Solving World Peace? (TED talk #8)

Based off of the TED talk by John Hunter on The World Peace Game

John Hunter gave an interesting and thought-provoking TED talk about how he has his students solve world peace. John Hunter, a teacher, invented a game that his students play where he puts all of the world’s problems on the table and has his fourth-graders solve them. This game is like the real world: there are countries, presidents, companies, money, and many more roles that the children assume. To win, all 50 problems must be solved, and the countries’ entire asset values must increase before the time runs out. The beauty of this game is that John Hunter allows time for his students to be creative so that they can figure problems out for themselves. Maybe if students were allowed time to have fun and play with the right side of their brain, they would become what Dan Pink is envisioning.

The main reason why John Hunter came up with this game is because he knew his generation messed up, and he wanted hid kids to have the tools to solve the problems that they created. It is very true though. All of the previous generations have created this world with global warming, political turmoil, shrining resources, hunger, and more. If schools teach kids that the world is fine, then the kids will grow up and have no idea what the statuses actually are. Schools need to bring in relevancy and criteria from today into our learning. I have had a great Social Studies teacher that I have learned more from than any other teacher. What makes her so great is not only that she teaches us all of the material in an easy to understand way, but that she connects it to the U.S. today. We don’t just talk about history; we talk about current events that are happening today. We could be talking about JFK, and then suddenly we will be talking about Obama. It all makes sense though, because she brings everything together that she teaches us into today. John Hunter is doing that with his world hunger game by having kids learn about the world today, but in doing so they also learn other skills.

Another beauty of the world peace game is that fourth-graders are the ones solving the problems. They can find out on their own what is right and what is wrong, what works and what doesn’t work because it is just a game. They can make mistakes without there being any real harm done, and then they can learn from them. It gives kids a chance to try out the real world, so that when they grow up they will already be one step ahead of people who didn’t play the game. Kids have a simple, no-complication way of looking at things, and that can be beneficial. When you get older you tend to make things more complicated than they need to be, which is why Adora Svitak’s TED talk comes to mind in this area. Adults have a lot to learn from kids, and this game proves it. Fourth-graders are very smart; they just need to be guided in the right direction. But, some of these problems are very adult-like. This game seems like it has a lot of information for kids to handle. Maybe if we start treating kids more like adults and with adult issues, they will be more literate and ready to tackle problems. However, when we do that, they lose some of that childish way of thinking. How can we have people think like a child in treating adult problems, but still have them have some of their adult assets?

In the game there is a secret saboteur that tries to undermine everything in the game. No one knows who they are, so everyone is a little more careful about who they interact with. John Hunter told a story about how there was a girl who, without warning or permission, decided to attack oil-rich ground. She had gathered her army and held the ground, allowing no one in or out. Everyone was upset with her, because they had no idea what she was doing, and this was the world peace game. A couple of days later though, it came to light that a country had military plans to dominate the entire world. Had they had access to that fuel, their plan would have succeeded. The girl was able to see the signs way before anyone else, and then started a small war to end an even bigger one. This reminded me of the movie National Treasure. In it, the main character steals the Declaration of Independence to protect it from getting stolen by someone else, who might have ruined it. He committed a crime to stop an even bigger crime from happening. He did something wrong to do something right. It is the same principle as is it good when a criminal is murdered? They were killed, but they did something bad.  Is it ok to break the law to save the law? The little girl went against what everyone else was doing, and stood up against what she knew. Sometimes you just have to follows your gut and believe you are right. A lot of the time when we are playing games such as jeopardy in class, I don’t want to answer the question because I am afraid that I will be wrong. It ends up thought that usually I am right, and then I get mad at myself because I had the right answer. It is good to have a saboteur/questioner in a group because they make everyone think more carefully and provide different perspectives to the group. In the game, if a military leader wages troops in a war, and some of them die, then the leader/student must write a letter home to the parents explaining why their son/daughter was killed. This again makes the kids think more carefully about what decisions they make, and it gives them a chance to explain their reasoning. How can kids start to think more carefully about what they say and do without having to write letter about everything?

This game uses collective wisdom. Instead of a teacher standing at the front of the class and lecturing the students, the students are able to learn from each other. I think that this works better because the students are not just learning the teacher’s viewpoints; they are learning what every other person thinks through discussion. This brings in mind Clay Shirky’s TED talk about how together we can learn from each other. This starts in the classroom.

At the end of his TED talk John Hunter tells another story about a group who was almost going to win the game. They had solved all of the problems, but one poor country had lost money (to win each country needs to gain money). With one minute left on the clock, the rest of the countries pooled together money and offered it to the poorest country. They accepted it, and won the game. John Hunter presented an interesting idea-spontaneous compassion. I wish he would have elaborated on it more, because it is very interesting. Is spontaneous compassion better than regular compassion? What are the benefits/negatives? Does it work? What even is spontaneous compassion (example?)?

