TT#8: Podcast - TEDtalks

This is one of the blogs I have been dreading.  I am not a fan of sitting and listening when I have a person in front of me to keep my focus.  This is one challenge I face when listening to podcasts. Much to my surprise when I searched podcast's on iTunes, I was shocked to find TEDtalks.  I would have never thought to categorize TEDtalks with podcasts.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TED_wordmark.svg

During my high school placement, I showed TEDtalks to my students to help enforce the material we were looking at.  What I like about TEDtalks is how they cover so many different subjects.  Each episode are roughly 20 minutes, they are not too long that I can re-show the episode back to back.  I have found that some are so compacted with information, that you need to watch them more than once to catch all the information.

The TEDtalk I had found for this post is How Schools Kill Creativity.  The speak was Sir Ken Robinson.  He discussed many in ways in which schools limit students ability to be creative.  The Arts receive the lowest amount of funding and students who need to be move to think are suppressed with medication.  This really made me think.  Do I suppress creativity in my students?  Ken told the story of Jillian Lyne who danced for the Royal Ballet in England.  When Jillian was young her teachers believed she had a learning disability.  Her mother took her to a specialist.  After hearing everything the mother had told him, he told Jillian he needed to speak to her mother for a moment and that they would be right back.  As he left, he turned on his radio.  He told the mother to just watch Jillian as she began to move to the music.  He informed her mother that Jillian was a dancer and that she should take her to a dance school.  This was the best possible thing for Jillian.  How many students are forced to sit still and learn.  Ken talked about how we learn through so many different forms.  This is why it is so important for teachers to not just teach in one way.

Depending on the grade level and the subject, I would consider showing this specific episode to my students.  I do recommend that teachers take the time to watch this video and think about how they inspire creativity in their students.

~ Miss Laing