1 million dollar TED prize for 'Hole In The Wall' education project

Sugata Mitra, an Indian innovator in the education field, has been awarded the $1 million TED Prize for his bold idea in making computer-based education more accessible to children. Mitra, an education technology professor at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom, said he will use the prize, awarded by TED, an annual global ideas conference, to launch a global initiative for self-directed learning that builds on his discovery.

TED called Mitra’s "Hole In The Wall" project an “innovative and bold efforts towards advancing learning for children". Mitra and his colleagues on this project dug a hole in a wall near a Delhi slum in 1999. The team then installed a web-enabled computer and left it there. The project’s aim was to show that children can learn almost anything without the need for a classroom environment or a mentor or teacher.