I found John Hunter’s TED talk very interesting from a presentation style because he has such a different personality than what I am used to. He uses words such as beautiful and amazing, and is very passionate about what he is doing. He talks slowly so that you can understand him, and uses sly humor that is funny. He also had videos and pictures. The videos were great because they gave a glimpse at what he was really talking about. John Hunter’s culture and personality were different, which made him fun to listen to.

What matters? That we address real-world problems to children today, because then they will have ideas for how to solve them for the future!

An Awesome Life (TED Talk #7)

Based off of the TED talk by Neil Pasricha: The 3 A’s of awesome

Neil Pasricha gave an inspiring TED talk about what most of us do not appreciate-the world is awesome. Drawing on past hardships and rough times, Neil Pasricha teaches the world how to savor the simple things in life. He starts out by telling a story of how his parents moved from Kenya and India to Canada. There his life was great up until 2008 where everything seemed to be falling apart. He started a blog about how even though his life was horrible; there was still a lot of good to be thankful for. The biggest lesson he is teaching here is that people need to stop and be thankful for all of the little things in life. In a world of increasing complex material items it can be easy to lose yourself, but stopping and wondering at the joys in life will lead you to have a fuller, happier life. Today, where life is better for most people than it was in the past, it is easy to take things for granted. If you have not lived without all of the luxuries we have today, it is hard to not take things for granted. You don’t know what you have until it’s gone is exactly right. I know that my mom tells me all of the time that I don’t know how lucky I am, and it’s true. I understand that I have a lot to be grateful for, but since I don’t know what it is like to live without the life that I have right now, I can say that I am grateful, but sometimes I feel like I don’t know what it is really like to be grateful. One of the only ways for people to truly appreciate what they have is for them to have not had it before. How can we get people to be thankful for everything that they have without having them lose everything?

Neil Pasricha then goes on to say that in order to live a fully awesome life, you must try to follow and incorporate the three A’s of awesome. The first A is attitude. If you are in a bad situation, there are 2 choices. You can mope around because of your slumps or you can mope around and then pull yourself back up. The difference between those who have awesome lives and those who don’t is that the awesome people choose option number 2. There are always 2 choices; look at something and just see the bad, or look at something and see the good. It is the difference between looking at the glass half full or half empty that makes the people who come out on top or the people who come out on bottom. Family crises result in the family bonding together, or they can drive them apart. You hear stories about people who were in hard times, but they learned from them and came out of them stronger than before (Neil Pasricha is a great example of this). It all depends on who will fall or who will fall and get back up again. The ability to take something that was not meant to happen and still learn from it and look for the positive is important in a society of imperfection. Everyone has problems and downfalls in their life, but that doesn’t mean that you can use them as an excuse to be grouchy or have a bad attitude. It is just part of life. A negative outlook on life can affect so many things: your health, your friends, your job, your motivation, etc. A positive outlook on life can bring so much, so why don’t more people have that?

The next A to follow for an awesome life is awareness. Awareness is the ability to take on your 3-year old self by wondering at the smallest parts of life. When you are 3 you are seeing the world for the first time, so everything in itself is a small miracle. When you look at something from the right perspective, it can be amazing. Taking something as simple as the smell of dinner cooking can either be normal or it can be wonderful, which relates back to attitude, but it is also about perspective. You can look at the simple joys of life as being normal, or you can look at them like a 3-year old and see them as incredible. People again from other countries can see the incredibleness of these gifts because they have never had them before. The world is amazing. Have you ever thought about how a camera works, or how a fruit all the way from Costa Rica traveled to where you are now so that you could buy it for 25 cents(with it not going bad)? Yet we are all too concerned with the more and more complex gadgets. The iPads and the luxury cars and the extravagant fruit pies would not be possible without the simple, basic necessities. What differs 3-year olds from adults in this case is that 3-year olds are seeing this for the first time. Adults are so used to all of the simple pleasures that it gets harder and harder for them to keep up this constant thought of awesomeness in everyday routines. How can people keep up this constant wonder of a 3-year old to be awesome?

The last A is authenticity, which is embracing yourself and following your heart. This is important because once you accept every part of yourself, you will be able to do more, see more, and become more. You are you, and you are cool with that because it is you and you are not going to change. More apparent in society today are people with eating disorders, getting plastic surgery, working jobs that they hate, marrying people for the wrong reasons, etc. They are not doing this for themselves; they are doing it for other people. Authenticity is all about loving you for you, but so many people find that hard to do. It is important to please others, but the main person in your life should be you! If people don’t try to deny their passions, then they will be more likely to follow them. Whatever you like to do, do it! If something really is a life-long dream, then you will never give up and you will keep striving until you have accomplished it. In order to be awesome you must first accept yourself, and once you do, it will change your life. So whatever you love, pursue it. You are the only person who is living your life. Why do we even bothering impressing other people in the first place?

Neil Pasricha is a very effective speaker because of the tone of his voice. He does not talk as if he is giving a lecture, but as if he is having a conversation. He speaks at just the right pace, and his words flow smoothly together. He only says a couple of ums and uhs, but they were not in the middle of a sentence (it was where a natural break in his talking was). Having him tell personal stories really made his topic stand out because it made it personal. He was talking from past experiences, as opposed to talking just from facts and learning from other people. His slide show of family photos made the presentation even better by giving the people something to relate to.

