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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Bring on the Learning Revolution

I started my blog with hope to answer the question of how to create a meaningful science classroom with a low-budget. I was able to find some very interesting information and learned a lot of possibilities that I wasn't previously aware of. I did stray from my original topic quite a few times because I found other questions to explore that I was sincerely interested in. Among most of the research I did (for any question) I was constantly finding information on how to make learning and education more beneficial and meaningful for students. For this blog post, I decided to focus on that topic. I was able to find a TED talk that focused on education as a revolution, not as an evolution. This talk was given by Sir Ken Robinson in which he talks about making a shift from standardized education to personalized learning that allows students' natural talents to flourish.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html

In his speech, Robinson talks about how education should be nourishing a diversity of talents and not a single conception of ability. He compares our education system to a fast food chain in which everything is standardized and you get the same thing no matter where you go. He claims that education needs to be more customized to circumstances and individual needs. Robinson also asks his audience to think about the fact that if your doing something you love, an hour can feel like five minutes, but if your doing something that doesn't resonate with your spirit five minutes can feel like an hour. He states that so many people are opting out of education because it doesn't feed their spirit, passion, or energy.

This topic is something we've all had experience with or have learned about in our pre-service career. I found his talk really interesting and motivating, but I still have questions like: what's being done now to make this change, are there any changes that are actually going to take place, what would a classroom look like with this type of curriculum?

1 comment:

  1. I was shown this in a class earlier this year, it a cool video from Sir Ken Robinson.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
    I found his ideas to be extremely thought provoking. I think his ideas could be beneficial, although they would be pretty hard to implement in a large scale. Also I see a lot of resistance from various aspects of the world.

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