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.

Sir Ken Robinson Ted Talk Response

Ken Robinson brought a very important point up about education. He values how being very intelligent is not always getting good grades, and being the best in your class, but living up to your own expectations and being the best person you can be. He also talked about how life pushes us too much to accell in the standard subjects while he thinks that creativity still needs to be present in all forms of education. He told a story about a girl that I thought was very interesting. This girl was thought to have all sorts of problems in school but it turned out that she only had forms of ADHD. She expressed most of her thinking through dancing and eventually became one of the best koreagraphers in the history of the U.S. She did the dancing for many famous shows including cats and phantom of the opera. Sir Ken Robinson's form of speaking was very effective and certainly kept my attention. He didn't use a PowerPoint presentation which was a good non distraction and he added small tidbits off comic relief to not make hints TOO serious. For example, he would get his point across and then he would add something funny afterwards to some it up. This also connects to his presentation style. Like I was saying before, not having a PowerPoint presentation was actually a good thing for this presentation. His talk did not necessarily need backup behind him for everything that he was talking about because his subjects were in general, pretty general. There were a few things that mattered from this video to me and my education. I had a lot to agree with him when it came to the creativity part. I am sometimes the same way as that little girl he was talking about. She expressed her intelligence throughout dancing and not through direct education. I can sometimes be the same way if I am not focused. Some days, I have no problem sitting down and thinking through a few math problems but other days I find it hard to focus if I did not get outside or have a good lunch. When it comes to education, I find this subject very important and I hope that we will be able to reinforce it in our children's schools in the future. I would really love to see my kids learning in a completely different environment than I am right now. When it comes to the world, I don't really know the full potential of this idea. The world is very different in very many places so this idea may work much better in some areas of the world than others. Overall, I thought that this presentation was wonderful to watch and listen to because for me, I like to sit down and listen to what is important to other people and the idea presented by Sir Ken Robinson was also very important to me too.