3 Revolutionary TED Talks on Teaching Innovation

Now and again a great idea is born and spreads, causing major changes. Yet, not all great ideas see full development and application in real life.

More and more people from a variety of fields are recognizing the need for a new great idea in education, one that will turn the teaching world upside down, make it more modern, efficient and able to develop the potential of the variety of people out there. It is becoming imperative to find a solution to the growing gap between the skills, interests and capabilities of students and the teaching methods applied to them, as well as the gap between the skillsets of recent graduates and the demands of the labor market. As usual, TED Talks present truly bright and revolutionary thinkers, and this certainly applies to the talks dedicated to teaching innovation. The following three revolutionary TED talks on education innovation may not blow your mind but will certainly make you think about the concept of the classroom, calculus and all those things you thought did not concern you anymore.

The death valley of education

If there is one name you should remember when it comes to teaching innovation, it is that of Sir Ken Robinson. The creativity expert, whose 2006 TED talk on how to escape education's death valley was shared massively and was recognized as an innovative idea, offers a very logical and yet revolutionary take on teaching. He plays with the idea that human potential should not be confined only the boxes of math and humanities, as people's creativity might span across a larger spectrum than traditional education is able to cover. In practical terms, he gives full credit to all the school outcasts who might not do well in the regular classes, but usually possess completely different kinds of intelligence and creativity, not accounted for at school.

Can video reinvent education?

The next education innovation idea is based on the natural development of all things digital. Online education has been around for some time and although it is not likely to replace traditional forms of teaching, it clearly shows that different methods can work well for different people. In this truly curious TED Talk, Salman Khan talks about the potential of video to reinvent education and he supports this claim with his personal video tutorials. His Khan Academy provides specialized software through which virtual students have access to more than 30 million lessons, an impressive virtual database of knowledge.

Attention: Children crossing

It turns out that children's intuition and ability to adapt and learn is greater than we have ever thought this is the prerequisite for the teaching innovation idea of Dr. Sugata Mitra and his experiment Hole in the Wall. In this project, children from a slum in New Delhi were provided a computer with internet and no teacher. Still, they quickly learnt by themselves how to operate with it and even started teaching each other. Amazing so how does this change the game? Mitra suggests that providing a creative and curiosity-stimulating environment is more important for learning than having a direct flow of information from a teacher.

Reinventing the educational model is an important mission and all the innovative ideas in these TED Talks aim to find the right way to do that. Technology can certainly benefit this revolution. Useful programs such as Logotech-4-Good provides much needed promotional products to students are a good example. Sometimes revolutions do not happen overnight but gradually and one steady step at a time.

Educators and schools who are using cutting-edge philosophies and new curriculum models should also look into our promotional USB drives for schools. These make a great handout for symposiums and conferences so educators can share your techniques.