Rationalism: Take Two

This doesn’t surprise me at all because of all the promotion that weight loss diets and other programs use. But a growing factor in that rising profit number could be because of the stereotypical person the media endorses. Beautiful size 2 women and muscular tall men have become the “norm”. Peoples self esteem could be greatly affected by these stereotypes that in turn would cause them to want to become skinnier and more beautiful therefore profits for many companies have increased dramatically and peoples self esteem has dropped. Our society is extremely shallow and narcissistic in regards to looks, people cannot go one day without bashing their own body or glorifying someone else’s.

Richard St. Johns: 8 secrets to success and Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning Revolution!

It all started when a young poor girl asked Richards What makes up success? He didn't have an answer but as he thought he came up with this, passion, serve, work, become good (practice), focus, push, ideas, and persist. These 8 things says Richards will lead to success.
As watching this talk i noticed that a few things contradicted what Dan Pink says in his books "Drive" and " A Whole New Mind" but some are similar. Both say that passion are important things, to have intrinsic motivation for your work and keep persisting. Another is to have good creative ideas. Having creative ideas keeps innovation alive.
One point of contradictory was that Richard said to get good at just one thing yet Dan Pink says to dabble in many aspects in order to be diversely knowledgeable about different things. The question is which is better. Personally, I would say that knowing many things is better than just knowing a lot about one subject, but if a person knows what they are going to do for the rest of their lives then they should excel at one particular subject or trade.


Ken Robinson starts off with a funny intro on himself and how the TED talks have been designed for the buildup of him coming and talking once again. But his main purpose was to spread the idea of new education and learning practices an dof what schools should be doing. Ken says that we are going through a crisis of human resources similar to the one of natural resources know as climate change. He says that we make very poor use of our talents or people who think that they have talents because many people don't believe that they are talented. He splits the world into two groups those who love what they do and those who endure what they do. People who don't get pleasure form what they do people who just go on living life are missing out when compared to the opposite group. This brings Robinson to his bigger point that schools and children's' educational career separates them from their natural talents. Robinson says to dig deeper and find those hidden "human resources" you can't reform a broken system but you need to revolutionize it to get what all children need, talent and skill and passion. There are things that society is enthralled to in education such as if you start here and do everything just like this then you will end up happy and successful in life. All in all his presentation showed that not every one has to do the same things and learn the same way and go to college at the same time to be successful but education and schools pull that out of all of us.
This is the opposite of what teachers and schools tell us to do. So the question is How can WE!! fix it? Because it is up to us to do just that.

Dave Eggers' Wish: One Upon A School

Eggers starts our by telling his story with some humor but one distracting habbit when he talks is he says um a lot which takes away some of the focus on what he is really saying. Dave Eggers big point and message throughout his talk was to spend more one on one time with disadvantaged students. He came up with a place where students could go after school and get help with English homework without bogging down class room teachers with so much unmanageable work.
This very much relates to my dad's school. My dad works in a very multi cultural and diverse school where 75% kids are on free and reduced lunch and many are from all over the world 10% of which are being taught English the language because they are students that come from countries that don't teach it. At his school there are 28 languages spoken from all over the world, but they also offer English lessons to parents so they can learn as well. Some under privileged students used to find help and support from teachers and staff in library until budget cuts and teacher unavailability became to great to support after school help. His school faced the same problems as the school talked about by Eggers yet he was the one who found a solution to the kid to staff ratio issue.
It was said on the video that with and extra 30-40hours a year of one on one attention a student could raise his or her grade by one level. If the students just had people sit down ith them ane listen to their creative thoughts on how to writ this of how to do that with help and support when needed. If this were implemented in schools across America or even Colorado, students would have a tremendous advantage. In my high school it is relatively easy to see a teacher during free periods, after school or before school, but not all schools have that support or flexible schedule.
The most important aspect that I took away was that this writing center that Eggers created didn't single anyone out. They didn't call it " The place to Get help if you can't learn well" , they left it open for any one to come in and learn in a great learning environment that had great role models. These role models showed kids that it was fun to learn in a non school related environment. This center was set up so that kids motivated them self to do well and so they did well because they were having fun while doing it. The different themes throughout the two stores of pirates and superheros are placed to spark the imagination and creativity of the students to help them have fun with it instead of a forced school like environment. This ideas is very much worth spreading to give every child that extra boost in their studies that should be put into action across the nation.

