jameswang.net » Education

TED Thursdays: Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education

James Wang — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:05:51 +0000

I’m on an education kick. Here’s another TED video about education. Children were built to learn and absorb. I think it is really powerful what he talks about regarding how kids love teaching things to each other and working in groups. He also talks about the power of retention when kids discuss things together. The concepts that I thought were fascinating were the granny method and the SOUL pods that he made that let you communicate between pods and with the “Granny Cloud”.

If you can’t see the video, then check it out here:

http://jameswang.net/2011/10/06/tt-mitra-child-driven-education/

TED Thursdays: Cameron Herold: Let’s raise kids to be entrepreneurs

James Wang — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:12:38 +0000

I watched this the other night and thought to myself while watching it, ok, ok, keep rubbing it in about the awesome experiences you had in your training growing up. I loved the graphic of traits to teach kids that was on the chalkboard.

If you can’t see the video, then check it out here:

http://jameswang.net/2011/10/06/tt-cameron-kidpreneurs/

As an adult, you might also want to check out his book on being an entrepreneur.

RSA Animate: Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms

James Wang — Sat, 28 May 2011 16:13:36 +0000

I’ve featured other videos of Sir Ken Robinson, but I love the style of RSA videos. This covers things that are covered from the two previous videos, but is definitely a great video and it’s neat how much the animations and doodles add to the experience. Main points I took from it were, education is broken because it is built off of broken concepts of 2 groups of people, the smart and the not smart. He points out that creativity and “divergent thinking” is very high when kids are young, but as they “get educated” their powers of creativity and divergent thinking tend to actually dramatically go down because of how we are structuring our education today. Also he says some comical but thought provoking things about ADHD and putting things in perspective of the world we live in today. Check it out.

TED Thursdays: Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!

James Wang — Thu, 26 May 2011 14:25:04 +0000

This one starts off funny but not filling, but once he gets into the meat of this probably 5 minutes in or so, he has some fantastic thoughts on education to note. He points out some key things about how educational models need to move from modeling after the industrial model(factories and fast food) to the agricultural model(farming and individualized localized menus). He points out that there are so many people who are good at things they are not passionate about. We need to help kids find their passions. Great talk. Check it out:

TED Thursdays: Ali Carr-Chellman: Gaming to re-engage boys in learning

James Wang — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:12:43 +0000

I really enjoyed this talk. She dives into the educational experience of boys in our world today and how there’s a big disconnect. Some of the things she points out are at

1) Zero tolerance policies on things that are just boy things – Examples being limiting writing topics a boy can write about to the point where they hate writing, not because they wouldn’t be good at it but because of the topics they are allowed to pursue.
2) The percentage of male teachers in schools has gone down from 14% to 7% in the last 10 years. Lack of male role models and male thinking in classrooms has really made boys feel like the classroom is not really a place for them. It sends a message that the classroom is a place for girls, not a place for boys.
3) Kindergarten is the old second grade – She states that we are expecting a lot from kids now in kindergarten. There’s a lot of pressure on teachers, many of them female, with compressed curriculum, to get all the kids through the class. The message is, “Focus, manage your time, pay attention, don’t talk. Act more like a girl.”

What can be done?
Change teacher attitudes about boy culture and speaking more their language.
Invest and innovate in ways to bring game theory into classrooms

This is a very very light summary of what she says, but check it out for yourself.

Check it out.

If you aren’t on jameswang.net, check out the original post here for the video:
http://jameswang.net/2011/04/22/ted-thursdays-ali-carr-chellman-gaming-to-re-engage-boys-in-learning/

Shift Happens 4.0

James Wang — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:34:56 +0000

Genius Machine

James Wang — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:52:13 +0000

I love playing with ideas. I’m definitely an idea guy. Unfortunately, though many of them do, many of them also don’t tend to ever see the light of day. I was reading Jason Curlee’s blog and saw this post recently talking about the book Genius Machine. Here’s quoting his analysis of it.

Ideas enter the process fuzzy, weak, and partially baked. Using the eleven steps–

Distinction (seeing something new),
Identity (knowing who you are and why you are driven to share your idea),
Implications (exploring every possible consequence of your idea),
Testing (find the breaking point),
Precedent (who else has done something like this),
Need (who will it be most valuable for / focus on your audience),
Foundation (discover the underlying principles or rules),
Completion (can your idea stand on its own),
Connecting (flattening the learning curve),
Impact (is the impact of your idea in alignment with your goals)
and Advocacy (you must champion your ideas)

You can check out his post here and while your at it, check out the rest of his site. I regularly find myself saving his stuff to think about and chew on for later.

TED Thursdays: Rebecca Saxe: How we read each other’s minds

James Wang — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:42:07 +0000

I really liked this video. Basically, she asks the question of what biologically helps us with judging other people’s actions. It is really amusing the experiment she runs with the pirate finger puppets and the children to show how child development of moral judgements of others develops over time. I think you’ll really like this, even if neuroscience is not your thing:

TED Thursdays: Dave Eggers’ wish: Once Upon a School

James Wang — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:34:11 +0000

Ok, I’ve been on a real education kick lately with videos, so here’s another. The main idea was starting a tutoring center for writing and homework. I love his idea of a pirate store that you have to walk through that leads to the tutoring area, and all the other crazy store examples showing that it isn’t school, its something completely different. I think the idea of tutoring is powerful and what he says about one on one time and how it transformed the life of the boy who was addicted to video games is a great story.

Here’s a link to the organization he talks about:

http://onceuponaschool.org/

They’ve also got a facebook page for this:

http://www.facebook.com/onceuponaschool

Like his talk? Buy his book:

TED Thursdays: Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

James Wang — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:26:01 +0000

One of my favorite parts of this video is where he talks about the story of the little girl that couldn’t seem to sit still. I’m sure just reading that you are already thinking “yeah, another ADHD kid”, but its worth watching to see what they ended up doing and what she ended up becoming. Sobering to think about in how we deal with children and what we see in them.

Like his talk? Check out two of his books:

There’s more than one Ken Robinson on wikipedia so here’s his wiki entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Robinson_(British_author)