It is a common belief that the future of education is tightly connected to technology. Tech companies are now willingly investing in various education-related projects. One of the most interesting of them is called School in the Cloud and it is backed by Microsoft.
The idea for the project came from Sugata Mitra, a professor of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University. Mitra saw that self-organized learning through Internet-connected computers and teamwork could be very effective educational method for children. That inspired the creation of the SOLE concept, which stands for Self Organized Learning Environment.
Microsoft’s new School in the Cloud platform will allow anyone anywhere to start a cloud-based learning environment. It works in very simple manner. Students only need to be given a task or a question on which to work in different groups. To reach the answer, kids rely on the advantages offered by modern technology and group discussions. The program will enable them to use tools like Bing to search for information, Office to present what they have learnt and even Skype with which they can connect to volunteer teachers.
According to Mitra, this strategy can successfully increase the pace with which students learn new material. One of the reasons is that children are much more engaged in classes when they use the SOLE method. In addition, they feel they are in control and they do not feel under pressure that they might fail. Also, kids have the chance to explore tasks and questions in various ways.
The combination of all of these factors motivates students to arrive at their own conclusions.
Microsoft’s School in the Cloud projects illustrates that technology has a lot of hidden potential that is just waiting to be found. That is why Mitra is hoping that governments will also join Microsoft’s efforts to make self-organized learning and cloud-based schools more accessible for children all over the world. Until that happens, however, anyone can take advantage to the company’s School in the Cloud platform which is now officially available on the web.