Nurtuing Creativity

Elizabeth Gilbert starts out her presentation with a story of how her career took off by writing her book called " Eat, Pray, Love". She talked about how people approached her and said things like, aren't you afraid that you are never going to be able to top that?, and you are doomed that that will be your only successful book, your career will just plateau from now on... ect. The same comments came about her career choice form friends and family, aren't you afraid that you wont be succsessful, and writing is not a job it is a hobby...ect. So the bigger question that came of this was Why? Why are people afraid to fail at something they are great at and make a living off of that is creative and uses natural talent? Her response was that creative people and creative workers have a repuation of being mentally unstable and unpredictable.
Society has this stereotype of creative people like writers, artists, and designers are not smart and the only reason they are doing those jobs is because they didn't do well at school or can't get another job because they, as Gilbert said, are "mentally unstable". Society has not valued the importance of creative minds and how much they contribute to our world. As Dan Pink says throughout his book " A Whole New Mind", right brainers will rule the world. Think of all the products and advertisements and movies that you have seen. Designers and architects and artists have put massive amounts of time designing a product that is appealing to the eye and that might persuaded the buyer to buy. Without designers our world, streets, and homes would not be what they are. It takes innovative people to create something new and beautiful that we would buy.
Elizabeth Gilbert goes on to talk about how creativity is unstable with some people and how it can be protected and looked at as a gift by society instead of something unpredictable in writers and artists. She says that the pressure of being a genius or creatively inclined has killed off many of the artists and the want to be someone who is creative.
Schools I think have a similar mentality that creative minds can't and don't "make it" outside of school and that being an artist is looked at a crazy idea. Schools need to change their mentality and encourage children and teens to express themselves as they want to and to follow their talents and try and fail but get back up and try again. Dan Pink says that not being afraid of failure and being able to come up with new ideas even if they don't work is a very important characteristic of being creative. Never letting the fear of failure get in the way of their ideas.

Contagious: Infecting teens with courage

Contagious...infection...sounds bad but really everything is contagious not just diseases but laughter, confidence, and passion. The speaker, Kiran Bir Sethi tells her story of how one teacher challenged her to challenge everything around her and how contagious this feeling was.
Challenging the system is something I know very well because of the studies that our English class has done. Reading the inspiring stories of people who stood up and challenged the system such as, "1984", "Little Brother", and "Fahrenheit 451". These books and the challenging of my English teacher, pushed me to look at things in a new way. Don't always trust everyone and protect the right that you are given.
"If the boundaries between school and life are blurred then children will go through a journey if aware, seeing the change, enable, where they can be changed, and then empower, to lead the change" Says speaker, Kiran Bir Sethi. This puts into words exactly what teens need to do to challenge themselves and the world around them and also to be consious of what is happening in the world around them.
Tying in my personal experience of challenging myself and others around me, people need to see the difference they can make on the world whether it is feeding under priveliged people of creating a new vaccine to stop the spread of viruses in a third world country, any thing is possible if you combine intrinsic motivation and Sethi's 3 requirements to change and challenge yourself and the world.
Challenging the system is not an easy thing, actually I have never done anything like it. Most of us have grown up in a world where challenging authority was not done period! Today people all over the world such Juliana Rotich, founder of Ushahidi, had challenged the media restriction crisis in Africa by creating fast and easy access information to those who need it most. The program has now been applied to many other parts of the world to inform people of information not provided by restricting governments.
Sethi says that in order for a child to change the world that child needs to experience the situation for his or her self and then change his or her mind set form " teacher told me to I am doing it" which is the "I can" mind set needed to accomplish these goals. Dan Pink might look at this and say it is intrinsic motivation driving these children to do well and try to change something, but I think that it is a combination of intrinsic motivation and how they are teaching the children to be more empathetic towards the world.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky presented with much story telling and humor as well to captivate the audience. One example Shirky used in his presentation was Ushahidi, a website that informed readers of the events happening in Africa. It was made by a lawyer women who felt the people of Africa were not receiving enough information because the government is restricting the media. This connects to 1984 and how restricting it was. All the people don't care or try to start a movement until now man stepped out against them. This is just what the woman from Africa is trying to do, appose the government and get information out to people who need it despite the consequences. The restriction of government in Africa proves Cory Doctorow's prediction in Little Brother even though it did not happen in America. The world is starting to form to Cory's and Orwell's predication of how the world might become.
Pink wrote of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations such as the carrot and the stick. Shirky also speaks of intrinsic motivation through the helping of others because of an internal drive to do so. I believe that this plays a huge part for success which agrees with the ideas of Pink as well. Intrinsic motivations could mean the difference between being a couch potato and doing something worth while. Shirky talked about the importance of communal and civic values. I believe that both are important but both connect back with the woman who created Ushahidi, she had the intrinsic motivation to create it but it also had, at first communal value, and then civic value as it expanded to help more and more people.
Combining these two characteristics could help influence and change the world, which is exactly what our generation needs to do to make a difference.

Fishbowl Reflection

On the inner circle, the class made relationships between design and the motivations that compel us to do something. The three motivations are motivation for survival, motivation from reward and punishment (which we have come to the realization that they don't work), and internal motivation, doing something because you want to. We made the relationship that when using the third motivation is when people come up with the original, right brained ideas because they don't feel pressured to be right or wrong as it is with motivation 2. Design is everywhere today because people are not afraid to do something because they want to or to come up with new creative ideas.