TED Talk #8- Suzanne Lee: Grow your own clothes

Suzanne Lee wants to grow our world. This may sound humorous and ridiculous but it is actually very revolutionary as far as biology is concerned. Through microorganisms, sugar, tea and time we can create clothing. This is also completely natural clothing. No animals, no plants (other than sugar) and no trees. It is so clean and can be shaped in any way you want. It is pulling directly from Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind chapter about design. These clothing items may be the start of a clothing revolution. They have utility because you can wear them and cloth yourself, a basic human necessity, and significance because you can add color, style and natural dyes to make them more appealing to the costumer. They are a perfect example of moving from left-brained for the past thousands of years, to the modern right-brained global community. Thousands of years ago, in the prehistoric stone-age, a caveman wore a loin-cloth, or so the historians say. Now the modern man wears a business suit tailored to their exact specifications. But now that white-collared jobs have been outsourced to Asia, this is no longer the appropriate attire. Now we need to grow clothes. We need to take meager ingredients and create the future.

The idea of growing clothes in itself is cool, but may not change the world, just what we wear. But as Lee finished presenting her small, fashionable idea, she moved onto the bigger picture. She started small and made that leap to the future. What if we could grow furniture? What cars? What about homes for people who have nothing? This is a step into the real application. If we could find a cure for poverty in sugar and tea, what else can we grow things from? If we can grow homes from tea, then can we not grow presidents from the slums? Can we build on something that seems meaningless and make it into something all the world will respect and use? This is exactly what we should do, and are challenged to do. It is up to us as humans to decide where to take this idea from. We could keep it only in the clothing business or expand as Lee suggested.

Without much thought, this TED Talk may have been dismissed by revolutionaries as a cool fashion trend. But someone somewhere somehow saw more to it than that. They saw the opportunity to build a new, clean, simple world. They uncovered the potential that lay within the sugar and tea. Who saw the beauty in a microchip? Or the telephone wire? Or Theodore Roosevelt? Or right-brained thinking? Or children in an inner city school system with not future ahead of them if they stayed on the path they were on? It took a scientist, an inventor, a political leader, an author and a teacher. All of these jobs seemingly unrelated are woven together by one aspect of their lives; vision. They all had the ability to see into the future, to change their fate, to reshape their world forever. Starting with something simple and taking higher, bigger, and stronger until all the world revels in the magnificence of it.

If a fashion designer and a biologist can come together to create fermentating clothing, then what else can be created when fields come together? What if an artist and a lawyer shared a cup of coffee and ideas? What if a doctor and an actor had lunch and ground-breaking thought? What if an educator and an architect went to movie and found a solution to world peace? In the TED Talk spirit I have a challenge for you; go outside your comfort zone and create a new world. Take something with utility and make it beautiful. Challenge what you know, what you think, and what you feel. Make something amazing. Create something inspiring. Form something revolutionary. Try something new. But most of all grow in body, mind, spirit, soul and sugar and tea.

TED Talk #6- "Dave Eggers' wish: Once Upon a School"

Dave Eggers' wish: Once Upon a School was a TED Talk about education. Eggers was talking about a study center with a twist. The twist is that not only can students really concentrate on homework without the distractions found at home but they also can work side-by-side with real writers. The students could have personal help with school work. This ensures that they understand the material they are learning in class. When they know the material, know it, not just are able to regurgitate it, students will be more willing to participate in class. When students are confident in their education and knowledge, they move past the idea of learning for class and teacher, but instead they want to learn and want to complete those education gaps. They are able to feed off each other and share their knowledge, with students of the same age, students of an older age, published writers and volunteer tutors all in close vicinity. They were all helping each other. If students can become more interested and engaged in their learning because of simply giving them one on one help, then why is it that more school systems do not have, adapt or use this obviously successful method to teach any students?

I think that education could go and be more heavily well liked if students felt like it was their choice to learn. If they feel as though the education is their own, and not something being forced down their throat, then students will be much more willing to learn. This related directly to intrinsic motivation. As Dan Pink says in Drive, carrots and sticks do not work in education or in the long run. Is that not what teachers and educators want to do? If feel like teachers should learn with and from their students, not teach at them. Students who love to learn will continue their education into college and this will improve every community. One by one, our local communities will improve and then our world and future is so much brighter. If every single child in the public, charter or private school system had a personal tutor and a place to concentrate and expand their knowledge, then our global community will improve exponentially until we have a world with every child educated and wanting to improve their international home.   

