Nominated by: Jeff McClellan
Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University. His idea of the Self Organized Learning Environment (SOLE) began in 1999, when his Hole in the Wall experiments revealed that given the right circumstances, children can teach each other almost anything. In 2014, Newcastle University launched SOLE Central, a research facility and a global hub for SOLE practitioners. SOLE is becoming part of mainstream education worldwide and increasing opportunities for thousands of people. One specific example is START SOLE. Inspired by Sugata’s SOLE concept, Start SOLE has established a base of over 10,000 educators (predominantly K-12) living in 90 countries. These educators work over 2,400 schools, and the STARTSOLE experience has reached an estimated 400,000 K-12 students.
