Teach yourself

Something is happening in Bhaumau - a rural village in India's populous state of Uttar Pradesh where parents spend most of their time working in agriculture and as day labourers. Children, with no guidance from adults, are forming learning groups and with nothing more than a tablet computer preloaded with educational videos, stories and games, they are learning English and conducting science experiments. In the first three months of playing with the tablets there has been, according to the project's monitoring data, an 11% increase in pupils' core academic skills such as reading in children's mother tongue, reading and speaking in English, and science. Maybe even more important, children are figuring out how to navigate the digital world to find out answers to their questions and are more confident about speaking up. This is a radically different approach to using technology to advance learning.