TED Talks Effective?

To start off, I don’t understand what the author is trying to get across when saying “makes a teacher feel more gifted”. What makes a “gifted” teacher? And having a teacher feel more gifted on’t make them necessarily better at their job. There comes a point where you come to a very fine line between gifted and entitled. Also I don’t think that watching TED Talks is going to make this big of a difference in the gifted education system. Most of the teachers I’ve had either had good attitudes or they didn’t. They either tried to help students out and make them believe in themselves or they didn’t. This comes from personality flaws, not “teaching skill”. I have had decent teachers with really awesome outlooks that made me want to learn and grow, so I did. I have also had very well educated and smart teachers that turned everything into a challenge of wits and authority. TED Talks were NOT going to change his teaching style, because he thinks he’s above it. A lot of what this author is talking about seems to be personality issues of leaders. The armed forces general seemed like he just had a really great commanding officer. I don’t think that someone would watch that and just say “Oh wow better change everything I’ve been doing for the past [however many] years.”. At the risk of sounding cheesy, I’m gonna compare TED Talks to fables we read as a kid. If you are a teenager, you have most likely lied to your parents at least once in your lifetime. Are you going to think back to Pinocchio every time you lie? If you were to watch it now, would you change your ways? I think Miss Rubenstein should ask herself these questions before just relying on surveys. She put herself in a leadership position by writing this article. The least she can do is follow her own advice. 

Transformational Leadership Using TED Talks

TED talks are a way for smart people with an idea that could make a difference can share their thoughts and ideas with other people.  This idea of sharing knowledge between all people is a great concept and has the potential to change the world.  In the article Transforming Leadership Using TED Talks by Dr. Lisa Rubenstein, she makes the point that TED talks could change the way teachers teach and students learn.  TED talks are great if teachers were to go look for new ideas on how to better the way they do their job and the way they communicate with their students.  I understand this main concept she is getting at; we all can learn things from the talks.  Beyond this, I found her article to be quite confusing.  She said a lot of things that made next to no sense to me.  She made a lot of weird analogies that didn’t seem to work.  In other cases, she doesn’t go into the topic as much as she could have.  It would have made much more sense if she just explained her thoughts more.  Despite all of this, I think her main point was that TED talks would be a good way to train teachers.  While she thinks that this is an awesome idea, I do not think that it is entirely practical.  There are a lot of things teachers could do to teach better, but I believe that teachers teach what’s best for the class as a whole, not individuals.  For example, I am a kinesthetic learner, meaning I learn things best by doing.  Unfortunately for me, most people learn best by seeing and hearing.  It would be ridiculous for a teacher to teach a different way just for the people like me, while the majority of the class learns best differently.  I think that she could be on to something, that teachers could switch up the way they teach, but I do not completely agree to an extent. 

Rubenstein TED Talk - Shelby Stephens

I have definitely enjoyed watching and reading the TED Talks from my classes this past year. They are just as informative and scholarly as they are interesting. I was glad that something finally told me what “TED” stands for, as I have often wondered. While I have always found the TED Talks intriguing, "Transformational Leadership Using TED Talks" by Lisa DaVia Rubenstein did not exactly leave me wanting more. The article itself was quite dense and wordy. While I do agree with Ms. Rubenstein’s thesis that educational leaders should and can become more effective through the use of this “new professional development paradigm”, I do not think that it was as successful or convincing of an argument as it could have been. This is mostly due to her open-ended and inconclusive summaries of different articles. A collaboration of ideas and results with the cited presenters in a cohesive manner could have definitely strengthened her thesis and argument for an alternative method of making educational leaders more effective.

            I can do, however, understand what Dweek and Molden have to say in their portion of the article about individuals’ motivation in terms of fixed (or entity) versus malleable (or growth) mind-sets. I can identify with the fixed or entity mind-set. Whether it has been in regards of my education and work or even with my hobbies like playing the piano or guitar, I have always sought out tasks or songs that I knew I could accomplish and avoided tasks that might challenge me.

            My favorite article summary detailed within Lisa DaVia Rubenstein’s article “Transformational Leadership Using TED Talks" was Dan Meyer’s 2010 article “Math Class Needs a Makeover”. Meyer presents a method of actually helping students to develop patient problem-solving skills. By removing scaffolding from textbooks, it will challenge students to think harder about the concepts to be learned and prompt growth of the malleable or growth mind-set. This, when applied to leadership processes as suggested by Dweek and Molden, along with the wealth of information and techniques that is TED Talks, should certainly be able to produce the “new professional development paradigm” that Ms. Rubenstein was theorizing about.

TED Talks Annemarie Holbrook

In Lisa DaVia Rubenstein’s article “Transformational Leadership Using TED Talks” she discusses the importance of teacher and student communicating. I agree that all children have different gifts and that these gifts should be shared. By separating the children into higher learning or more gifted categories, you are taking away from the opportunities of the children that do not fall within this “gifted” category. The inspiration of the other students and their gifted ideas and ways of thinking could rather be put to use in helping others reach this level, or even motivating others to think creatively. This brings about the effect of the early adopters picking up on what is going on around them, then trickles in the remaining students who decide to follow the example. Students have the power to inspire and motivate other students with their personal hard work and creativity.

