SOLE: Let learning happen

Conventional schooling based on content-delivery has become obsolete in the face of the need for human connection which the pandemic has made evident. Educators need new pedagogies which are child-driven and supported by technology. We propose using SOLEs (Self-Organized Learning Environments): a space where children, families and communities can come together to discover and explore self-organised learning.The objective for SOLE is to provide educators with a tool to help seamlessly incorporate inquiry learning into the natural classroom/public space environment without any special preparation or extensive training. It aims to inspire people to become creative and curious problem-solvers with the confidence and skills needed to tap into the global network of tools available to them, as well as the knowledge of peers and educators. By doing so, groups can learn, engage in dialogue across differences and collaborate to create flourishing communities and a more equal and connected world.

Children and youth in Colombia are clearly the most affected by the pandemic and violence. Public schools and libraries, which were safe places for many of them, have been closed for more than a year without a clear timing for total re-opening. Most families lack internet connection and devices at home, which is highlighting precarious or non-existent remote learning. It is said that 42% of the country has no connection to the internet. This becomes even more drastic in rural communities where over 97% have no internet or very poor connection. Added to that, the public debate about opening schools and higher education does not include the voices of children and youth. Conventional schooling based on content-delivery has become obsolete in the face of the need for human connection which the pandemic has made evident. Educators need new pedagogies which are child-driven and supported by mixed technology. Re-thinking the new school for the pandemic and after the pandemic needs spaces for interaction and self-guided learning.

SOLE (Self-Organized Learning Environments) is a disruptive learning methodology that empowers communities to develop autonomy, collaboration, deep learning, and most important of all, to solve real-life problems! A SOLE session is simple. You need a space (in-person, virtual or hybrid) with learners, a few computers with internet access and Big Questions. In a SOLE people self-organize to find answers to questions without the need for a teacher. In this intellectual adventure, learning emerges from the participants’ interest, developing life-skills like collaboration, expression and communication, creativity and innovation, critical thinking, self-direction, technological fluency.

Together with SOLE is the Granny concept. Research has shown that having limited intervention provided by an encouraging, un-trained, remote facilitator can promote thriving learning processes. A Granny's role includes provoking curiosity, asking questions, listening carefully, and providing a warm environment. The Granny Cloud is a network of volunteers from all walks of life who connect remotely to SOLEs to co-facilitate and provide participants with the opportunity to experience worlds far removed from their own.

Our work is inspired by the work of 2013 TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra who’s work in India leverages internet technologies to enable self-managed learning.

Our main focus is the disenfranchised: children, youth, families, educators and their communities all around Colombia, Latam and the world. We prioritize outreach to  indigenous, afro-descendant and rural communities, displaced, ex-combatants, migrants and people with disabilities and low-income urban communities.

Our mindset and approach is inclusive so we build bridges with many enabling constituencies as well. For most of these communities public education is poor. We have been engaging with these communities for over 5 years co-designing how SOLEs can be used in their public spaces with scarce connectivity. For example, we have setup SOLE as a nationwide program in public libraries where communities can gather to learn how to learn in groups using the internet as well as the library materials. Most of these communities face challenges which involve learning from their context, their needs and their interests to be able to promote self-management and self-organization. We allow them to ask the questions that previously were not heard, and motivate their curiosity.

Learning to ask questions and working in groups to answer them allows not only for the development of 21st century skills, but to actually explore emergent possibilities which formal planned curricula usually evades.We have accompanied farmers and FARC ex-combatants who ask: how can we make our crops more healthy and productive? Children in schools have found passion for topics like science, math and history connecting it to their local knowledge through SOLEs asking: How do living things affect our planet? Is it possible to rid the world of bullying? Do warring nations advance their technology quicker than peaceful ones?

We have also used SOLE to create nation-wide conversations with questions like: What kind of future do we want to create? Are we on track? What action is needed to bridge the gap?

A SOLE takes a single class period in a public space (classroom, library or virtual call) and begins by having learners, organized in small groups  (3 to 5 on shared devices), consider an open-ended question provided by the educator or learners themselves. They research the question on internet-connected devices while preparing a presentation. Then, each group presents to the whole group and discussion follows. This process is iterated weekly with a different question. StartSOLE is a technology platform that facilitates the process of seamlessly incorporating inquiry learning into the natural classroom space environment without any special preparation or extensive training.

