We Need To Talk About An Injustice

If you only watch one presentation from TED 2012, watch this one from Bryan Stevenson. 

 

"Our humanity depends on everyone's humanity."

Equal Justice Initiative

Quotes Worth Spreading

I had the opportunity to attend TEDActive last week. (Full Disclosure: TED - with the generous support of the Kohl's Foundation - kindly paid my way so that I could give them feedback on their soon-to-launch TED-Ed initiative. All expense paid trip to Palm Springs at the end of February. It's rough, but I took one for the team.)

I'm sure this year's TED Talks will begin appearing shortly, but I thought I'd share some of the quotes I wrote down from some of the talks. Please note that while I'm attempting to quote directly, I'm sure some of these are paraphrased a bit. Please also note that there were many good quotes from many talks, but sometimes I just listened and didn't write anything down. Not all of these quotes are profound, but they made me think for one reason or another and I wanted to record them somewhere to refer to later when the talks are posted.

John Bates (TEDYou Talk)

Be generous by graciously accepting compliments. It's a gift you give the complimenter.

Brian Greene

Some details really matter.

Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts (talk posted)

The key to maximizing our talents is for us all to put ourselves in a zone of stimulation that is right for us.

Paul Gilding: The Earth is Full (talk posted)

It takes a good crisis to get us going.

Peter Diamandis: Abundance is our Future (talk posted)

The news media preferentially feeds us negative stories, because that's what our minds pay attention to.

It's not about creating a life of luxury for everybody on this planet, it's about creating a life of possibility.

Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story (talk posted, contains graphic language)

Make me care.

The audience wants to work for their meal, they just don't want to know they're doing it.

The unifying theory of 2 + 2. Don't give them 4. (Me: Shoutout to Dan Meyer)

Billy Collins

If at first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried.

It took a long time to put the wheel and the suitcase together.

Michael Tilson Thomas

Technology is changing music itself.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein and Steven Pinker

Our circle of empathy expanded.

We are susceptible to reason.

Jonathan Haidt

Don't change the rider, or the elephant, change the path.

Atul Gawande

Making systems work is the challenge of our generation.

Complexity requires groups success. We all need to be pit crews.

Regina Dugan

If you refuse to fear failure then impossible things become possible.

Why did we do it? In part we wondered if it was possible to do it.

Donald Sadoway

If you want to make something dirt cheap, use dirt.

Julie Burstein

Passionate optimism.

Lior Zoref

They are all thinking with their friends.

Upgrade your brain.

Jennifer Pahlka: Coding a Better Government (talk posted)

Government is what we do together that we can't do alone.

Jim Stengel

What if I thought about him every day when I went to work?

Pick one attribute related to curiosity and make progress on that this year.

Articulate your ideal often.

Sherry Turkle

We sacrifice conversation for mere connection.

I share therefore I am. (Me: Shoutout to Dean Shareski, although she was disagreeing with this.)

Tali Sharot

People with high expectations always feel better about things.

Optimism changes both subjective and objective reality.

Bryan Stevenson: We need to talk about an injustice (talk posted)

Our humanity depends on everyone's humanity.

The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.

One of the keys is proximity: we're too far from poverty and suffering.

Note: Bryan moved the audience. The next day Chris Anderson asked for contributions from the stage - the audience contributed $1.1 million to Bryan's attempt to reform juvenile justice.

Chip Kidd

What do stories look like? (Me: He designs book jackets.)

Tom Campbell

We tend to use jargon to classify things, instead of really looking at them.

Ainissa Ramirez

It takes 64 elements to make a smart phone.

You fail your way to success.

Scientists brand failure differently. We call it data.

Kate Messner

The power of what if . . .?

We need more kid-sourcing.

Angie Miller

Are you content to let someone else represent you? That's what you do when you don't represent yourself.

Awele Makeba

It is my hope to find my best personal self in service to others.

Sebastian Wernicke

In a new medium you can break the rules.

Cesar Kuriyama

The power of time off.

Brene Brown

Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.