This is not the only free tutor center in America. There is also many other places in the nation participating with the same idea. Students across the nation are becoming interested in school and class work, without even knowing it. Because these tutoring stations are behind fun, gag shops so that students are not entering with the mentality that they are being forced to attend this learning area, but rather a fun place to work on writing. This also relates to one of Pinks points, that design is important. Some schools have tried something like this idea because they have colorful walls and paintings all over the school. But there is still the idea that they are going to school and are stuck in bright, white, bland classrooms; I know that is how I feel. Perhaps if school was taught outside or in engaging rooms, it would feel more like a helpful learning environment to better their education and less like a prison cell. If the design of the curriculum and student schedule was more flexible and less bell-orientated, perhaps the students would be more willing to give up their time and stop fighting it. I know that when I get up at 6:00 am every Monday through Friday, I do not think, “Oh yay! I get to wake up earlier than the sun to learn about parabolas and subordinating conjunctions!” I know that on late start days, I am at least more willing to get out of bed. But that is because it feels like treat, like a carrot. I quickly lost interest in getting up early because I was being forced to, not because it was a suggestion.

Education is highly based on carrots and sticks, a system that has recently been proved that does not work well under long-term circumstances. Students will be motivated to learn under their own terms, not because they think that they have to. The educational system that most school environments use is defective and needs to be changed. Why have we not yet changed it? Why are we still letting students and young children be unintentionally manipulated into hating school and think of learning as a chore? These ideas of education needs to change, it needs to be reinvented to fit the modern day and way of learning. We need education to adapt to the current time to benefit more children overall in the long run.

TED Talk #7- "Ric Elias: 3 things I learned while my plane crashed"

Ric Elias is a survivor of the miracle plane landing on the Manhattan River. This is such a traumatic experience that affected every person on that almost-deadly flight in their own way. Elias decided to make the best of it. He said he is now a better person, not perfect but better. He says he was able to look into the future and see what would have happened. How things would have turned out. And he changed his current life to benefit everyone. He says as the plane was lining up with the water, he realized three things; don’t postpone anything in your life, eliminate negative energy and he wished he could see his kids grow-up. That was the one thing in his life that he would change or achieve; he would be a good dad.

So ask yourself, “What would I change in my life?” That question is very hard to sit down and think about because many of us never consider having to change anything. We never think that we need to complete the bucket list that we all have. When students look back in their lives, do you think that they well say that the wished they had gotten number 42 right on the World Geography test? Somehow, I doubt that. Instead they might think that they had wished they had tried out for band or tried to be nicer to that one peer of theirs. But why do we need to have a life or death experience to take a step back and see what was important? We should be able to change that the in the moment. We should not have that retrospect view of the world. We should change events while they happen, not in our minds five years later. This also calls for a change in emphasis in school and education. Teachers should not stress small ideas that seemingly do not relate to any other topics or subjects. They should rid their curriculum of discussion, done, moving on. As an alternative, they should have one flowing idea that relates to every topic, every discussion, and every day of class. They should tells stories, make students laugh, and let students tap into the side of them that can create a piece of art, regardless of whether that masterpiece is a drawing, sculpture or a 100 story building that people will use every day they go to work.

Elias’s speaking style was perfect for the topic he was discussing. He let you into his mind during the downfall of that airplane.  He told you to imagine yourself in that situation and helped you to empathize with him. I remember perfectly where he was seated, 1D, because he incorporated it into his tale and told you why this particular seat was important. If teachers do this, I personally feel that students will not only be more interested in topics and ideas, which will prolong their academic pursuit, but it will also help them to remember those topics and ideas. This can be back up by what Dan Pink is saying in his book, A Whole New Mind. He claims the same idea, that story is a key to successful memory. I have tried to apply this in my life and from what I can tell it is a correct claim, as demonstrated in my remembrance of Elias’s plane seat. Story gives the listener, reader or audience more connection to the tale being told. It connects to the ETHOS side in all of us, right-brained, left-brained, male or female. We feel an emotional connection to the story and want to be able to recall it.

Ric Elias has taught me to cherish what I have, think of no regrets, desire attainable things and wish for a better life then make it happen. I can lie in bed and be satisfied with who I am, or at least work toward that goal. Although this is goal may be different for every person who tries to achieve it, there is one thing that all people have in common when trying to reach their goals; they must not let others try to change it or alter it. They should let their dream be true and pure, untouched by negativity and “slight changes.” If they keep their dream, goal or bucket list their own, it will be attainable. It will be achieved.

TED Talk #5- Sam Richards: A radical experiment in empathy

The video I watched on empathy was a big picture video. Although it was a little hard for me to be able to understand the first time I watched, the second time I did, I really tried to step out of this box of my own world. I stopped trying to find topics to discuss in my English assigned blog and I started to understand what that Iraqi man was thinking. I started to realize the evil in the American’s ways. It honestly made me uncomfortable to listen and have to idea in the back of my mind that people really do think and feel this way about people. I wanted to walk over to my son and daughters and tell them that I love them and that I will stop these awful Americans. Once the video was over and I started to think about what I had felt, I realized that it was the worst I have ever felt about a situation that was not affecting me directly or personally. I understood and was able to empathize with an Iraqi insurgent. I, a middle class, fairly non-profound, teenage girl in suburban Colorado, was able to feel, or try to feel, what a grown man, whose homeland was being attacked by evil, Christian, American soldiers that he was going to hurt them no matter the consequences, felt. Polar opposites, right? Yet Richards was able to make that connection. He was able to give me the knowledge to understand this man’s life. He started with a story that was easier to relate to because it was from an American’s perspective, simply a twist on history. However, he then moved on to a much more extended point of view. If Richards can help me understand what it felt like to be in that position, then I should be able to give myself the ability to empathize with others whose lives are not too different from my own.

