Skype Grannies

Retired teachers are skyping children in India, reading them stories, according to the Guardian.

Last year in Education Guardian Professor Sugata Mitra appealed for volunteers in the UK to read stories over the internet to children in Hyderabad. "When I last visited India, I asked the children what they would most like to use Skype [the internet telephone service] for. Surprisingly, they said they wanted British grandmothers to read them fairytales – they'd even worked out that between them they could afford to pay £1 a week out of their own money," Mitra said.

In the future, Mitra wants to create a "cloud" of working and retired teachers as a resource for children all around the world to tap into. He has teamed up with distance-learning company ICS and, in India, hundreds of children are now learning from "Skype grannies".

He is now looking for experienced maths and science teachers to work with students in Hyderabad.

What a great way to use the skills of retired teachers.

This post is the first I have written by using scribefire, a firefox addon which allows you to blog within the firefox browser.  So far, so good.