One big question that arises after I watched this TED video is why do people only ever see the negative in their lives? Why do they only see the flaws, and not the assets? Why do they not see the awesome in the simple? And how can we change this so that they do?

Helping Kids to Help Education (TED Talk #6)

Based off of the TED talk by Dave Eggers: Once Upon a School

After watching the TED talk by Dave Eggers I was taken aback by how one man saw a problem and came up with a creative solution that did more than merely solve it, but changed the world. Dave Eggers had many friends whom were teachers, and he had heard them talk about how they were having trouble getting inner city kids to read, write, and do their homework. They wanted to be able to have one-on-one time with each student, but with classes of 30-50 people that was impossible. He realized then that, being a writer, how many of his friends and co-workers had flexible schedules, and therefore ‘free time’ to spare. He created an office space where kids could come in and receive free one-on-one tutoring from hundreds of volunteers. As his business grew he tackled problems along the way, and his idea eventually became such a success that other people started to copy him around the world. Today his business is still growing, and a website has been created to help inspire people to come out and help kids in need of education.

What really strikes me about this whole thing is how Dave Eggers was able to take a problem with no apparent solution and come up with such an obvious, easy answer. The problem was that kids did not get enough one-on-one time, and then the solution was to just have people volunteer their time to help tutor kids. It sounds so simple, yet if he had done it any other way I doubt that it would have been just as successful. One of the main reasons this works is because it is volunteers that are doing the tutoring because they want to. This ties back to Dan Pink and internal motivation: if Dave Eggers had found people and paid them to tutor children for free it would have not been as successful because the adults would be less motivated to help the kids. The volunteers want to help the kids, and in return they get back something even more special, which is hard to put into words. The adults get the satisfaction of helping out someone in need, and in return also learn from the kids. This reminds me of what Adora Svitak believes in her TED talk, which is that adults and kids need to be involved in a mutual relationship. In this instance, they are. What is so great about this system is that the volunteers do not need a master degree or have to be a teacher; they can just be regular people wanting to help. They also do not have to have a commitment. All that matters here is that an adult is volunteering some of their time.

Why the kids like this set-up and are participating in it I think has to do with the fact that they are not walking into a place labeled ‘Center for Kids Who Need More Help’. When they walk into a store, they feel normal. People do not want to be labeled as someone who is struggling, they like to think of themselves as smart, and they like other people to think that they are smart. When you walk into a tutoring place, it is almost as if you are admitting that you are not smart. With this system though, the kids walk into a pirate supply store. They are not being taught by teachers, they are just getting help from other adults, almost like they are getting help from their parents.

What Dave Eggers believes is extraordinary, and if other people could participate in what he is trying to start, the world of not only education but of parenting could be altered (in a good way). He thinks that all kids have potential, and that all kids are smart. All it takes is a teacher who will guide them in the right direction. Think about how many kids are given up on because they do not seem smart enough at first glance, which makes sense. Adults put most of their effort into the children who they think will succeed and become someone great. If everyone got the same amount of attention as those select few, think of how great everyone could become. When a teacher assigns a class of 40 a paper, students will be less inclined to work hard on it, because it feels impersonal and they think the teacher won’t care as much since she has 39 other students she assigned this project to. But when a student has someone who is giving their writing a close look, and is helping them every step of the way, suddenly the paper starts to feel personal, and the students feel accountable towards the adults and want to do them proud. What is also interesting is that students will work harder on writing than they ever have if it is going to be published (like in a book). Once they know it will be permanent and no one will be able to change or deny what they said, their writing improves greatly. So I wonder how we can make kids work this hard on their writing and turn up good results all of the time instead of just when their work will be published?

It was hard not to miss the immense creativity involved in this idea. A pirate supply store-the idea is funny, original, unique, and it will attract people to buy the products. This is what Dan Pink is talking about when he says the future will belong to right-brainers. People who can creatively solve-problems will make the world a better place (maybe this is what schools should start focusing on). I also couldn’t miss how Arapahoe has something much like tutoring-writing lab! Writing lab is open to all students, and they can take any schoolwork and receive one-on-one help with another language arts teacher. Having been to writing lab several times, I know how helpful it is to have a teacher only focus on you and your writing. However, in order to reach more students writing lab should be offered every day, instead of just Tuesdays and Thursdays.

While Dave Eggers speech was inspiring, it could have been better if he had not said so many ums, ya knows, and uhs. It was sometimes hard to follow his speech because of all of the pauses and stuttering. He did use real photos on a slideshow to have the audience visualize what he was saying. The photos helped because instead of the audience just hearing about his points, they actually got to connect a place with a name. He elaborated on the funny parts of his story (the pirate and superhero store), which made his TED talk overall more enjoyable. I also noticed that he calls himself out on his flaws, saying how he is not speaking the English language very well and how he is very nervous.