http://youtu.be/86x-u-tz0MA
Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat Pray Love, remarks on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. How can we extend this idea to school-aged kids?
This talk, part of the TED Radio Hour is part of a collaboration between NPR and TED.
Science teacher Paul Anderson says video games teach kids that failure is okay — that it’s part of the learning process.
“Trying something, failing, trying something again, that’s something we aspire to see in kids,” he says.
So he created a class around the premise of a video game — without a video game. Anderson honestly talks about what worked and what didn’t. Check out how it turned out.
In 2006, Sir Ken Robinson presented a TED talk about the importance of nurturing creativity in education. That video has been viewed more than eight million times.
Just a few weeks ago, Robinson presented a video TEDx talk in London, addressing how population growth and technology are fueling huge changes in education, and the imperative to make all schools progressive. He argues that the principles of what’s considered “alternative” education are those that should be applied to mainstream education.
It’s hard to argue with these ideas.
Sixth-grader Thomas Suarez has taken the Web by storm the last couple of weeks. The YouTube video of his TEDx talk in Manhattan Beach, Calif., has more than 445,000 views. Check out how he amazed the crowd by talking about how he created two apps: Bustin Jieber, a Whac-a-Mole for Justin Bieber and Earth Fortune, which shows different colors of the Earth based on the region’s fortune.
Did he learn to make the app in school? Nope, he came up with it by playing with the iPhone software development kit.
“These days, students know a little bit more than teachers, with technology,” he said, adding “sorry” when the crowd laughed.”Educators should recognize this resource and make good use of it.”
[Via Good]
Check out Gever Tulley’s TED Talk about the importance of tinkering. Read more about Brightworks, Tulley’s San Francisco school, which opens this fall.
Learning from current math textbooks is the equivalent of watching hours of “Two and a Half Men”: meaningless, says math teacher Dan Meyer at last year’s TED Talk in New York. Students are taught to solve formulaic solutions to formulaic problems without any real-world context. Check out Meyers’ vision of what learning math should be.
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MindShift reports on technology and education from KQED in San Francisco
