Eric Whitacre TED Talk

Eric is a very open minded man that came up with some great ideas, and knew how to execute them. His presentation about a virtual choir with 2,000 voices was not only genius, but has a lot of future potential. Eric, through a lot of convincing, joined choir in college and became very acquainted with his whole class and choir teacher. At the end of his years at college he wrote a piece of music as a gift to the choir director. A few weeks later, a girl on the internet sang the soprano part to one of his pieces, "Sleep". This triggered a huge thought in his mind. He wondered if he could get enough people to do the same thing, he could possibly make a virtual choir! So, he took action and added a video of him conducting the song, and he got a HUGE amount of people that joined in and sang the song that he had composed. Then, a voluntary editor edited the whole entire thing and put them all singing together in a video. I think that these ideas have even more potential for the future. Just watching this made some of my own ideas spark in my head. What about a virtual play or virtual game? Or even a virtual movie!!! With all of the parts put together by the people of the internet, we could accomplish some pretty crazy stuff!!!!! This definitely excites me and I want to almost take action myself! Overall, this presentation blew my head off and I may consider trying some of my own ideas too!!!

Ali Carr-Chellman TED Talk

Ali's TED Talk, I think, has been the best one that I have seen yet. This was mostly because I agreed a lot with what she had to say, but also because what she was saying so SO deep and IMPORTANT, I almost felt like I needed to help the effort myself! Basically, she talked about the disconnection of boys from school. There were a few reasons for this. One, was because of zero tolerance. This means boys not being able to express what they want to in school, because their ideas are so called "not appropriate". Video games, violence, and that type of stuff is definitely not present in girls the way it is in guys. This makes guys feel like they are rejected and that school is a "girls thing" which essentially demotivates guys and makes them do worse in school! I mean, why has no one realized this yet!?!?!?! These things are what a typical boy IS and what they THINK about. Video games seem like a very general part of a boys life, but when introduced to teachers and others, the boys' ideas are REJECTED. Also, she made a point about how more boys today are taking less interest in writing. This is because the things that they want to write about are no longer accepted and the things that the teacher wants them to write are the things that they have to write! The second reason was fewer male teachers. Throughout history, our male teachers are slowly fading away, again making school look like a girls thing to guys. But not only this is happening. Male teachers acting like roll models for young men is a HUGE important thing for the future development of maturity. When a young boy starts to see nice, composed, older men who are smart, and have dedication, the boys look up to them and finally get the click in their heads at a certain age to change. A lot of this change is not happening because of this, causing more behavior problems, and less hope in boys. The third reason that Ali had was that Kindergarten is the new second grade. As you and me may have noticed, all of todays education wants to be at the top, so things that used to be learned in second grade are now standards in kindergarten. This is definitely going to lead to some problems. Not only will students at a young age have more stress, but we will eventually get to a level where it will almost become impossible for the kids to catch up! For me, elementary school was more of a life skills teaching environment, where you learned to work with other kids, and how to manage different things. Now since I have a younger brother, his elementary "life skills" environment is being replaced by much more academics and "you have to learn this and that" stuff. This overall leads to kids not learning the skills that they needed to, when they needed to. The answer to all of these problems, were a few smart ideas made by Ali. Designing better games (that involve education and can be very entertaining), talking to teachers and everyone involved with the problem to get them to come to their senses too, and to find more money for this type of game design. Hopefully, these ideas will get spread around because I COMPLETELY agree with everything that Ali said and I think she has some of the most important ideas that we have seen yet. This TED Talk was AMAZING and I hope to learn even more!

Dave Eggers TED Talk

I have a TON of take aways from this video. I think that this is the best TED Talk that we have seen yet. Dave talked about a different type of tutoring, and enviornment, that completely enveloped the kids into it. These kids (in one case) got "addicted" to finishing their homework early and it made a huge impact on what they could do afterwords. Dave's idea of this free tutoring business worked pretty well until he ran into a road block. Dave needed a way to cover the cost of the property and other things! This meant building a "mini-shop" inside. This shop, for Dave, was pirate themed and had a ton of pirate themed items that were up for sale in the store. This managed the cost and created a way to attract more people to the business. Also, one of the things that Dave stressed a lot in his presentation, was one on one tutoring. This means, one parent or adult helping one kid at a time. The reason that this is so successful is because the student is forced to focus on their work without anyone having to prompt them to do it on their own. I also think that this is better because kids feel like they have more confidence when they know that they can ask any questions at any time if they do not understand anything. I think that sometimes, with all of the distractions these days, students need time to relax, while doing homework at the same time. Dave's speaking techniques were not the highlight of his talk. Although, a lot of times I got what he was trying to say, all of his thoughts were scrambled around in his language. He also used "um" a lot, which for me was a major distraction at the start and he talked very fast, without going back to recap on what he was saying. But, other than all of this, I really liked his presentation style. On the powerpoint, there were no more than one or two things going on at a time. I really liked this because the one picture or whatever really had to do something with what he was talking about!!! All the pictures of the places shown were very helpful to his overall presentation and left me with the pictures connected to the words in my head. There is a TON that matters from this video. Dave has an extremely important point about how the future of education is shaping to be, especially with after school tutoring and help. He has devised a way to make learning fun and focused at the same time, which in my opinion is how it always should be. I also think than more things like these will be popping up throughout the United States, and the idea that Dave has now shared will be built and built on until it reaches its maximum potential, which in my opinion, will be the future of our education. I really enjoyed spending time watching his TED Talk in class and I hope to hear more updates on these ideas in the future!