TED is like the failure conference. Everyone here has failed. Often. And learned from it.

You hear one of two voices. Either "you're never good enough" or "who do you think you are?"

Empathy is the antidote to shame.

Steven Addis

Get in the shot. (Me: Referencing taking photographs in your life.)

Imagine

I blogged about Pangea Day previously, but now it’s about to happen. It’s scheduled for May 10th, from 12:00 – 4:00 pm Mountain time.

Pangea Day is a global event bringing the world together through film.

Why? In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it's easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that – to help people see themselves in others – through the power of film.

. . . 24 short films have been selected from an international competition that generated more than 2,500 submissions from 100+ countries. They were chosen based on their ability to inspire, transform, and help us see the world through another person's eyes.

While they don’t have the films posted (at least not yet, presumably they will), there are fifty films listed on the site (so I’m not sure which 24 have been selected). They do have an interesting section titled Anthems, where they have six films posted created by various filmmakers, with each film having citizens of one country singing the national anthem of another country. I thought this was a really interesting idea, one which creative educators could modify and take in dozens of different directions. You can view them on the Pangea site, or I’ve embedded the YouTube versions below.

Australia Sings for Lebanon



Kenya Sings for India




Japan Sings for Turkey




France Sings for the United States



The United States Sings for Mexico


The United Kingdom Sings for Argentina

Creativity: More Food for Thought for Our AWNM Project

I just wanted to share a couple of other resources for our students involved in studying Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind.

First, Carolyn Foote pointed me to this post from 2006 on Presentation Zen applying the six senses of AWNM to presentations:

The six fundamental aptitudes outlined by Pink can be applied to many aspects of our personal and professional lives. Below, I list the six key abilities as they relate to the art of presentation. The six aptitudes are: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. My discussion is with presentations (enhanced by multimedia) in mind, but you could take the six aptitudes and apply them to the art of game design, programming, product design, project management, health care, teaching, retail, PR, and so on.

I think the post is well worth reading for our students as they consider the application of the six senses (and also as they create their Wikified Research Papers or other presentations at Arapahoe).

Then, for those truly dedicated students (you know who you are), you should consider watching this 19 minute presentation given by Sir Ken Robinson, where he makes the case that schools should be cultivating creativity, but he fears that we are actually killing it. (For some reason, when I embed the video on this post it won't play, so you'll need to view it on the TED site.) Be forewarned, he doesn't mince words (at about the 3 minute mark):

My contention is that all kids have tremendous talents and we squander them - pretty ruthlessly . . . My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy - and we should treat it with the same status.

Two Steps Forward . . .

It seems like a recurring theme in my school and district, two steps forward and one (or sometimes 1.8) steps back. By the end of this month, my school will be offering access to our wireless network to “personally owned devices.” Anyone who owns a device that uses the standard wireless protocols (802.11 a/b/g right now) will be able to connect to our wireless network and access the Internet (although not our file servers and printers). This access is still filtered by the same filter that school computers use, but is not password protected or restricted in any other way. Users have to accept an agreement each time they launch their browsers, and teachers have full discretion over their use in classrooms (much like we handle cell phones and iPods right now).

For those of you paying very close attention, you may recall that we had this briefly last fall until we realized that the licensing for our Internet filter did not cover these personally owned devices so it was switched back off. Over the summer the district purchased a new filter (8e6) and this was part of that agreement. This means that our students (as well as staff, parents, and other visitors to the building) will be able to bring their laptops, or iPhones, or Palms, or iPod touches, or whatevers and be connected. We have theoretical wireless coverage for about 95% of the footprint of the building, although I suspect that we will find quite a few dead spots as students start bringing more and more devices. We may also have density issues, although we did put extra wireless access points in our media center and cafeteria, figuring those areas would see heavy usage. (Because of our variable schedule, our students have a fair amount of unscheduled time at school to work on assignments, seek out teachers for additional help, meet with counselors, and use our media center – including the computers. While we currently have 35 computers available in our media center, they are still often all being used, so this will begin to help students have access whenever they need it, not just when the computers are available.)

