How software that learns as it teaches is upgrading Brazilian education

Teaching algorithms aim to change Brazilian education for ever - but where does the teacher fit into the classroom of tomorrow?

It's 10am on a sunny November day in Rio de Janeiro, and the scene inside the classroom is one of quiet application. At a dozen or so hexagonal tables, pupils work on laptops or in exercise books. At one of the clusters, a teacher sits to help a pupil, while another talks to a group of students at the far end of the room - a large salon in which almost half of the pupils at the school are seated. The rest of the school's 213 students, aged between 11 and 14, are busy elsewhere in the building, which includes six small, more traditional classrooms.

Through the windows that run the length of the classroom, dark blue sea is visible in the distance, past green hills, while above the school Rocinha favela surges up the mountain in a clutter of concrete and peach-coloured brick.