Ted Video: Sugata Mitra-Can kids teach themselves?

Remoteness and the quality of education: Sugata Mitra discovered the correlation to why standard test scores went down the more remote a community is, was in direct proportion with teachers wanting to move to urban areas - the more remote the community, the higher percentage of the teachers in those areas wanting to move closer to town. This tells me that when teachers are unhappy, their feelings are reflected in their ability to be effective teachers. I'm not surprised that teacher satisfaction affects performance, but it was interesting that so many teachers - 65% - were not happy living/teaching in remote areas. I would like to know more about why this is too.

I was facinated with Sugata Mitra's additional research called "The Hole in the Wall." He found that even children who had never seen a computer, nor spoken English, were able to do both just by experimenting and teaching each other - after 3 months with no adult help, they could speak 200 words that were computer related. For example: file, exit, save ... They were also using these words in their normal speech. This tells me that children need more opportunities for discovery learning to build/construct their knowledge, and that teachers should never take all the credit for what students are learning.