The second step forward has to do with the filter itself. One of the reasons my district chose 8e6 was because of its ability to include overrides. There are actually two levels of override, an Active Directory override and a Building Level override. The Active Directory override allows all staff members to enter their login credentials and override many of the sites that the filter blocks. This allows them to use their discretion about using a site that may be blocked but is still educationally appropriate, and also allows them to get to a site to evaluate if it is appropriate. The Building Level override then gives an even higher level of access. I’ve questioned whether there is a need for two levels of override, using the seemingly incontestable argument of why would they trust me more than my staff. Those discussions are still ongoing, but I’m hopeful that they will eventually give all staff the same override rights as the building level override.

This is a huge improvement over last year, where we did have a building level override but no individual overrides, making it much easier for teachers to do their jobs “just in time.” If you are using 8e6 in your district and don’t have these overrides, you might ask (nicely) why not. This is built-in to 8e6, so I don’t think there’s a huge technical hurdle to implementing it. Keep in mind that it does keep a log of all overrides, and that log is attached to the login override that’s used, so there is still some “tracking” that can be done.

So, what’s the one step back? With the implementation of the new filter over the summer, they had to re-setup the categories of what was blocked and what was allowed. As part of that process, we now have lost access to YouTube, Google Video and other similar video sites. Previously we had had full access to those sites, and many teachers and students had used them effectively. Now, they’re somewhat crippled. Yes, teachers can access them with their override, which is annoying but still workable if they want to show a particular video to their classes. But what they can’t do anymore is have their students watch videos on their own, or find videos, or work on presentations that include videos, or upload their own videos. With our variable schedule, this is something that teachers had asked students to do in the past, but now we can’t.

I’ll spare you the long, drawn out arguments I made, as most of you can probably make them better than I did. But I will say this much. This completely contradicts the philosophy of my high school (and I thought my district). Our philosophy is to have high expectations for our students, to educate them to behave ethically, responsibly and safely and then expect that they will do the right thing. When they don’t, they know we’ll have a conversation and try to learn from the mistake, but we don’t assume they are going to screw up. In other words, our philosophy has been to educate, not ban.

It appears to me that the basic problem is that the filter, as much as I like some of its features, still cannot do what it purports to do – which is block inappropriate content (however that’s defined and whoever is doing the defining, which is a whole different rant). As it is, the filter is only capable of blocking categories and all of YouTube, not just inappropriate content on YouTube. While I understand that that is technically daunting, I don’t really care – that’s not my job, that’s the filter company’s job. Until they can do that, I think we should stop calling it by the euphemism “Internet Filter,” and instead call it what it really is, an “Information Censor.” It still amazes me that schools are so willing to abrogate their responsibilities and turn over control of the resources their students are allowed to access, the information and ideas their students are exposed to, to a third-party, for-profit company that does not hold education as its primary mission. What's next, are we going to start buying textbooks? OK, so maybe I shouldn't be so amazed.

So, as one example, our students won’t be able to learn from and participate in Pangea Day while at school. From the TED blog:

On May 10, 2008, Pangea Day, sites in New York City, Rio, London, Dharamsala, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Kigali will be video-conferenced live to produce a 4-hour program of powerful films, supplemented by visionary speakers, and global musicians.

The purpose: to use the power of film to promote better understanding of our common humanity. A global audience will watch through the Internet, television, digital cinemas, and mobile phones. Yes, of course, movies alone can’t change the world. But the people who watch them can.

To start the process, a short Pangea Day trailer (2:30 min) has just been given front-page exposure on YouTube, inviting anyone to submit their films. Pangea is seeking films "that provoke, entertain and inspire". "Images are powerful to divide, but also to unite", says the trailer.

Here’s the trailer. Note that while the trailer can be viewed on the Pangea Day website, films are submitted to a group at YouTube, meaning our students won’t be able to view them, or submit their own.



Sorry, LPS students, you won’t be able to view this at school. Please go learn – and change the world - at home.