Ted Talk #8 (Choice)

I watched a ted talk by Jacqueline Novogratz. Her talk was about poverty and changing it. When you first think of poverty, you think of someone that doesn't make a lot of money. In this talk she talked about how that is not the only thing that should define people in poverty. She told an inspiring story about a young women she met who was living in the slums of Africa named Jane. These slums were unimaginable. They were basically pieces of metal but together and put so close to each other, privacy was impossible. Jane had two dreams. One, to become a doctor and two to have husband that won't leave her. She couldn't afford to get an education and her husband left her with two children. With no money she had to turn to prostitution. She said something that really made me think. She said it wasn't the poverty that was bad but it was embarrassment she felt standing on a street selling her body.I think in America, prostitution is so horrible and we view any woman involved as someone who we should not associate with. However, Jane had to choose between feeding her babies and selling her body or having pride but having her children die. Should we really shun this? She also talked about an organization that works to provide for those in poverty. They will loan money to anyone as long as those people try to save some sort of money. Jane saved 50 dollars and that was a lot. She got helped with money and made a dress making business. I think a lot of times we think that people need to work there way up from the bottom, why? Why can't those who are fortunate help those that aren't. I think this world focuses to much on competition and fighting for ourselves when we could be helping everyone and building from each others strengths. At the end of the story with Jane, she gets to go live in a new housing facility in Africa that is similar to the loan organization. As long as the people can come up with some sort of savings, they get a house. Jane was asked what about her dreams? She described how they had changed, she didn't want to be a doctor, she wanted to help people. One of her jobs is going and talking to women suffering from HIV, like herself. She said she gives these people hope, which is better than any medicine. She also realized that she didn't want a husband that wouldn't leave her, she wanted a family that loves her. Jane loves her children more than anything. So in the end her dreams weren't what she thought they would be, but sometimes your dreams need to change with your life. This was so inspiring to me because I think we all get way to caught up in living out our dreams of going to college and getting a good job. There are people all over the world that can't do this, but they still don't give up on reaching for a goal. I will definitely take that away from this video. Jacqueline told her Ted talk through story. This story pulled people in and made them think. Like Daniel Pink says, we have an innate sense for story and in the end, we will listen most to it. I will always remember this woman's story and how poverty isn't always the money you have but what you are going through and what you went through.

Ted Talk # 7 ( Choice)

I watched a video by Karen Armstrong. She is a religion historian and talked about the importance of implementing the golden rule "treat people how you would want to be treated." She said that without compassion for other people, our world will not be ok for the future generation. Personally I am very religious but not in the normal way. I have faith but I think that religions often bash eachother and don't follow the golden rule. Because you catholic your better then a Buddhist or because your Jewish your better then a christian. Religion made up the golden rule, but doesn't always follow it. I think that her view of the world and how we need to be compassionate for eachother not only once a day but everyday and all day. If we all went around not doing harm to people but good, would we have war? I think acceptance is a big part of this. We all want others to accept us for who we are but sometimes we are judgmental of others and don't accept them for who they are. She said that religious teaching must always lead to action. I completely agree with this. If people learn the golden rule, they have to use it. In school, church and sports, what we learn as a youth we have to go out and challenge what we have learned. She talked about how compassion requires an acute sense of intelligence not just feeling mushy inside. Those who have the ability to truly help people and not hurt them, these require intelligence and maturity that is far above just feeling love for everyone in the world.  She said we don't have to fall in love with eachother, we just have to be friends and all look at the same problems and the same goals and work as hard as we can until we are on the other side of the problem seeing the amazing result of our collaboration. I really enjoyed this ted talk, however i don't think she made a lot of points that would stick in my mind and her voice was very monotoned and annoying. She used her hands a lot and paced back and forth but it was obvious she was passionate about compassion and spreading the golden rule.

