ORGANIZATION
School in the Cloud
Mitra's TED Prize-funded project (2013–2020) establishing seven Self-Organised Learning Environment labs across India and the UK—physical spaces where children investigate beautiful questions with internet access, peer collaboration, and Granny Cloud encouragement, no teachers required.
The School in the Cloud was the institutional embodiment of Mitra's pedagogical framework, funded by his 2013 TED Prize ($1 million) and built as a proof-of-concept that self-organized learning could operate as the primary educational model rather than a supplement to conventional schooling. Seven SOLE labs were established: five in India (New Delhi, Gocharan, Korakati, Chandrakona, Kallikuppam) and two in the UK (Killingworth, Gateshead). Each lab was a designed environment—computers arranged to facilitate group collaboration, internet connectivity, video infrastructure for the Granny Cloud, and minimal adult supervision (a facilitator who posed questions and encouraged but did not teach). Children attended by choice rather than compulsion, investigated questions that interested them, worked in self-organizing groups, and presented their findings to peers and visiting observers. The project ran from 2013 to 2020, producing extensive documentation: thousands of hours of video records, learning-outcome assessments, comparative studies with conventional classrooms, and qualitative ethnographies of how children's engagement evolved over months and years. The results were