Through empathizing, and in its very definition, I can understand what people are going through. This will help in education because if I can connect with others, and step into their shoes, I will be much better adapted to looking at something in a different light. I will have to ability to understand why they do what they do or say what they say. This will help when I have to do a group project and we must share ideas or if I am in a brainstorming group and someone is coming up with thoughts that I think are useless. People in the grander scheme of education currently make decisions based on time management and monetary expenses. Although I am sure they do know of effects on students and teachers, I feel as though they do not understand or can relate to students and those who work the closest with them. When CSAP was put into effect in the state of Colorado, I believe that the board members did not say, “These tests are not completely affective because some kids do not test very well and do posses the skill to fill in a correct bubble answering standard questions.” CSAPs do not test our learning, the test how well our teachers can tell us exactly what we need to pass a standard test. Perhaps if these same members of education board had considered that filling in a bubble would not be applicable in these children’s futures, then we would not as much of an education reform.

This TED video showed me that if we all understood what we were each going through, and then maybe we would not have war. I am not saying that empathizing would solve these world problems, but it certainly would help to correct a misjudgment. As Richard said it in the video, you cannot help but feeling in the front of your brain that tens of thousands of people are dying because of oil. Because they need it so they need to take it. My brother, father, son, uncle, aunt, sister, mother, daughter died for America’s oil need. As an Iraqi, that is not a pleasant thought. This is not light topic. This is probably the reason that Richards did not have any humor or sly remarks in his talk. He wanted us to focus on those emotions of anger and frustration rather than be lighthearted and come away without truly understanding what he was seeking to be comprehended.

If you watch this video and can suddenly relate to more people, I believe that you were a successful listener and would make a successful empathizer without the support of Richards. This TED Talk is very useful and easy to utilize in everyday situations. It touches on the personal life of just about anyone, with the exception of Spock.

TED Talk #4 "Clay Shirky: How cognitive surplus will change the world"

            Clay Shirky had very good ideas that he wants to spread with the world. One of these ideas is cognitive surplus. This idea, he says, is made up of two things, ancient motivation and modern tools. Ancient motivation originated in the 20^th century and is now a dominate part of our lives, free time and talents. Modern tools were around in the 20^th century but were focused on being consumed, not used. In the 21^st century we can move on to creating and sharing with help from those tools. With this surplus we have also have a surplus of time; the world has trillions of hours of free time. The idea that there are a trillion hours people can devote to anything they want. The world now has internet sources like Lol cats but also Ushiditi. Shirky says that “even though [lol cats] is a stupid creative act, it’s still a creative act.” Lol cats and Ushahidi have one major difference; Lol cats is communal (by producers for producers) and Ushahidi is civic (created by participates but valued by society, it makes everyone more knowledgeable).  Ushahidi was originally created to help everyone be more informed, but turned out to be a resource that people can use even when the media is being blocked in a time of crisis. This is important because it means that we can be greater as a whole than one person alone. We can use these tools to solve global issues and create humor. We need this technology to work with human generosity and move into a world that is both enjoyable and helpful.

What if this was never created? Would we be less of a society, or just less informed? I would hypothesize that we would have a less of a communicating a society. Without Google and other sites such as these, many would still be highly uniformed. Many people are still uniformed. In China, the government is blocking certain internet site. As Shirky best put it “free culture get what they celebrate.” The celebration is the freedom. If China does not have that freedom, how can they better themselves and their country? This freedom can allow for better design of our world. Although Ushahidi is a highly informative site, it still has to be creativity appealing. Original design centered on generosity can achieve incredible without those governmental restraints. We need to take advantage of this ability to communicate so that we can solve problems that may not have had a solution before this cognitive surplus was possible. When given the opportunity people will add to this vast knowledge, they will do it without pay and compensation. When people are able to pay, they are able to fine away their guilt. However, without ever being offered a reward, participates are still sharing this information. People also benefit from the community that they feel; they feel a connection with others that they have never met or even really seen their face. What this means for education is that we need and thrive one this human connection. With online classes, our compassion to learn and feed off each other’s strengths and weaknesses are shrinking. We need to have that human connection to really benefit.

