Caroline Casey: Looking Past Limits

Caroline Casey is legally blind.  She was diagnosed with ocular albinism as a child, but her parents didn't tell her until she was seventeen and the eye doctor broke the news to her.  She never went to a special school, or took any special classes, or was ever treated differently because her vision wasn't all there. Casey grew up wanting to drive motorcars and believed she could... Even after she was told the news she still kept her dream of wanting to learn how to drive on her seventeenth birthday.  After she learned of her disability, Casey went onto college and got a couple degrees, then became a global management consultant at a pretty large company.  One day, her eyes just gave out. She was forced to ask for help from others, saying she just couldn't see.  The people sent her to an eye doctor, who was actually more of a therapist.  "What do you want to be?" Casey didn't exactly know when she was asked... She went home and went for a run on her regular route, but ran into a rock that she had never hit before. She cried and cried until she ran back home, sat down with her favorite book, and decided she would be an elephant handler.  She didn't know how she would, but she was going to handle elephants in India, and she did, raising enough money for many, many eye surgeries for others.  Casey came back and became an activist for the disabled and has achieved so much just because she believed.  The way Caroline Casey persevered despite her disability proves that if you just believe in yourself, and you are being the real you, you can pretty much achieve anything, despite the roadblocks which might pop up. This philosophy of just being you, and back could improve the lives of many. Like laughter clubs, just accepting yourself and looking at yourself positively could help bring people into their own and reach the levels of high touch and high concept that Dan Pink talks about throughout his A Whole New Mind.  Casey's belief that because she knew she could do something, then she would succeed.  So, that brings me to the question, is success all in the mind? According to Casey, you only need to be yourself, and believe that you can do something to do it... Looking at many cases, I think Casey is pretty much correct, it all goes back to perspective on how one handles a situation.  Casey engaged the audience by speaking in different tones of voice when needed and she used hand gestures well to get her point across. Although she couldn't see the audience, she complimented them, calling the men "George Clooneys" and the women beautiful.  She used a story, which was the majority of the talk.   Her story was primarily positive and inspiring from the beginning, which I think, helped the audience stay engaged a bit.  Caroline Casey gave an interesting and engaging TED Talk despite the hardships she had to overcome to do so.

Dave Eggers' Wish: Once Upon a School

Dave Eggers' TED Talk really summed up many of the concepts in A Whole New Mind.  His idea to begin tutoring kids in the community for free and just to make the community's children more adept at English skills. This idea spread all over the country and now there are multiple "hidden" tutoring centers in areas that need them.  The fact that they are in an outside, somewhat silly, relaxed setting makes the process of homework much easier.  I think that if I had a center like that with great tutors and other kids around in a fun place, I would do my homework so much sooner; Not only because I have the resources right there at my disposal, but because there wouldn't be nearly as many distractions like Facebook, the newest episode of Glee, texting, or taking a nap.  Centers like Eggers' are vital to many kids' learning and progression towards eventual graduation and mastery of the English language. If centers like that popped up in not only cities with many minorities and families with English as a second language, more children would benefit from this one-on-one stimulation.  Relating back to the first sentence, I believe that this approach to learning has many of the same aspects that Pink discusses in AWNM.  It relates to design because of the interesting physical environment in which the children are tutored, but also in the one-on-one setup in which the tutors cater to the kids. This is all a good example of design on Eggers' part.  He told the audience about this idea through a story.  The story of how it all developed and is now helping kids nationally learn to write.  He employs symphony when he brings everything together, the children learning in both the classroom, tutoring center, and in workshops, and the expansion of the entire program.  This shows the big picture, over all the little bits that make it what it is.  Eggers' entire idea was spawned out of empathy.  They felt for the teachers and students who were struggling with writing, and then they decided to lend their creative and experienced hand at writing to help the kids learn.  Play is put into the picture with the entire funny joke-ish store front that each tutoring center is hiding behind. This adds a bit of silliness to the learning environment to make the children more comfortable to engage in writing creatively or not. Meaning is inputted into this idea when the children actually take off with the skills they learn and when other centers begin popping up in other cities, like they did in Brooklyn and Los Angeles. It is rather interesting how applicable to everyday situations, such as this, that the principles Pink discusses are.
The way that Eggers engaged his audience was an interesting and different one to say the least.  Compared to other speakers, Eggers was exceptionally nervous... And he let his audience know that he was.  I think he did this to make the audience feel more comfortable and just to let them know honestly from the beginning that Eggers might slip up a bit from nerves. He also inserted random bit lets of his own humor, which further comforted and engaged the audience.  He used the background to project pictures of his program mostly to give people an idea of what they should be visualizing.  Eggers also used a quote and story example from a child who went through the program and really exemplified the results.  I believe he actively engaged his audience, including me.