With over 20 years of research from PhD Sugata Mitra, powered by proven  interventions using public infrastructure in Colombia to over 450,000 participants in 2500+ public schools, libraries and internet kiosks in the last 7 years;  as well as tech-based deployment in the US to over 10,000 teachers; d we have been able to prove how to "let learning happen" in very diverse contexts (from formal public education to community-empowerment) in an effective way. Such is the case that different strategies ranging from in-person to remote teacher training as well as training trainers, to the design and deployment of the StartSOLE app have allowed thousands of educators around Colombia and the world to implement SOLEs in their classrooms, public spaces or virtual settings.

SOLE is the future of learning: It is not about teaching but about letting learning happen. SOLE is where children, families and communities come together to discover and explore self-organised learning. Frankly we are disrupting the model of school where learners are passive recipients of content curated by others. SOLE validates that the right design and supports, such as technology, the internet  and grannies, unleash people’s inherent curiosity and creativity. People are motivated to pursue answers to their own Big Questions. New questions invite deeper learning and skills. The joy of learning turns SOLE into a lifelong habit.    

We engage the people who need it the most to help them claim their voice, their agency and community spirit to solve their own problems, leveraging new technologies. We view root cause as claiming power to make your life and community better in the context of your emerging realities. SOLE is part of a global movement to use technology to empower groups to learn, collaborate and act without being hampered by the bureaucracy and politics of institutions.  We imagine SOLE groups as ubiquitous with people of all ages and backgrounds pursuing answers to the Big Questions they deem most important.  As a global movement, we envision networks of networks learning across boundaries and differences to bridge people and ideas. The tipping point in Colombia and globally is about better solutions created from the ground up and it is also about the power of networks to accelerate progress.

The Internet in public spaces and the power of groups of people's inherent curiosity is our core technology. Available devices such as computers with big screens to share and work together in small groups are ideal. However we have adapted to use tablets or smartphones as it is what people have widely available. Our technology includes:

1) SOLE Toolkit: to accompany educators to implement SOLEs on their own. ( https://cutt.ly/ZnHI9dU for English, www.solecolombia.org for Spanish).

2) The Granny Cloud: an independent team of volunteers that reaches out to children with limited educational resources around the globe and provides them with the opportunity to experience worlds far removed from their own. The role of the Granny includes provoking curiosity, asking questions, listening attentively and providing warm encouragement.

3) StartSOLE: a simple, free app for educators to facilitate Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs) in their classrooms or public spaces with internet (i.e libraries, internet kiosks, community centers, etc). It allows educators to 1) self-train about SOLE, 2) plan  SOLE sessions, 3)review their SOLE session keeping track of rubrics, and 4) explore a dynamic Big Questions database. It also includes StartSOLE Virtual: a simple synchronous open source videoconferencing platform integrated directly into StartSOLE. Virtual SOLEs allow to easily invite learners to join with just a link (no extra software required); simple, detailed security permissions to ensure safety and focus of learners; easily create and push them to breakout rooms for small group collaboration and other tools for formative assessment.

Our work (Self-Organised Learning Environments), is inspired by the work of 2013 TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra (PhD) - who’s work in India and UK leverages internet technologies to enable self-managed learning. Explore his TED Talks and The School in the Cloud Documentary.

His life-long research is published in multiple academic sources. We recommend reading: Mitra, Sugata & Kulkarni, Suneeta & Stanfield, James. (2016). Learning at the Edge of Chaos: Self-Organising Systems in Education. The Palgrave International Handbook of Alternative Education. 227-239. 10.1057/978-1-137-41291-1_15.

For information on various aspects of SOLE explore StartSOLE Youtube channel

SOLE is widely used in Colombia. In this report from SOLE Colombia's 2020 project with United Nations Colombia called UN75+SOLE you can find detailed locations, data and stories regarding the latest use of SOLE to open a nationwide dialogue in Colombia regarding what kind of future we want to create. Previous reports show a specific emphasis on skills development. 

