Ted Talk #4 (Clay Shirky)

This video has many take ways. The first one is a team is better the one person for creating things. The Blog in the begin gig was better when a team got together and created a new website. It only took a little time and a whole new thing was born. This is the main idea of the whole Ted Talk and should really be thought about and tried to be applied to everyday work.

The speaker’s effective speaking techniques are he changes his voice speed to emphasize certain points. When he is telling the audience about the Trillion that the world has of free time he says the “over one trillion hours a year” extremely slow so that the listener can process what he is saying and understand the magnitude of the fact. He also has a very monotone voice. This, in a way, hypnotizes the listener and they zone out everything but his voice. The most important technique he uses is story telling. Like all the other ted talks, he has a story to start off the presentation. This, as Dan Pink’s book A Whole New Mind says, gets the listeners attention and helps them remember the facts better.

His presentation style includes a lot of pictures and slides. By doing this the audience is more engaged and can better understand what he is talking about. It also get the audience to look at the screen more, preventing their minds from wondering.

This video is very encouraging. It shows that the world’s ideas together can become great and this should inspire people. It also shows the audience that even the worst creative ideas are possible. This applies to me because I have a lot of creative ideas, and they are not always the best. If I were to try some of these ideas I might have an idea that makes me a millionaire. This lesson should apply to education because kids should be encouraged to come up with creative ideas. To often kids are not allowed to be creative in school and forced to follow the rules. If teachers encouraged them to be creative more the world might have many creations that would be useful of entertaining. The world should also use the lesson; even the worst creative idea is an amazing idea. If every creative idea was tried out, the world would have better technology, cars, buildings, and medicine. Not all the ideas may have worked, but the ones that did may have ended up changing history.

 

Ted Talk #3 (Dan Pink)

Rewards and punishments often cause harm. When there is a clear solution rewards work well. However, when there is critical thinking involved then rewards are not as effective. When creativity is involved people’s own motivation is the best motivation.

I can see how this works. When I try to solve problems, I solve them for fun. This means I’m not thinking about all the possible solutions, I’m just playing around and under no pressure to get it right. When I’m pressured to get it right, in the fastest time, my hands start shaking, and my brain works twice as fast, but not as clearly, and it will take me longer to get it done.

ROWE has no schedules for workers, letting them decide what works best for them. If they are tired one day they can sleep in, as long as their works gets done they can do whatever they want.  Their productivity increased because people motivate themselves more than “carrots” do.

Think of it like this, when I was in 5^th grade we had a challenged to count how many books we read in 12 weeks. The goal was 12. The first 12 weeks I read 24 books. Twice the amount we were aiming for. The next 12 weeks the teacher announced that we were now required to write a small report for every book we read and would be graded for every report. In these next weeks I read 9 books. I went from reading in every spare moment to dreading reading, all because I had “motivation”.

There are many other examples in the real world; however, Dan Pink also presents scientific evidence. Studies show that one who never had motivation will perform better in a task that involved critical thinking, then someone who is “unmotivated”.

This talk has encouraged me to spend more time playing and think creatively, even though I have no motivation to do so. In his speech, Pink suggested that some of the best ideas came from simply messing around.

Ted Talk #2 (J.J Abrams)

J.J Abrams tells about how he found his love of mystery. He goes back to his childhood when his grandfather would show him the interworking of machines. Taking apart machines was one of my personal favorite childhood activities. Even now I buy broken machines and let the kids I babysit experience the wonderful pass time of “fixing” the broken parts. It is a great way for them to find out about how stuff works and also lets their creativity flow by constructing a different machine from the old one. Last time, a kid and I took an old VCR apart and we found the motor. Then, using a battery, a switch we also found in the machine, and electrical tape, we made the motor run. Not only that, but we used the switch so the motor can be turned on at the press of a button. I can see how activities like these fueled Abrams love of mystery because the endless possibilities in life that always keep you guessing. Understanding how things work can sometimes solve those mysteries, but other times it may just lead to more mysteries. When someone understands the endless possibilities the world has to offer, mysteries become compelling to try to solve. The answer is out there and you can find it, and who knows, it might just lead to another mystery.

Abrams then goes on to say how life is a “mystery box”.  He informs the audience that first acts in a show are called a teaser. It needs to draw people in and what better way to kill the cat than with curiosity. People are naturally interested in knowing the answer to a mystery, and shows with a good mystery can draw people in who would otherwise hate the show. He also gives examples of how mysteries appear over and over again in movies. Think of any movie you have ever watched, the opening scene is never completely understandable; there is always a mystery in it. How the character got there, what they mean when they say those lines, and most importantly what’s going to happen next. If a movie opened up with, “in this movie Barbra will find the love of her life, not know he is the one, let him go only to want him back again. They then will get married, have beautiful children and live happily ever after.”  Everyone would get up, turn the TV off and go find a movie with a mystery to watch.

Abrams then goes on to tell that sometimes the purposely withheld information is the most interesting. Not knowing exactly what happened and knowing that someone else does is so intriguing to the human mind.

The last part of the speech tells us that anyone anywhere can do anything that they strive to do. You don’t have to have the best equipment or superior schooling, you just have to be creative and use your skills

Ted Talk #1 (Sir Ken Robinson)

This Ted Talk really made me think about our education system. Sir Ken Robinson is correct when he says schools do not teach math and arts equally. Society today focuses on math, reading, writing and history, fine art classed are not nearly as emphasized as the other subjects. In school I have to take 2 years of math, 4 to get into collage. Yet only a few art credits are required to graduate. Arts in school should be taught as much as academic subjects.

Sir Ken Robinson had a very effective speaking style.He made the speech funny and easy to listen to by including jokes that helped along the story. He also added examples of his ideas so the audience could understand his thoughts better. The funny and easy to follow speech made the meaning of the speech sink in better.