TED.com (and Coursera.org) are two very distinct reasons why I like technology. Sure I’m hammering away on the keyboard of this Macbook Pro and looking at my iPhone at a text message, but they seem like a way of life and an extension of me. I take them for granted. But I do not take knowledge for granted.
On TED.com I was listening to Sir Ken Robinson talk about revolutionizing education. And while he was talking about public school and higher ed, I kept relating it back to our audience. The parents, corporate dwellers and change agents. Here are highlights that point to why.
He said:
Feed your spirit
Human flourishing is not mechanical, it’s organic.Create conditions under which they will begin to flourish.Customize to your circumstances (I see this as empowerment).Personalize education to an audience (I think of our workshops).Create a movement to develop your own individual solutions with external support and (in the case of education) with a personalized curriculum.
And I especially liked this very graphic analogy.
Current public school education is like the fast food of education – doesn’t feed the spirit just as fast food depletes our bodies.
I can say the same about much of Corp. AM.
He ends with a poem by Yates.
HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)
“He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven”
from the Collected Works of W.B. Yeats
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