Finally the StartSOLE app produce realtime data regarding educators, SOLEs and locations which are being planned and reported through the app. There are currently 187 schools/communities using the app, 292 educators signed up and 706 SOLE sessions reported in Colombia alone. StartSOLE is also widely used in the US, Argentina, México, Chile and recently, Peru. 

The learner-driven use of the Internet will always introduce risks ranging from security to fake or inappropriate content. However, SOLEs themselves address and mitigate these risks by the nature of the environment they create. A computer used by groups of learners in a public space is a safe use of the Internet in the sense that working together on visible screens reduces accessing inappropriate or dangerous content, sources are peer-reviewed by the nature of a SOLE and critical-thinking skills are developed to be able to assess content together.

There is a risk, during Virtual SOLE, of hacking where individuals enter the videoconferencing tool uninvited. StartSOLE complies with all the necessary measures for children's privacy and protection required by US authorities.

In Colombia, since 2014, SOLE Colombia has trained over 4250 educators (teachers, librarians, internet kiosk administrators, community leaders and organisational champions) which have reported 419,739 participants in their SOLE sessions. Currently over 900 of these educators are still in contact with the SOLE Colombia team and over 350 of them are active members of the SOLE Colombia Community. 

Since the creation of the StartSOLE app a portion of this community has signed up and uses StartSOLE as a tool for planning, doing virtual SOLE and reviewing their sessions. Now, in Colombia specifically, we are planning to increase the use of the StarSOLE app as a means for scaling the SOLE methodology throughout the country together with teacher training and train-the-trainer models. We present the global numbers as well as we work in joint efforts with other SOLE teams around the world to transform the future of learning.

Current number: 278 Educators in Colombia  (34,000 SOLE Educators Globally)

Number for 2021: 1000 in Colombia (40,000 SOLE Educators Globally)

In 5 years: 25,000 in Colombia (250,000 SOLE Educators Globally)

These educators will then have direct impact on the Participants of the SOLEs which will in Colombia aim to be over 2 million in the next 5 years.

In SOLE Colombia we have 4 strategic priorities which set our impact goals for the next year:

1. Incidence: Massively enter the formal system (1. Ed 2. No-ed) permanently. Goal: Develop 1 nation-wide deployment in partnership with public and/or private institutions to take SOLE into the public media system to reach 200,000 participants.

2. Scale SOLE in other countries worldwide. Goal: Enter at least 1 African country and 1 Asian country with SOLE and train a group of 15 educators in each country.

3. Generate self-governance in the community so that it grows and nurtures in a self-managed way. Goal: 50 Educators from the community creating a self-managed community-led project.

4. Generate a SOLE system for areas without connectivity. Goal: Co-design with 5 communities and 5partners a menu of open-source solutions for communities to implement SOLE with scarce or no connectivity.

In 5 years, the goal is to reach 2 million people in the areas most affected by the internal conflict in Colombia as well as communities worldwide with similar conditions, and having a self-governed active community of 1000 Educators.

We are already achieving this year's objectives based on partnering and challenging our SOLE Colombia Community locally and worldwide. To achieve the 5-year goal we need to grow as an organization and network of networks to create exponential transformation supported by tech.

We measure:

1.  Number of individuals and communities who receive skills and knowledge to improve Internet use and new pedagogies using SOLE [though trainings, workshops, etc] 
2. Number of SOLE participants reported by SOLE educators ( including characteristics of the population)
3. Percentage of trainees who indicated an interest in further training/next steps 
4. Rubrics on 21st century skill development and behaviour changes reported by educators (I.E. Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Creativity, Communication, Self-direction, Global connection, Tech Fluency)
5. Number of SOLE sessions and Big Questions related to their contexts, topics, results and new questions
6. Testimonial qualitative feedback from SOLE experiences regarding skill development, community empowerment and leadership and general learning transformations.
7. Number and type of emerging actions from SOLE groups.

You can see examples of this in our our latest Conversation on the future of education,  Narrative of the Great Conversation about the Future and The voice of Colombia as infographics and visualisations of different data extracted from SOLE sessions.

We are a team of 4 full-time staff, 4 contractors (tech development and accounting), and a large community of volunteers and trained facilitators (1000+ Ambassadors and Grannies) which we hire or summon for specific projects.

