School in the Cloud

‘If you suggest something to a child it always precludes [what] that child could have done if you had not suggested it’ – Sugata Mitra

TED-Prize winner Sugata Mitra pioneers a form of education where children – specifically those in under-privileged areas of the world where schools are sparse – can teach themselves a curriculum through computer-based learning. The latest film by Jerry Rothwell follows Mitra as he explores the possibilities of his theories, meets the teachers and students inspired by his approach, and opens the ‘School in the Cloud‘ classroom in the rural village of Korakati, India.

Mitra is not a trained educator, but a computer physicist. When he worked for a tech company with his offices next to a slum, he decided to build a computer in the wall to see if local children could get far with it. He witnessed behaviour that he attributed to a physics ‘edge of chaos’ theory: a completely disorderly process of group education.

This documentary maps out his theorem and sensitively records the lives of the local Korakati families for whom Mitra’s idea might be a way out.