Sam Richards: A radical experiment in empathy

With the recent death of Osama Bin Laden, I think this was an interesting TED talk for me to choose.  Although the man was horrible and definitely has a place in Hell because of the horrible acts he committed, I'm sure he had someone who cared at least a measly bit about him.  My church pastor sent out an E-mail this morning concerning that issue exactly, and I don't want to preach, but what he said in the email was essentially one of empathy and how we shouldn't hate our enemies, yada yada.  I think this really relates to what Sam Richards addressed in his talk from October last year.  Richards is a sociologist and professor at Penn State University.  He attempted to put the audience into the shoes of a normal Iraqi citizen in today's times. This seemingly forced empathy put me at least, in a position of guilt... After all, a lot the media and government lead us Americans to believe that invading Iraq for primarily oil is alright, and that killing hundreds of thousands of civilians is okay.  Although the Iraqi citizens are seen as the American enemy, we as fellow humans need to learn to at least empathize with the people not involved with the terror and killings.  Richards proves the point that it is difficult for people to understand and relate to their enemies, although that may be the only way we achieve a peaceful world.  He also says that the only way to understand sociology, the study of society, people, and how they are all interconnected to make the bigger picture, is empathy.  If we can empathize with other people, we can further our understanding of others and their motivations.  For example, a bank robber may steal from other people and potentially hurt those involved, they could be doing it for their family's well-being or just to simply survive.  When one takes the time to listen and empathize with another person, they begin to understand that person, even though they may not agree with them. In his TED Talk, Sam Richards engaged the audience with a lot of pictures which backed up his reasoning, and brought the audience into the world he wanted them to empathize with.  He also pretty much forced the audience to immerse themselves in what the Iraqi person thinks and feels everyday, and that alone caught my attention, and most likely the others in the audience.  He defined important words on the screen behind him, like crusade, and that showed the multiple meanings and most importantly the meaning of the word to the Iraqi people.  He used an analogy at the beginning of the talk to get people into the correct mindset of someone living in an unfairly militarized area.  Richards also used a lot of repetition towards the end to solidify his message to the audience.  He employed quotes to back up his over all idea.  Over all, Sam Richards made a convincing and relevant talk concerning empathy in the world.

