Reflection on "Why I both love and hate TED talks"

I have posted and tweeted for the past year about my current favourite TED talks.  Sugata Mitra at his acceptance of the 2013 prize still tops the list, followed by Rita Pierson from the TED Talks EDucation TV Show ( Dr Pierson died suddenly on June 18,2013)  and whilst it could be any of Sir Ken Robinson's talks the RSA Animate is still favourite.

I love TED talks because they are:

• Short - from about 8 -25 minutes so they cater to my lifestyle and attention span.
• Polished- whatever the length they are well thought out, incredibly well rehearsed and presented.
• Great professional learning- like twitter they connect you with folk you might only ever read about, or even folk and ideas you have never head of.
• Not just about education- although this is where I usually head. There are a plethora of outstanding talks- check out Australia's Adam Spencer on "Hunting Monster Primes at TED 2013".
• Incredible archive so that you can search easily and quickly. I discovered my favourite blogger via this method. Enjoy Seth Godin on "This is Broken" TED 2006
• Music and performances I would never normally watch or listen too- the latest one is Tom Thum on "The orchestra in my mouth" at TEDx, Sydney 2013"

TED is obviously an incredibly successful global enterprise and as such has spawned a number of offshoots:

• Different forms of TED events, to cater locally or for specialised groups. Examples are TEDx, TEDxYouth, TEDxChange. I found out about Virtual High School via watching Stephen Baker's TEDx talk. I also tweeted that if you only got one opportunity to view a TED talk this year then watch Kevin Breel "Confessions of a Depressed Comic" from TEDxKids@Ambleside 2013. TEDx events are great and congratulations to Birdwood High School for hosting a coming TEDx event in SA this year.
• TED-Ed lessons for sharing. There is now a dedicated website with lesson ideas, outstanding lessons, tools for flipping the classroom.

So now to why I hate TED talks. Because they make me angry. Angry that we have this amazing array of talented people generally giving the same version of the message that education systems need to change yet I don't see the change - nor do I think it will occur in my professional lifetime. It is also not new to TED- TED just reminds me and reinforces the message.

Twenty years ago at Bowden Brompton Community School we knew. We knew that to engage our most disenfranchised young people their education program needed to be personalised for them. That our relationships with them and their families were critical and communication needed to occur at least daily. That if there were gaps there needed to be scaffolding and support as the gaps might not just be in education so how could we connect and support with other professionals and agencies. That kids never left they were yours forever- so they could come back and try, try again. As teachers we needed to up our skills and as such we had what I realise now were a combination of therapy and teach-meet sessions every day - before and after school.

We also believed that if it worked for our kids at BBCS that this approach would work so much better and easier for 'mainstream kids'. I have heard these messages retold through so many TED talks.

All the schools I have visited this trip have been led by teams that realised they had to work outside their systems and "create their own" to be successful for their children and young people. The last TED talk on the systemic need for change comes from the incomparable Geoffrey Canada. Dr Canada is CEO of the Harlem Children's Zone which supports kids from birth through college to break the cycle of poverty and they achieve amazing results - just like HTH and VHS . Dr Canada does indeed talk the talk and walk the walk - and yet he is still angry! Because although the success rate for the Harlem Children's Zone is fantastic there are still so many children and young people never engaging and dropping out of schooling throughout the USA.

 The mission statement for TED is "Ideas worth Spreading". What I passionately want to happen is that TED is recognised as more than entertaining short talks and the ideas that are generated through these talks get major traction. A recent example of that traction, in part via TED is the growth of the Khan Acadaemy and its  concept of the flipped classroom. 

Could this traction possibly lead to a larger changes such  that there is a systemic shift in how we construct education, particularly for poor kids, or  will those changes need to be via individual schools or groups of schools. Either way TED talks and my own experience reaffirm that something needs to happen and soon!