This week in class we have looked at some of the hundreds of videos uploaded onto the excellentTed.com website. I´m sure that there´s something there of interest for all of you. What I´d like you to do is to write a little bit about one video you´ve seen, briefly explaining the content and saying why you like it.Have a great week.
“What is to love?” starts Helen Fisher her speech about Romantic Love. She is an anthropologist and for many years she has been studying how human brain works when “we are in love”. With the help of volunteers and a brain scanner she could realized that many different things happened in the brain.
ReplyDeleteShe affirms that to love is not an emotion, it`s a drive that the mind controls. However most important is to translate her studies about three brain systems:
- Sex drive, which is a kind of feeling similar to being hungry
- Romantic Love, the main question. The speaker tells us about how the person could be focus on his or her love and only thinking about she or he. It also says love is all about dopamine.
- Attachment, how we can tolerate the human being we “are in love”.
At the very end she tell us a story which I found it very interesting (if you want to heard it: 21:27) and she tackled the problem about antidepressants, a subject that is concerning lots of students because the prescriptions are growing considerably the last years.
Nevertheless, I will express my opinion because I don`t want to make this longer. I think she started the speech on a “catchy” way but the development of it was everything good except that she forgot for a moment that she was a scientist as she started to talk as a feminist. That was unexpected for me, even if she said the truth, because what I wanted to hear was the development of a scientist research. Despite of the end being almost perfect, as she didn`t really exposed her conclusions; I finally like it and enjoy it. This is why I totally recommend it.
Indeed Ted.com is an amazing website and I am certainly happy about discovering it.
ReplyDeleteAlthough it offers a bewildering array of interesting videos, the one which had caught my attention from the very beginning, is the video that starts with a poster where you can read that admittedly “There are places on earth in every country where, for various reasons good schools cannot be built and good teachers cannot or do not want to go”
This phrase and all its significance in a global world claiming equal opportunities for everyone was the thing that struck me most. Evidently, education is a big issue and the irony set by professor Sugata Mitra: Good teachers do not want to go to those places where they are needed the most, required an audacious creative approach.
Understandably, being a professor of educational technology, he came up with new ideas and in 1999 alongside with some colleagues carried on an innovative experiment to tackle this problem. The experiment was named “A hole in a wall” and took place in Delhi.
They embeded a computer with internet access in wall in a slum and children living in played with the computer first and in the process eventually learned how to use it.
Admitedelly, from this experience, it is an environment that stimulates curiosity which motivates children to self-instruct and peer-share their acquired knowledge.
Generally speaking the experiment was a success and was carried on in other parts of India, South Africa and in Newcastle in a public school.
All in all this unique experience clearly explained by his mentor on the video at Ted.com is something you must see.
Marcelo
I choose Ken Robinson: "Schools kill creativity" talk, because of it's title. It intrigue me that all we have learned from school, won't help us in our future daily life.
ReplyDeleteThe school system has the same subjects in every country. First, math & science, then humanities and finally arts. Also, between arts there are different values: music and literature first and dancing and painting at last.
He asked the audience: why don't we teach dance with the same amount of hours per day as math? They are both important. Children born artist, but through their education they loose it. The school system is plan in order to produce university professors, the speaker said. The subjects are plan for utility, "don't dance, you can't live as a dance". And the same, for the rest of the arts.
What i like it most is the interesting way of explaining how creativity is not well valued in the school system. Making mistakes is the worst thing you can do, when in fact we have to be prepared for failure. In failure, we found creativity.
I´ve choosen a very interesting video about learning disorders, "A Second Opinion on Learning Disorders" by Aditi Shankardass. To my surprise, she remarked a great number of children that are misdiagnosed.
ReplyDeleteAditi works in a lab of the Comunicative Disorders Department at California State University. She uses a EFG technology device that enables a more accurate diagnoses for children with developmental disorders.
She pointed out how EFG device has revealed mistaken diagnoses such as a seven-year-old Justin Senigar who was diagnosed of severe autism. After using the device, it turned out that he was suffering from brain seizures.
Amazingly was the change in Justin after taking anti-seizures medication. Not only did he enrolled in a regular school,but he also became a karate superchamp!!.
Ana Paula