John Hunter on the World Peace Game

John Hunter didn't plan on being a teacher, let alone such a great one.  I think this is what may have played into his idea for the World Peace Game. For instance, I doubt that if he hadn't gone off to India to become all transcendental, that he would have been nearly as in touch with what education should be, teaching children how to solve problems in the world.   After attempting traditional teaching in the first year or so, Hunter decided to try a new way of teaching.  This was him challenging his students to take charge of the society on a 4 foot by 4 foot piece of plywood which he called the World Peace Game.  Now that the idea has developed, the game is 4 levels of Plexiglas, ranging from the depths of the ocean for submarines all the way up to space for rockets.  Hunter explains the rules, and then basically lets the kids off to rule the world... and fix the problems which they are sure to encounter. All 50 problems are just as plausible as they would be in the real world, nuclear leaks, extreme weather disasters, economic crashes, global warming, international disputes and the list goes on.  Although the entire game relies on the students, Hunter includes interesting requirements within the initial assignment, one of these being writing letters to dead soldiers' parents.  Every time they lose one of the play soldiers in their country they have to write a letter to that soldier's parents explaining what happened and why they are dead.  The point of that is to ensure that the kids carefully contemplate before they choose to go into combat.  Situations like this show the students the effect of such violent action in the world.  Within the game, little miracles occur every year, like the little girl who risked an attack on another country which ultimately saved the rest of the world from being taken over. Or the class who pooled all its' money together to help the poorest country win the game with less than 5 seconds left.  Proof that spontaneous compassion exists and happens all the time in very unlikely situations.  As someone who also shares a belief in miracles and hope for the future, I can only hope that these children take the skills they learned in that class to ensure miracles exist in the real world when we really need them.  John Hunter brings up the idea that students need the chance to be human, which involves real-life consequences and rewards for how they decide to run their country as opposed to simply being graded for their ability to put facts onto a piece of paper.  I really think that if history and social studies classes adopted this idea to put into their lesson plans it would engage students in a completely different and really impact teenagers' decisions and how they deal with their everyday issues.  Hunter ended his talk by saying, "I can only hope that my students picked up critical thinking tools from this, if only they did and then they can save us all." I think that if most gifted programs begin using his example, a peaceful future could be within reach.
Within Hunter's talk I noticed that he used less physical cues to get his message out.  Instead, he weaved a story out of his idea to keep the audience attached.  He brought in many concepts that Pink has written about, obviously story, but empathy, play, and meaning also.  He also comes off as more humbled than most, this leads him to come off more soft-spoken, but really his words had just as much meaning in them.  Throughout he didn't move much at all, unless he was mimicking people he was describing.  He smiled quite often and used personal pictures as background.  He also brought in students' commentary and opinions of his game which helped give insight into what it's like for those involved.  Over all, I really enjoyed John Hunter's talk and what he is trying to do with his teaching style is one faucet which will lead to fixing the world's problems in the future. 

Clay Shirky's How Cognitive Surplus Will Change the World

Initially, I expected this TED talk to be a bit... boring.  I only assumed this because of the title, specifically the words 'cognitive surplus'.  Although I came into listening to the talk with low expectations, it led me to be rather resonant on the topic discussed.  Cognitive Surplus is the ability of people in the world to volunteer their time and talents to create and collaborate on different projects.  According to Shirky, people don't enjoy being couch potatoes, they are just because it is an opportunity.  People would rather be out creating and sharing ideas.  He used examples such as a Kenyan lawyer who, in 2007 after a disputed politic outcome, began blogging about the situation, keeping people updated on the latest news from the situation.  When her blogging became so widely read that she couldn't handle it alone, two programmers volunteered to help her out and hence, Ushahidi was born.  Ushahidi is a program which is used to spread information to the public by crisis mapping. Governments in the US, Mexico, Haiti, and many other countries use the program for many different reasons including snow plow mapping after only 3 years.  Another example Shirky used was an experiment conducted within a preschool in the Middle East. in preschools everywhere, teachers struggle with late parents who just cannot get their children on time and it wastes the teacher's time.  In one preschool, the teachers began charging a fee for when parents came late, while in the other preschool, the teachers left the school policy as usual without a late fee.  In the school with the late fee, the number and frequency of late parents increased greatly and that number remained high even after the late fee was lifted. the other 'control' classroom's late rate stayed consistent throughout.  Now why did the results turn out this way? It is because of the compassion and guilt people felt throughout the experiment.  When the parents had to pay a fine for being late, they felt they were compensating the teachers enough that they could be more careless about the teacher's time and that the money would replace the guilt they would have felt otherwise.  This displays how the feeling of emotional guilt has a bigger impact on people than monetary guilt does because they feel like repaying someone emotionally is much tougher than it may be to pay someone money to make the guilt go away.  Many people encounter this everyday in situations like donating to cancer funds or the Dumb Friends' League, etc.  When people felt guilty about not doing anything to help those who really need it, many choose to pay money over volunteering to make up for their guilt.  Although donations are needed in most cases, it is more personal and compassionate to donate one's time with kids or dogs in need.  All this cognitive surplus (volunteering, creating. and developing) is all in support of people staying compassionate and not losing intrinsic value, which is so easy to do in times when you don't even have to talk to people face to face if you don't want to. Technology removes emotional ties from relationships which can result in mindless drone relationships that mean nothing. Shirky presents this information in his own way by using arm/hand movements, although he shows little facial emotion compared to other speakers we have seen, his use of interesting and relatable quotes, and the employment of his sly humor, which one would only recognize if one were listening. 