Morgan Spurlock TED Talk

Morgan Spurlock's TED talk was titled, The Greatest TED Talk ever sold. This idea talks about Morgan's new idea to sell the rights of the name to his TED talk on Ebay! This idea seemed very smart considering that inside the TED talk, he expanded even more into this idea. What I took away from this video is that as humans, we all see brands in our life and can even be characterized by "our own" brands, but when you sell the rights to anything big, like these brands, major money can be tossed around. I also took away that a lot of company's in this time are very hesitant with a lot of things. Most of the companies Morgan tried to get on his side denied him right away and left him in the dust. I think that this is because of our economy today. People in the economy, in other words, businesses, are more hesitant because of their personal finances. No one wanted to take a huge enough risk like the one that Morgan Presented to them!! One of the things that I loved the most about this video, was the way that Morgan talked and presented his presentation. His talking and presentation was very smart because It put sidetracked things into the talk, without making a huge enough distraction that the viewers thoughts get off topic. For example, he would be talking about something serious, and then just for fun, would add a joke or a funny statement into it to make things funnier and more interesting. This helped a lot because it was enough to keep my attention but not enough to be a major distraction. His presentation also incorporated a lot of videos that happened off site, but brought his points together. I think that a lot of things matter from this video, especially because of the time that we are in right now. With the government and the economy as bad as it is currently, companies are not making as many risky choices which in the long run slows things down even more. I think that the actual idea behind Morgan's TED talk will come into play in the future. Overall, this TED talk was very enjoyable to watch and think about.

Clay Shirky TED Talk

Clay Shirky infused some great ideas into his TED talk about cognitive surplus. This new idea, that anyone creative has the power to introduce a new idea online is getting even more popular as I see it. New sites and new ideas pop up on the internet every single day. Now, Clay had a very interesting point that went along with this. Without the technological era that we are in, and the creativity of people, these ideas would not be possible. This is why he says basically technology is shaping the way that we come up with new ideas because it is like a whole new dimension. His second round of thoughts were about punishments and their effects. He talked about an experiment where a punishment was put in place at a day care center where if the parents were late, there would be a fee. This simply made the parents come later because they figured that it wasnt bad paying a little to be late. Then, once the fee was taken away the same behavior still applied. Now, I thought that this TED talk was a little confusing, and maybe its because I was sick, but I watched it again today and it still didn't make total sense. I think that part of this was the way that he talked. Clay made it difficult for me to understand what he was trying to get at because of his jumpy talking technique. He would jump from one thing to another and his whole talk seemed like is wasn't very linear. This confused me a lot and I wish that I could talk to him in person to ask him a few questions about his very interesting ideas. But, besides the talking, I thought that his presentation was fabulous. His presentation style was a little different than others because it used the slide show as more of a main tool than a background helper. I thought that this was pretty effective in the end because he had to use a lot of graphs that needed to be pointed at and a lot of pictures that needed to be explained. So basically he adapted his presentation style to what his talk needed. What mattered in this video, I think, will matter most in the future. A lot of the ideas that he presented will be carried out in the future. Creative acts turning into mass projects funded by the people themselves. These kids of ideas, like I said before, are popping up everywhere and are becoming more frequent. Not only the LOL cats are popular any more but others like EPIC FAIL are starting to rise. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this video and I hope to look more into some of Clay's other TED talk.

Daniel Pink TED Talk

Daniel Pink's TED talk threw out some very interesting ideas about the reality of science and how we have been thinking wrong. One of his very main ideas was about motivation. He did a lot of research and figured out that the motivation of money only works for very easy low level thinking problems, while when it comes to higher level ideas and puzzles, rewards actually stressed the thinker out. When a reward was given the person was motivated in a very logical small pathed way. This doesn't open up the window of thinking that you need to figure out harder puzzles for thinking outside the box. In fact, a reward is bad a in a puzzle problem circumstance because it narrows the persons focus when thinking about the problem. A very simple problem that he used as the example was the candle problem. Here is a picture of the problem unsolved.

The objective of this problem is to get the candle wax not to drip on the table. There are many ways to go about this but there is only one right answer. Here is a picture of the solved problem.

This is very easy if you think of the box that was holding the tacks a part of the equation. The point that he was trying to make is that a reward definitely makes us a lot faster at small focused tasks but when it came to the higher level thinking and problem solving problems, a reward was the worst because it narrowed the thinkers "vision" of how to solve the problem. David's speaking techniques were very effective because I was watching the video the whole entire time. Never once did my vision stray from the screen. His talking was constantly backed up by the screen behind him and he never looked back once. Also, his presentation style was very formal. He seemed to have the whole entire speech memorized word by word but he also had a little fun with it. I do think that Daniel's ideas are very legit and he backed each one of them up very well. I sincerely enjoyed his presentation and I am looking forward to more of these TED talks.

David Blaine Ted Talk - How He Held His Breath for 17 minutes

This video meant a lot to me. David talks about what it took to achieve his personal goals I noire and how he did it. With a lot of practice and a lot of patience, David achieved the ultimate goal of his- holding his breath underwater for 17 minutes. If you ask me, that is a pretty amazing achievement. This meant a lot to me because I value hard work and determination to get to ones goals in life. David set some of his own goals and achieved them only through superb hard work and complete dedication. David's speaking techniques also kept me listening to the whole entire video. His actual stories were what kept me listening. I thought it helpful how he also brought his failures into the story too and not just how he succeeded so fast and well. The whole talk was more of a long story that had a good plot and a good ending. David's dedication is going to help me peruse my goals more too. For example, tonight I am pushing the limits by catching up on all of my school work even though it us 11:30. It was actually that video that is the only thing keeping me going right now. David's presentation style was also very engaging. David occasionally showed clips or pictures of him in the tanks up on the screen. This was helpful because it gave the audience a back up to his talking and also saved him from not having to describe everything. (a picture is worth a thousand words). I would say that this video is a very motivational step forward for people achieving their goals in life. Overall, I loved this video and I loved learning about david's journey to get to his goal.