The Golden Rule

In Karen Armstrong's TED talk, she talked about how the Golden Rule needs to be reapplied back into society. For those of you who don't know the Golden Rule, it's this: Treat others like you would like to be treated, and don't treat others how you wouldn't want to be treated. Karen really didn't use any special means to deliver her TED talk, and it was a little boring, but her message was one that was very good and should be applied everywhere. To me personally, as a Christian, the Golden Rule is something that I try to live by, and I think that everyone should try to live by. This is a concept that has been lost in the midst of the world trying to keep up in technological advances and in wars and other problems in the world. Education-wise, the Golden Rule is a hard concept to really apply, but still should try and be enforced as much as possible. The area where the Golden Rule really needs to be applied is in the real world. People everywhere are trying to get ahead of the game for themselves by any means necessary. This is how society is telling people to work, and everyone is more than willing to follow society in that sense. People need to challenge the system of society and try and go out of their way to make a difference; to treat other people nicely and to help other people out with their problems. The intrinsic motivation of people to go out of their way and help people is still a concept that people are coming to terms with, so it might take a while to sink in, but this is a change that society needs in order to move into a future where creativity and new thinking is the norm. 

Math Overhaul

The TED talk by Dan Meyer explained how math curriculum in schools today is more harmful to students than helpful. He says that this curriculum is just regurgitated information that only needs a formula to solve. Meyer proposes that math problems need to be simplified to just the basic shape or picture; to let the students come up with the questions to solve and to discuss with others how to solve the problems. The way that Meyer gave his TED talk was by using the methods of how he teaches his own classes, and he shows the results of this type of teaching and how different classes around the world tried this technique. I completely agree with Meyer that students need to be able to come up with their own mathematical equations and not be fed information that can easily be solved with a simple formula. I know that for me personally, math is a class that is very boring and something that I really don't want to do. The prospect of solving math by making an equation with real-world objects sounds a lot better than solving problems in a textbook that follow the same guidelines. The concept of using real-world items and situations is especially appealing to the type of math I'm currently in, which is geometry. Geometry is a math class that is one of the easiest places to apply real-world ideas and situations. Seeing real objects that have the shape you are learning how to solve makes learning a lot easier, and the teachers can let students come up with problems and solutions to those shapes. This type of math teaching/learning is an evident form of intrinsic motivation, and how students can be creative and learn as long as the right system is implemented to learn in and the students don't have information and questions that they are required to answer. Students (as well as most adults) would rather find out what the problem is and solve that rather than be given a problem and solve it, and then to another one that is the same thing.
  

After School Help

The TED talk by Dave Eggers talked about how students tend to work better and are more motivated to work if they have one on one conversations with adults to get help and ideas. Dave Eggers and a group of other authors set up a shop in San Francisco in order to give students this help after school, purely on a volunteer basis. Dave gave such a great TED talk because of his personal experiences with this idea that he had, and how he utilized this idea that eventually became a worldwide phenomenon to help students everywhere. This idea of intrinsic motivation to work harder and to get help for homework goes along with many other ideas in other TED talks that I have seen, and this is something that is extremely undervalued in schools and in the workplace in modern society. Schools still use the carrot-and-stick concept of motivation, in that if you do "good" work, you are "rewarded" with a good grade and if you do "bad" work you are "punished" with a bad grade and the option of failure of the class. The same is used in the workplace, with raises and bonuses for good work, overtime and the possibility of being fired for bad work. This process has been used for many years, but studies now show that people work harder when they are working for the joy of working on something meaningful. The study center that Dave Eggers and other authors set up also shows that students are willing to learn and get better, but feel more inclined to do so on their own terms, not because a teacher or parent forces them to. The same concept can be used in other areas of school as well as in the workplace. Grades in schools need to be eliminated in order to encourage true learning, and workplaces need to incorporate the creativity of their employees to get new ideas. Revolutionaries like Eggers and others will eventually show the world the true value of intrinsic motivation, as they already have begun to do.  

True Success

The TED talk that former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden gave was about what true success is and how it is measured. Wooden said that true success is when a person takes themselves and their given situation and makes it the best it can be. People need to focus on making themselves the best they can possibly be, not on how other can be better. The way that Wooden spoke about success was using stories from his own personal experiences and quotes from other respected people on how to be successful. It was remarkable to see someone his age that could memorize all of those quotes and speak with such clarity and authority. I see this view of true success as something that has been lost in almost every aspect of life, both in education and in society. Education today is about trying to make the students the best that they should be; to hold them up to a certain standard and that they should at least equal it if not surpass it. More classes in schools need to focus on how well the student can do and appreciate the effort that the student can give. Teachers and other people in education need to realize that one student's best effort may be how another student does when they don't try. As long as the student is trying their best, there is no need to push students more than what they can handle. I see grades as a way of making students try too hard and end up not caring anymore. Grades should either not exist or be way more lenient for different students. In society as a whole, people are expected to act a certain way and to live up to a specific standard. Society needs to change it's thinking to allowing people to be themselves and to be accepted that way and not have to conform to how everyone else wants them to be. Success is a measure of how well a person does for themselves and not how society views success.

