TED+Talks

TED Talks go here

Sir Ken Robinson: Do Schools kill Creativity?

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In this Ted Talk Sir Ken Robinson outlines a critical problem modern educators face, why that problem arose, and why it is something that all educators need to be mindful of. As the title of the video suggests it is the opinion of Sir Robinson that modern public education is actually designed to diminish creativity (defined by him as the ability to come up with new, useful ideas across "brain segments") in favor of developing "productive skills". Schools came to this practice in the 19th century as a response to demands placed on society by the second industrial revolution for engineers, sciences, and professors and by equating academic performance with intelligence. That is, schools began to "strip mine" students for those actually had a very acute, focused skill set and discarding those who did not. This is a problem, in his eyes, because it is designed for a system that is not compatable with the future of the world. That is, the future of the world is not simply in who has the biggest head on their head transportation unit (body) but on those who can come up with the most creative/innovative ideas and these ideas are increasing in value.

Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology

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This is unreal. In this presentation Pranav Mistry outlines his development of augmented reality or "SixthSense" technology which enables users to better interact with the digital world. The presentation is largely a demonstration where Pranav shows what his technology is capable of from understanding the user's hand gestures to reading and interpreting objects that it sees. This write-up really fails to grasp the impact of this technology and what potential it gives for our future and for the future of digital interaction. A must watch Ted Talk.

Johnny Lee: Wii Remote hacks

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I had actually seen his presentation of this (or, more specifically, his YouTube video of it) in 2007 and was amazingly impressed then with what he did. It had been my hope that Nintendo would use his technology to develop games but, alas, that never happened. The biggest take away from this, though, was his talk about how the internet has allowed ideas to spread amazingly fast around the world and how even small time researchers can get their ideas heard and their innovations on the streets must faster than previously.

Richard Baraniuk: Goodbye, textbooks; hello, open-source learning
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Rich advocates, as the title suggests, that textbook technology and the use of textbooks is an out modded approach to education that is unnecessary, cumbersome, and restrictive. Through the process of rip, mix, create, and burn (a phrase stolen from the music industry), Rich states that information which was once locked up in textbooks would be better served if it was copy and reused in manner that expanded access through, for example, translating the materials (ripped), customized in a way that was relavent to the user (mix) or used to develop new content or create new access (create), and then placing the ideas back into the physical world (burn). He also points out that this still has to be done in a responsible manner that respects copyright laws and intellectual property and offers solutions on how this can be used in a responsible manner.