SOLE Colombia is a small and powerful team of enthusiasts in education, design and technology who are constantly testing new ways of learning and relating using the Internet in ways never done before. Colombia was the first country in the world to do SOLE with a national government back in 2014. Our drive is to test how interdisciplinarity, education and creativity can change narratives of inequality and disconnectedness amongst humans as well as with the non-human world, inspite of how the current education system and capitalism perpetuate them.

SOLE Colombia’s founder is an economist, interaction designer, educator, electronic musician and dad. Working as an educator both at postgraduate and community level, and then as digital and innovation advisor and consultant in the public sector and the social sector, he builds solutions directly with the communities to nudge this system. 

Our project manager joined first as a granny back in 2017 when we piloted a Spanish-speaking Granny cloud. Recently, she has joined as staff adding her experience in the corporate sector to give a solid social business approach. Our communications lead has been giving SOLE Colombia the colourful brand which has allowed it to reach hundreds of thousands of participants nation/worldwide. Our finance head has a feel for connecting finance with purpose. 

Through SOLE we've bridged self-organization and self-management with practical ways of fostering it for those who need it the most through our SOLE Colombia Community which includes educators, librarians, community leaders, volunteers and partners from all walks of life.

SOLE Colombia is focused on inspiring large-scale and individual transformation through facilitation, conversation, inquiry and the sensible use of technology. SOLE Colombia's purpose is to allow for anyone to participate in living well together. In a diverse country as Colombia that means bridging gender, social classes, religious beliefs and ethnicities. 

We do so in the leadership team as we are a mixed group, mostly women, of very diverse backgrounds: local and foreign nationalities, multi-ethnic and openminded. Our founder is a Colombian-born national of Indian and Spanish parents. He is sensitized to First Nations and has worked specifically for their self-development. His sibling and her same sex-partner, have equally contributed to his growth in respect of understanding equality, gender and human rights issues. Our finance head self-defines herself as a feminist and has a powerful observation for equality. Our communications lead is religious and her amazonian spouse produce visual communication and design for inclusion and diversity. Our project manager is a mother and coach with a special feel for children. 

Our tangible goal is that once self-organized learning is the common narrative of education world-wide we will not need to push it forward. We want to be out of a job, so to speak.

We are growing and nurturing the SOLE Community, our self-organised community of SOLE enthusiasts world-wide whom are collectively hoisting this common vision of a more equitable and connected world to live well together by unleashing people’s potential for learning, dialogue and self-organized action. Everyone's invited!

This is the perfect timing for us to engage in this type of learning experience. The UN project validated our ability to scale with limited resources. This is a critical moment to build on the foundation of the half-a-million lives we have touched. We have built trust, community and desire for next steps.  We have a diverse network of partners but we simply do not have bandwidth to nurture them. We’ve benefited from excellent media. We are poised to dramatically accelerate our reach in Colombia and beyond. 

However,  we are stuck because we have failed to consolidate a constant resourced team; to have continuous collaboration with the government as government officials change and corruption (public and private) stagnates transformation; and to amplify our work prior to the 2020 UN partnership. All these challenges have taught us to adapt and reinvent in uncertainty, but we definitely want to learn from others: Solvers, networks/partners of the Solve and MIT.  

We do not know exactly what it is that we need to get to the next-level. Maybe we will know when we are there. What we can say, is that we sense we are going there now and the Solve community can help us get there.

We need a constant source of revenue as we have the networks of networks necessary to scale SOLE at a nation-wide level: this means we have access to the public institutions that could leaverage our solution to the general population with a focus on vulnerable communities, as well as other NGOs. The problem is they do not have the resources to hire us or what we do as it is so new and emergent.We would need a permanent source of funding which rarely occurs in the public sector as they do investment through open bids with pre-dertemined expenses. This doesn't allow for adaptability or innovation in the public sector.

We would like to partner with risk-sharing partners who understand the value of permanent design-test-redesign models and whom have a clear vision of wanting to transform the future of education and equality, such as the Ford Foundation, Ashoka o similar organisations. 

We would love to find a patron and philanthropist such as MacKenzie Scott or any other philanthropist part of The Giving Pledge network o similar.