Colloquium Minimally invasive education: a progress report on the “hole-in-the-wall” experiments Sugata Mitra Centre for Research in Cognitive Systems, NIIT Limited, Synergy Building IIT Campus, Haus Khas, New Delhi 110 016 India. Email SugataM@niit.com; Website:http://www.niitholeinthewall.com Introduction It has been observed that children are able to learn to use computers and the Internet on their own, irrespective of their social, cultural or economic backgrounds (Mitra and Rana, 2001). These experiments, first conducted in 1999 were labelled by the press as “hole-in-the-wall” experiments (see, for example, Padmakar and Porter, 2001), because the experimental arrangement consisted of computers built into openings in brick walls in public spaces. In what follows, we describe the work done subsequent to these initial experiments, the results obtained and some, possible, conclusions. Initial experiments The first experiment reported in our earlier publication was conducted in Kalkaji, a suburb of New Delhi, India. The experiment consisted of installing a computer connected to the Internet and embedded into a brick wall near a slum. We observed that most of the slum children were able to use the computer to browse, play games, create documents and paint pictures within a few days. The results have, since then, been reported in detail, elsewhere (see, for example, Mitra 2000 and Wullenweber 2001). Subsequent experiments Shivpuri The Kalkaji experiment raised some doubts about whether the children had got inputs from computer literate adults in the vicinity. We repeated the experiment in the town of Shivpuri (state of Madhya Pradesh in central India) in May, 1999. Here we observed boys acquiring the skills required to do the tasks described above through an explo- ration, discovery and the peer tutoring process. The area was unsafe, no girls were observed to use the computer, and the experiment was closed after a few months. Madantusi So far, the experiments had been conducted in cities and towns. In June, 2000, we were able to repeat the process in the village of Madantusi (state of Uttar Pradesh, in north- © British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 2003. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 34 No 3 2003 367–371