The School in the Cloud project is a series of learning labs across India and the UK where children can embark on intellectual adventures by engaging and connecting with information and mentoring online and bring SOLEs (Self-Organized Learning Environments) to their own communities. It is now managed by SOLE Central at Newcastle University, a global hub for SOLE research and practice directed by Sugata Mitra.
The School in the Cloud platform was originally launched at the 2014 TED conference to help accelerate this research by helping educators — be they teachers, parents or community leaders — to run their own SOLEs and to contribute to the global experiment by sharing their experiences with others.
A Self-Organised Learning Environment, or SOLE, can exist anywhere there is a computer, Internet connection, and students who are ready to learn. Within a SOLE students are given the freedom to learn collaboratively using the internet. An educator poses a Big Question and students form small groups to find an answer.
During a SOLE session students are free to move around, change groups and share information at any time. Towards the end of a session they have the opportunity to share what they learned with the whole group. SOLE sessions are characterised by discovery, sharing, spontaneity and limited teacher intervention.
