are some days in this job that are definitely stand out days – and today was one of those.  Makes me want to beg you to put me back in the classroom :-)

The SOLE lesson today (why are there no mammals bigger than the blue whale) was absolutely fantastic.  We had about 40 of our kids and multiple teachers present to experience this – it was so exciting to see our students sharing with students across the ocean.  This will absolutely be just the beginning!"

RHS Principle, Ms. Losso

United Kingdom

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SOLE with STORY CONCEPT

We started working on SOLE in Science & Social Studies with 4th & 5th grade students. Children themselves researched on topics from their syllabus, they created colourful worksheet with having fun, they know their topics very well now with ‘SOLE’, they are more interested in doing their studies and also find SOLE very interesting.

Some feedbacks from the students stating, that they feel that they are playing when they were actually learning.

So we decided to trail SOLE with a story concept. 

Exercise:

Facilitator Started narrating a short story on ‘Chandra Gupta Maurya’ and asked children to prepare their own learning material (please find attached images of the learning material made by children ).

Moreover few group were not still satisfied with their work and so they went home did a bit of research and took print outs of the topics.

Rest of the groups could not do the same as they were from a remote area(villages) and financially not too sound. But when they came back to school it was noticed that they were sharing their views on the same.

Teachers & Parents are now tensed as the children are more smarter and can ask any questions for which the teachers and parents may not have an answer for. While Students know it all.              

The principle of Dr. Sugata Mitra works incredibly well.

-Kiran