Ted Talk# 5 Dave Eggers

I really enjoyed this ted talk. Dave Eggers talk was very inspiring. His store/ tutoring center/ publisher was so unique but was something that I could see changing the world. He talked about how when the children finish their homework and have time to spend with their family and pursue other passions, they are happy which creates happy families which creates happy communities. The way that he cared about what children had to say and he had belief in every single child no matter where they came from they have something to say and something to change. I love the way he started with one idea to start a place where children can go and get help with writing but it developed into going to schools and even creating a middle school that focused on this. In the beginning it didn't work and people didn't come but he kept trying. This talk really relates to cognitive surplus with Clay Shirky and the ted talk I just watched about the schools in India. It is talking about using everyones abilities and creating something magical. I also took away from this video that you don't have to do something huge to create something great. Dave Eggers project started as something little but affected many kids. That one kid that wrote books and made speeches and was only nine all because he got some one on one time with a tutor that believed in me. In the beginning he seemed very nervous and stuttered alot, by the time he was at the end he was relaxed and passionate about. I think that fact that he was nervous made him more relatable. I like how he didn't use huge words or big ideas, he used stories that made you want to listen. I believe if we all have something to give the world and Dave Eggers project only proves that is right.

Ted Talk #4 (choice)

I choose to watch a Ted talk by Kiran Bir Sethi. She is from India and is the director of a school called Riverside. Her ted talk was about how contagious is a good word and to infect, is a positive thing. She talked about how when kids want to make a change and when they believe they can do something for the world, it is contagious and we all get infected by this great new outlook on life. I found this Ted talk very  inspiring. One of the mottoes at there school is I can. She said that adults need to provide the motivation to kids. They need to tell them that they can. They did a project at there school that was about child labor. First they put the kids through 2 hours of child labor, then they sent them out to the streets to talk about how horrible it is and how it needs to be stopped. She showed a video of the children talking to a man and making him see the horrors of child labor and change his mind. The child's face just lit up because he made a difference. She talked about "infecting" places. Her school started in there city where every other month for two days they close down the streets and give it to the children to play, draw, read and listen. One of the adults said if you give back to the children now, they will give back when they grow old. Then they sent  a kit of "I can" to 32,000 schools. In the kit it told the kids to have one idea and go out and change a life. The stories of kids teaching adults to read or teaching a city to recycle was amazing. These kids testing score were higher then almost all of the other schools in India. I cant agree with this video more. I think a lot of times kids are put in a box and are not always told that they can do whatever they want to. We are put in a stereo type of teenagers that only cause problems. But I believe that inspiring, motivating and enabling kids to make a change, we will respond and can really do amazing things. There are so many issues in the world right now and I think children can bring a fresh sense of innocence  to these problems. They don't look at the negatives, they see the problem and do whatever they can to fix it because in a child's mind, impossible is nothing. School should focus more on going out in the world and being the change, instead of learning what the value of x is or what the correct grammar for a sentence is. Personally I would love to help out around the world, but sometimes I think that why should I? I am just a kid. This video sends the exact opposite message out and shows people that life is about listening and changing.  Karin used videos of amazing things but talked during the videos and then went back to just talking. She presented herself nicely and made an intentional effort to inspire the people around her. I know by watching her video, it brought a smile to my face and spark in my heart, if I can put that effect into my Ted talk, I will consider it a success. If more kids believed " I can" it would eventually infect the world to a "we can" and people would look back and say " They did"

Ted Talk Response #4( Clay Shirky)

