Minimally Invasive Education

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Minimally Invasive Education (or MIE) is a term used to describe how children learn in unsupervised environments. It was derived from an experiment done by Sugata Mitra in 1999 often called The Hole in the Wall. Children in an Indian slum were given access to a state of the art, Internet-connected computer embedded into a boundary wall. The children taught themselves to use the computer and the Internet. This and subsequent experiments showed that groups of children can learn to use a computer on their own irrespective of who or where they are. In order for this to happen, computers must be provided to them in a safe, public location, such as a playground, that they associate with free time and play. Recent work in 2004 shows that, in addition to learning how to use the computer, the children also learn many other things, that their school scores improve, and that they have to learn to work with each other.