The students, however, must get their inspiration and help from important figures in their lives such as teachers. In order to inspire students, the teachers must be inspired. This is where the idea of TED Talks comes in. Discussing topics, implementing plans, sharing fails as well as successes and pooling ideas can begin the inspiration process.

I have been exposed to many TED Talks during my time at Clemson. First semester I took Yoga and for some of our assignments we were instructed to watch particular TED Talks relating to mind and body and other important issues. Each of us was assigned to watch and to respond. This set up allowed us to be ready to discuss what we watched with the rest of the class as well as the teacher. We all shared our thoughts and ideas and it made for a great class. TED Talks have come in handy in my research papers, not only providing information, but also sparking new topics for me to think about and discuss in my paper.

By inspiring others through thorough discussions and sharing of ideas and experiences we can all build our knowledge. Not one man can be an expert at everything; we all need that inspiration, the drive, the ideas, and help. By having discussions such as those started by TED Talks we can make all this happen.

Last Blog!!!!! Ted Talk Article

Like the post before me I found this article hard to understand. But I can very much so relate to the article. I myself was not a so-called “gifted” student. I was with all the random shakers and problem kids for the better half of my high school career. But when I was a junior I took an honors class and then as a senior I took an AP class. In the honors class and in the AP class I saw a large difference in teaching style and behavior by both the students and the teacher in the classes.

Having been not a gifted student I was forced to take classes with students who didn’t care about school. In turn the teachers would either not try to teach or just didn’t care about us students and would be lazy for a better half of the class. Along with teachers being lazy, the student’s behavior leads to lots of class disruptions. With the teacher having to act as disciplinarian and teacher not much teaching was done. This lead to poor test grades and complaining from the students that it was the teacher’s fault. But in my AP and honors class the opposite occurred.

In my AP and honors classes the class ran more like they do now in college; fast pace, no discipline problems to deal with and if you don’t study it’s your fault for the bad grade. I also saw that the teachers in these classes had more enthusiasm to teach and knew their subjects well. I also found that as a student in this class, I was more willing to learn and more eager to learn because I was in a positive learning environment. In these classes we didn’t watch any TED talks, but I had herd before coming to this class that TED talks were a great way to learn more interesting things and I do agree. Having watched the few TED talks that we had to for the blogs I have grown to like them because they all have very interesting topics on relevant things.

Transformational Leadership; TED Talks: Sadie M.

While I definitely agree with the idea of this article, I'm not sure how well the argument is presented. Although the author uses examples of multiple TED Talks to support her idea, she does a better job of summarizing the videos than of convincing her audience. Some of the ideas really don't make sense to me at all. For example, in the section about conducting, the author uses many strange analogies that don't really fit: saying that teachers are responsible for how kids "play" together in the classroom just as musicians "play together" in a orchestra. While I understand that concept, what does it have to do with gifted children? She also explains that because music is a creative art form, teachers should be like artists and have room for creativity in their interpretation of classroom standards. This seems like a very weak idea to me. On other points, she simply does not elaborate. She uses terms like "various classroom management strategies" without explaining what and how. Similarly, she talks about taking risks as educators, but does not give a solid definition or example. A point she explains well is the idea of looking to others with expertise in a certain area, using examples of Thomas Edison and General McChrystal. However, I feel that this is a lot easier said than done. How likely is it that a teacher is able to bring someone into the classroom to elaborate on a certain subject? While videos and other methods of "bringing others on board" might be used as an alternative, the teacher still must have a certain level of expertise on the subject to be able to answer students' questions. In all, I do think that the author makes an interesting argument, but I do feel that it could have been better supported. I do understand that it is difficult to write a paper about videos when the reader may or may not have watched them. Still, I think the author could have gone into more detail about how exactly these videos would inspire teachers to change, especially compared to traditional proffessional development.

Handy Dandy TED Talks

TED talks are a way to share important information between strong minds of the community.  A person with a bright idea can give a TED talk and pass along his ideas to the next person.  In the article, Transforming Leadership Using TED Talks  by Lisa Rubenstein, PhD, Rubenstein brings up a strong point of using TED talks to train our teachers.  She goes on to say that these TED talks could be a good place for teachers to learn new techniques to enable them to better influence the knowledge learned by their students, especially when teaching the gifted and talented. 

Rubenstein makes a wise point.  Every time I have watched a TED talk I have learned something new and have been able to use that knew knowledge in everyday life.  So what if our teachers had the same opportunity?  How much stronger would the staff of the school systems be?  I think that TED talks could be an opportune way for other successful teachers to give pointers, tips and helpful guidance to younger teachers in training.  These teachers can learn from the sharing of information and improve our school system and overall positively influence our country with better education.

In one example, Rubenstein denotes a TED talk by Dan Meyer who stimulates his gifted children’s thinking skills by giving the students a picture and allowing them to solve the math problem by developing and enhancing their problem solving skills.  This video would be a great attribute for a teacher of gifted and talented students to learn how to stimulate her students and challenge their ability to think abstractly and rely on their own to solve a problem.  Many of the talks that Rubenstein mentions would be very helpful in training the future teachers and would be a great attribute to teach our teachers.  With this use of the technology of today, communication can be widespread and education can benefit from this new technology.