Went to the Learning Futures conference at work today. Mainly interesting and will be blogging it for the work blog, but won't bore you here.

One of the talks was of interest to anyone who's intrigued by how learning happens.

Professor Mitra talked about his "hole in the wall" experiments where he put a computer and touch pad into the wall in a slum in India to see what would happen. The initial experiment was done in 1999 and has been repeated many times since. The computer showed the alta vista search engine, and basically within a few hours of the computer being installed, a local lad of about 12 had figured out how to browse despite never having used a computer nor being able to speak/read english.

A later experiment, using the same concept, in a remote village where no-one could speak english, showed that within three months the local children had taught themselves english in order to use the computer. It's all pretty amazing!