Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University and previously a Visiting Professor at MIT.

He is at the forefront of a new approach to education which challenges how we teach today's children in a technological age.

His “Hole in the Wall” experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they’re motivated by curiosity and peer interest.

In 1999, Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there with a hidden camera filming the area.

Almost immediately, children from the slum began playing with the computer and in the process taught each other how to use it and get online.

The findings challenged some of the key assumptions of formal education, demonstrating that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity could result in learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge.

Further research showed the importance of an encouraging adult in the educational environment and as a result the Granny Cloud was born.