Daniel Pink's Motivation Talk

Daniel Pink's TED Talk on people's motivations surprised me as to where peoples' real motivations to work lie and how incentives affect people and their work.  From what he says, I now see how people's drives to achieve autonomy, mastery, and purpose in their lives motivate them to make the most of their work. Autonomy is the need to be in control of one's own job and life. Mastery is when one attempts to learn and master a certain talent or skill.  Purpose is the idea of being part of the something bigger than yourself, or just having a point to your job or skill. In 8 out of 9 people that were in a study, the people offered the lowest incentive achieved the greatest success, while those who had the most failed miserably. The idea of "FedEx" days in the workplace are a wonderful outlet for workers' creativity and it adds to the company's productivity and the invention of such products. If all companies gave that to their employees, I'm sure many very useful tools would come of it.  When Pink speaks, he uses large motions, whether with his hands or if hes walking across the stage.  He also inserts comical bits throughout the speech.  Because incentives don't work for most people in important situations, Pink bringing this note up may improve job productivity all over the work spectrum, as people begin to become more productive.  As we were discussing in fishbowl today, if grades and class were not absolutely mandatory for children, I think students would get a more enriching learning experience because they wouldn't deal with the stress of grades and it might just weed the classes down to the kids who actually want to be learning and taking the class... Much like a college atmosphere.  But the problems with this would still be parents pushing their children to the child's limit and children may not be mature enough to take on such responsibilities as choosing certain classes that will help them in the future. It is an idealistic idea, but an interesting one.Over all, Daniel Pink's talk about people's motives sparked thoughts for the future of education and the workplace.

Kathryn Schulz: On Being Wrong

One thing that I really believe is that people just need to accept that they're wrong every once in a while. So when I saw Kathryn Schulz's TED Talk about being wrong, I was very interested. The overarching theme of her talk was to point out that being wrong isn't we as humans should look down upon, but instead we should accept and embrace that we are wrong sometimes and that's what makes us human... But it is also what makes life interesting. She spent most of her career studying people's mistakes, why we make them, and how people react to being wrong.  The number one reaction she got was that people that being wrong was wrong in itself, it was bad.  Just one example she got from the audience was that begin wrong was a "thumbs down".  According to her research, people avoid being wrong as much as possible.  After all, students are always striving for A+s because getting bad grades is being wrong and therefore equated with being bad and a failure.  She pointed out that as long as we don't know that we are wrong, being wrong feels like being right. It is when we realize that we are wrong that we begin to feel the "thumbs down" feelings.  A great analogy she used was the coyote from the Roadrunner cartoons.  The coyote would run off the the edge of a cliff and just float in mid air and was completely fine... that is, until he realized he was standing on nothing. And once he made that realization, he would fall. The coyote in this story very much represents humans in our capacity to fail.  That capacity is not a defect of human nature, but a defining characteristic of humans.  Over all, Schulz said that in order to really discover wonder in the world, we have to look at each other, and at our mistakes and and accept that every once in a while, one might just be wrong. 

Kathryn Schulz uses many techniques to keep the audience engaged in her talk.  She began with a story about how she made a pretty humorous mistake in college to grab the listener's attention. There was a picture attached to explain the story further. After the cute story, she officially introduced herself, with her qualifications to be speaking, etcetera.  In addition to that introduction, she more deeply introduced her talk topic.  She kept up the use of storytelling throughout the talk with multiple examples in the form of stories.  When she employed the use of quotes, they were prevalent and presented on the screen behind her for the audience to see.  An example of that is when she presented the words "Fallor ergo sum" meaning, I err therefore I am.  In addition to quotes, she uses real-life screw up situations like the BP oil spill in the Gulf Of Mexico as examples of mistakes made by humans.  Other real-life examples she used to bring attention to things that didn't go as planned, was Mumbarek being kicked out of office in Egypt or the prolonging of George Bush's Iraq War.  These real-life situations give credibility to what Schulz is saying about the human ability to be wrong. In addition to these examples, she uses visible examples throughout the presentation, such as a visible list describing the thought process of assumptions about people who disagree with us.  In the end, Kathryn Schulz presented an interesting TED Talk which captivated the listeners and presented an intriguing argument.