Shirky’s style was very unique. He would go from a very serious topic to something humorous. It was a sly, sneaky humor that made this presentation flow very well. He was also in a small room with a much smaller audience. This could be a forced venue without choice, but I believe that it was purposeful. I showed that people can have that connection, that intimate communication while still discussing something bigger and greater than most of us can imagine. All of his humor and comments were well connected, even if one had to dig a little deeper to see the relation.

TED Talk #3: "Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation"

                Daniel Pink’s TED Talk about the things that motivate us and our society was very revolutionary to the greater populous. Pink said that the old reward and punishment way of thinking is no longer, nor has it ever been when it comes to creativity, effective. He addresses this pressing issue in a way that connected to a larger audience. He was able have humor simply thrown into the talk and then continue rolling along with the talk. When he was discussing this issue, he would quickly become very passionate and loud then make a statement and all of a sudden draw back to a softer, more timid voice. I t was as if he wanted to make the atmosphere more intimate. This allowed me to better understand that if you are motivated by others or tangible rewards, then that the task becomes work and therefore creates a mindset that it is not as enjoyable. He hinted that in the future, a right-brained, creative society, we will not be able to use the old way of thinking about motivation; we will need a reformation. I was able to relate to what Pink was saying very easily. He was personal but not obviously so.

As I was watching, I was thinking about all the daily tasks I do that I either used to enjoy or currently do. I came across the similarity that completely agrees with what Pink is saying; I enjoy the things I do because no one told me I have to do them. I sing in choir; no one pays me or grades me on it (yes, there is a grade for the class but it is not reflective of performance). I play tennis; my parents did not even completely approve of the idea and therefore I receive no money from them. I sing because I like making music and I play tennis because I can get outside and stay physically fit. No one is paying me or telling me I must do this “or else.” He also touched that this is why students do not typically enjoy learning about school. Teachers drill math into us, students, from the time we walk into kindergarten to the day we graduate high school (and hopefully college). Yet most of the arts classes are optional and one needs very little credits to graduate; yet there are still plenty of students still wanting those classes. If these likes and dislikes are drilled into us, then we will not be able to continue expanding our knowledge because we all lose interest. The world will come to a creative and technological stand still. However, some businesses and schools are changing and meeting the needs of the students and of the future. This talk allows us to look at the things that fuel our world, see the flaws and make that adjustment for a better future.

TED Talk#2 Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong

Eric Whitacre was a young man in high school and college when he decided he would make music his career choice. When he was in high school he aspired to be a pop artist, but as he grew and matured, he joined his college’s choir. Whitacre felt something that first day that he had never felt before; enlightenment. Whitacre says that when the choir opened up the score and began to sing it was like nothing he had ever known. He describes this experience as, “finally seeing in Technicolor”. He says that he felt like he was part of something bigger than himself. Everyone in that choir could share in the beauty and sound they were creating, no restraints or limits. He later wrote music for choirs and piece by piece became known by many. It only took one small moment, that first note to spark this man into a future and success. The next great achievement in his life was also sparked with one movement; a viral video fan. This girl sent a video to Whitacre singing part of his song as an innocent girl, not having the slightest idea that she would begin a worldwide connection between thousands. If you care to watch this truly breathe taking video, here is the link to the full edition; . I took away that an epiphany can happen anytime, we all want to be bigger than ourselves and people can share beauty through music, virally and physically.

Whitacre’s presentation was to be very personal with the audience by telling them his childhood dream and how he became entranced by music. In that way he was able to connect to the viewers and audience. He did have some humor to keep the feel light. However, his videos and stories were so poetic and unimaginable that he did not need much talking to explain his movement. He had several videos that really took the place of a lengthy speech. His style was very different from that of Sir Robinson’s. Robinson connected with the audience through various stories and constituent humor but Whitacre did not focus on the verbalization, he focused on the technology. Whitacre really wanted to get across that technology can make people feel connections as they would if they were in the same room or even continent together.

This is how the Virtual Choir matters in the world. It illustrates how people are making those connections and social web with each other in the modern times. People used to not even know others in a separate town, much less the other side of the world. Now people have more online dating, online socialization (MySpace and Facebook), online updates (Twitter) and now they can make that right-brained, artistic, creative connection. People can achieve the highest level on the hierarchy of needs, purpose. It matters in my life because I enjoy singing and making music and if there is an easier, more universal way to do that, I would like to be a part of that. Because the audition videos were sent in and not live, people got more than one chance to be their best. They had more time and practice to make their voices sound perfect (or at least the way they wanted to sound). This allows for people to adjust and change, they are able to adapt.

This Virtual Choir changes the way we see human connection, high pressure situations, how to get an idea started and think about acclimatizing to the future.

For the TED Talk that showed this movement go to; Eric Whitacre's TED Talk

For the original choir; Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir

For the second, 58 country, 2,000+ member choir; Eric Whitacre - Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 2.0, 'Sleep'