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.