Cognitive Surplus

In his TED talk, Clay Shirky talked about what he called cognitive surplus, which is what individuals do in their spare time to help the good of the society. The two different types of cognitive surplus he mentioned, communal and civic, both have profound effects on societies worldwide. Communal cognitive surplus is the material created to benefit an individual community of people who have a common interest. The material made is not necessarily beneficial but is funny or enjoyable for that group of people. This type of cognitive surplus is a major part of what Daniel Pink focuses on in his books Drive and A Whole New Mind. The motivation for this right-brained activity is to help out the community, not for a prize or reward. People want to help other people for the sake of helping, not for what they can get out of it. This type of cognitive surplus is highly undervalued in today's society, and is seen as more of an afterthought or the remains of the other type of cognitive surplus, which is called civic cognitive surplus. Civic cognitive surplus is matter that is beneficial not only to an individual community, but also to the whole of the world. This material is seen as extremely beneficial, and is made out to be the most important part of cognitive surplus as a whole. The way that Clay Shirky presented this material is that civic cognitive surplus is indeed the most important type of cognitive surplus, and communal cognitive surplus is an inevitable result of helping people out. This is not the way that both should be compared. I see this as a more traditional way of thinking, that one way is completely better than the other. I see both communal and civic cognitive surplus being equally helpful; they just have different areas of expertise. Communal cognitive surplus helps out more on an individual basis, which means that it can more deeply affect people than civic cognitive surplus. Civic cognitive surplus affects a wider range of people across the globe, but not as personally or intimately as communal cognitive surplus. Both types of cognitive surplus need to be understood for what they really are, and not be compared as the same thing. One issue that society has is that if it's not important to them, than it has no value at all. This is a view that needs to change. Clay Shirky had a great example of this using the LOL cats. These are pictures of funny cats with funny captions. These are highly valued by many people, but some see these as useless and therefore unimportant. They are not inferior to other types of information or entertainment; they are just different ways of expressing creativity, and creativity is something that should not be compressed into what society values. 

New Techniques of Motivation

The TED talk by Daniel Pink showed that the traditional ways that businesses motivate people are now irrelevant to how hard people actually work. Scientific studies have shown that people who work for rewards or incentives often do work harder in the short term, but eventually lose interest in their work. These studies also show that people who work for the pure joy of just working and helping people work harder long term and produce better work. The way that Daniel Pink spoke was in a way of presenting a case to a jury in a court. He presented his "evidence" through many different studies and experiments done in many different places and times around the world. His final statement to the "jury" was that motivation should not be incentive-based, but instead should be based on what people enjoy doing and what they create by themselves. Pink supported his argument by using different slides showing images of a problem that people have to solve, and showing different quotes from professors on their different studies of motivation. This video matters to me personally because it shows that maybe future careers will be different for me, that I might have a job in which the way they motivate people is different to that of modern day businesses. This is extremely important to education because the incentive to get good grades is changing. No longer is the excuse that you need good grades in order to be successful valid. That type of motivation has been proven to be ineffective and even harmful to students. Students need to be able to learn about topics and issues that they want to learn about, to a certain extent, so that they feel satisfied in their learning, and this type of motivation will improve the overall grades of students. This matters as a worldwide issue because companies and businesses need to reevaluate the way that they motivate their employees to work hard and to improve the overall welfare of the company. Instead of offering their employees bonuses and extra vacation time, they need to allow them to come up with some of their own original ideas and to have some fun, just like the company Google does. This type of motivation will help improve the overall success of the company and also increase the happiness and output of the employees. 

The Limits of Technology

The TED talk of Billy Graham shows that no matter what new technology comes out or new information is discovered, the age old problems of evil, suffering, and death still cannot be fixed. Religion gives answers to why these problems exist, but even religion cannot permanently destroy evil, suffering, and death. Billy Graham’s way of speaking was captivating to the audience, and his stories from the Bible and of his own personal experiences explained his point and his belief. He used his experiences with some very famous people, such as Mrs. Gorbachev and Albert Einstein, to show that even some atheists and other non-religious people think that the world, with its immense beauty and lack of understanding of the aforementioned non-resolvable issues, there has to be a power out there greater than that of the human mind or technology. The fact that there is a God out there who is guiding our lives is the most important information in this video and to me personally. Education does not teach the issues of evil, suffering, and death in the world, and how these issues cannot be resolved by science or technology advances. This shows to the world that no amount of science, technology, or human creativity or intellect can fix the oldest issues that the world still has. Evil, suffering, and death are inevitable parts of human existence, but God is there to help guide and help everyone through evil and suffering, and when the time comes, as it does for everyone, for a person to die, God is there with open arms to welcome them into a new world where these problems no longer exist. People need to understand that while the advances of technology and science are excellent and that they should be encouraged, that there are some problems that they cannot answer, and that no one can answer except for God. Science and religion are not opponents; they are partners that need to work together and can work together with their own expertise in their own specific fields of knowledge.