Stanley Kubrik once said:

I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker. [Highlights mine]

Idea two of my vision for the 21st century school: let children decide which problems they want to tackle enables the nuclear explosion of learning.

On the 6th of July I will present an updated version of the 5 Ideas To Bring Our Schools Into the 21st Century TEDx talk.

It is going to happen at the Marin Fair in San Rafael. Schools Rule Marin is organizing a Kids Talks series all days. My session is going to happen on Saturday 6th of July at 5pm PST. [map]

What I find frustrating with TED talks is, that there is zero interaction. They are geared towards awing the audience: Look at my brilliant idea it’s sparkly. Watching the presenter you hold your breath, give applause and wait for the next speaker’s rocket to go up into the sky.

For me the most interesting stuff is happening in the interaction. In the “have you thought about this” questions that bring the whole topic forward.

 My goal for this session is to do exactly that, engage with you passionate kids, teachers, parents, …

I will introduce the 5 ideas within 15 minutes encourage interruptions that bring the ideas forward and then open up the microphones for additional input and conversation. Can’t wait.

We will tape it, and are in dialog with the organizers to see whether we can webcast it too. Please join the conversation.

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Massie is Savannah's oldest School

The video of my TEDx Creative Coast talk is not yet released, but I thought I quickly summarize the 5 ideas. Someone even said that it is just one big idea and you can view it like that:

Envision a world where every child in every classroom is fully engaged in solving real world problems of their choosing and sharing their ideas, progress and solution with the whole world for the benefit of all.

For me it is easier to remember via the 5 points:

1. Let children solve real world problems. They learn skills that they can use in most every job.
2. Let the children decide which problem they want to tackle. Excellent skills to have: Coming up with ideas, convincing your fellow students to focus the rest of the year on that one problem and focusing on the solution for the rest of the school year. [I can't wait to find out what they will do.]
3. Share the problem, proposed solution as well as the whole process on the web with the world Wikipedia style. We live in a networked world, let’s use that opportunity to the fullest. Track progress weekly for a great review at the end of the year and for others to learn from everyones else’s progress.
4. Big hand-over of the solution via a presentation in front of students, teachers, parents, … Great skill to have to be able to present your ideas and solution in front of a larger audience.
5. Project Fridays: Every Google employees is allowed to focus 20% of their time on a project of their choosing. Let’s do the same with our children in school. 20% is the equivalent to one school day a week. Let’s do it on Friday. It would be a major change and make a real difference, but still if we put our minds behind it, we can implement it in our schools by the fall.

These 5 ideas form a framework to really energize our schools. Every school can adjust any of these to their local needs and capabilities. Central is to trust in our kids ability to come up with interesting problems and solutions for them to focus on. As they have not been given that chance before, they may need some nudging at the beginning, but after that I am convinced they will awake to their own ability and drive the whole process with all their might.

Will let you know right away once the recording is available. In the meantime join the Alive School movement . In addition you can check out the slides I used:

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This is the current status of my TEDx Creative Coast slides:

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