I think Clay Shirky's message was very important. Cognitive Surplus is society using each others free time to create something good. Everyone has a different talent and everyone has different motivations that can help each other. I think we need to move towards the fact that society needs to do things from intristic motivation, doing things because we want to. We have always had motivation now we just need to use todays amazing technology to increase what we achieve. I also liked when he was talking about how even if something is stupidly creative, it is still creative and better then doing nothing. I found it so interesting how at the daycares, the late arrivals increased as the fine increased to, you wouldn't think this would happen but because the guilt from the parents was removed and they knew they were paying for the extra time, they kept coming late. Something that I am very passionate about is realizing that everyone has a talent and that we can build off of each other. He talked about designing things for generosity and intristic motivation not just to get a reward. I think our society is not "celebrating" our free time wisely. We put people down and focus on competition instead of working off of each other like in the website Ushihdi. We see this even in school, its all about who gets the best grades and the most recognition but what school is really for is to fill our children to knowledge and change the world when they get the chance to. We all have creativity we just need to switch our potential from communal to civic. I liked how he backed up all of his info with graphs and pictures but that was not the whole point and the audience didn't get away from what he was trying to say. I believe, along with him that society can grow together through our amazing technology and are drive to change and create, not to be rewarded and gain for only ourselves. His presentation style drew you in and made you focus, however I think he did skip around a little bit. His eye contact, hand movements and his pacing made him seem very invested in what he was saying. His voice was a little monotoned though. His idea of cognitive surplus was hard to grasp but important. I think you need to really pay attention or go back to watch it again to really get it. I don't think a Ted talk should be like this because you need to reach out to the people and tell them what matters and get them to understand. With the amazing things going on in our world and the ability to create cognitive surplus, this is what separates our society from those in 1984 and Little Brother. By using these ideas we can change what some are predicting our future. I think the ideas Clay Shirky has are complex but worth listening too.

Ted Talk Response #3(Daniel Pink)

I found Daniel Pinks Ted talk very interesting. He discussed the fact that our human beings motivation may be more complicated then we think. So far we have thought that our motivation is based on things that let us live( food, water...) or the rewards and punishment system. We have found that people now do things for self fulfillment and enjoyment. I found it very interesting when he was talking about when you give people the option of rewards on tasks that involve creativity, the creativity is lost. I completely agree with this. In class when we are given a creative problem to solve and there is going to be grade on how well I do, I do not perform as well and my ability to think outside of the box is dampened.  As we can see out economy has crashed and the US is struggling to pick up the pieces. Maybe this motivation factor is apart of it? In business it is thought that he higher paid jobs, the higher quality of work. This is not always true and maybe if we got to do work on what we wanted to but didn't always know what the reward would be, we would get more done. I liked how Daniel Pink used real life examples of this new drive in us. When he talked about the company in Australia it really connected me to what he was saying because it is proof by this company. I think that is an important aspect of a ted talk. You can't just be talking the whole time about what you think and why. It is important to share your opinion and what you think but you also need to back it up with things in real life that support your new ideas or philosophies. My passion in life is dance and I dance because of the feeling it gives me and the power I have with it. I don't do it because I know that I will be rewarded or that I will win, which shows his new idea.
I also liked his presentation style. There is something about him that really makes you want to listen, the way he engaged the audience by asking questions, using his hands when he spoke, walking around as he spoke and making eye contact. He seemed relaxed yet passionate about what he was saying and intelligent about his facts. I liked how he was trying to "make a case" instead of tell a story. I will reflect back on this ted talk for my own.

Ted Talk Response #2 (our own choice)

I watched a video by Peter Gabriel. He talked about his project called WITNESS. They give cameras to human rights activists and people to film injustice going on. He talked about how you can say as much as you want, that people are lying and its not true but when you have real footage showing injustice, there is nothing else to be said. I can relate to this alot. I have a very close friend that went through a horrible time, and because there is no evidence, justice cannot be served. If we could catch those treating people bad, maybe they wouldn't do it as much. Something I liked about his video was that it wasn't something you would expect. Who would think that giving people cameras to catch injustice on film would be someones passion? Its a pretty smart idea though. I think that is a big thing I have learned from these ted talks. Its not about just talking to sound smart, its about telling people something that we don't think about everyday. It's about showing people that there are things in life that are important that we need to pay attention to and help. Peter Gabriel showed two videos. The first one told horrific stories of young women and men in Uganda suffering from the civil war. To hear there stories about being raped and beaten gave me something to think about, it gave me inspiration to change things like this. In the end, that's how you can judge a successful ted talk, if you took something away from it.
However, I don't know if his presenting style was something I would use. He was sitting which did make it seem very relatable and easy to listen to but he didn't always seem passionate about what he was talking about. I think he was more nervous, or so it seemed. It was hard to completely be inspired because he didn't seem as inspired. I liked how it was casual and I liked the real life videos, they gave it a real aspect that made the audience realize these things were realities that we can help.