Actor Educator Psychologist Historian

I have been spending some time lately watching TED: Ideas worth spreading, talks and thinking about them. First off for those who don’t know TED is : TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. (from TED)

It is a conference and now a website where there are talks and discussions about different topics. I have been watching several on the uses of statistics, education, creativity, the AIDS epidemic, and a few other topics.

If nothing else these are thought provoking talks that one should listen to and grapple with even if it not one’s topic area. I am not a mathy person but I found the talks on statistics wonderful.

First off the speakers are very talented speakers and in way each one of these talks is a performance which I highly respect them on that level. Every one I have watched has been from someone who was able to make a heady and difficult subject interesting and accessible.

Now I am wondering how some of these talks and ideas could be brought into the classroom as a teacher. Some of the obiovus uses I can think of is to show this video or this video to those students who are being ill served by the traditional school system. (I am thinking artists and writers… or anyone who has talents outside of the traditional school subjects.)

But why limit it there? Why not challenge students to watch some talks on subjects that interest them and then to create a talk of their own? Just because a high school student is “just” a student doesn’t mean that they cannot come up with their own ideas and present them in a talk format. I would love to hear from any teachers  who have done this or a similar activity, or one who would like to try, and hear how that goes. A project such as that would combine many different talents, first off research, critical thinking, public speaking, and writing skills to name a few. Why aren’t we challenging students to do this already?

If we expect our children/students to be the future and come up with new ideas to save and change the world we need to equip them to do so. We need to give them practice at coming up with these kinds of ideas, we need to give them experience at this type of thinking. We cannot expect our students to think outside the box (though even thinking outside the box has become a buzzword that has lost it’s meaning…) if we don’t challenge them to do so?