whether i was watching the speech with half my heart or half my mind, kbs definitely got my attention. she was passionate about bringing a creative way to engage chlidren, and that's what we need these days, i've realized. it may be good to stick with something tried and true, but if you never explore different avenues, you may not know how beneficial it may be to you at the end. she also did a wonderful job of spinning the word "contagious." each word, unfortunately, has a connotation and a denotation that society has given the word, and that may never change because it is so engrained in society's head! but by offering the examples around india and putting a positive idea to 'contagious', kbs was able to put a positive spin on the word. now how realistic it is - this may just be the pessimist in me speaking - but only someone with ample resources and funding would be able to take on a project like this. i'd love to do it, but what's the realistic chance of it happening? its a noble idea, and undoubtedly a noble cause. i especially liked her "we can" attitude, but it would take years upon years worth of effort to succeed. maybe im off..maybe its one of those days, forgive my thinking. i wish we could start something like that here. here, where people are always willing to volunteer and lend a hand. maybe its something i need to think more about! :)
day 8: TED talk – (kiran bir sethi teaches kids to take charge)
http://www.ted.com/talks/kiran_bir_sethi_teaches_kids_to_take_charge.html
contagious is a good word. even in the times of h1n1, i like the word. laughter is contagious. passion is contagious. inspiration is contagious. we've heard some remarkable stories from some remarkable speakers. but for me, what was contagious about all of them was that they were infected by something i call the "i can" bug.
so, the question is, why only them? in a country of a billion people and some, why so few? is it luck? is it chance? can we all not systematically and consciously get infected? so, in the next eight minutes i would like to share with you my story. i got infected when i was 17, when, as a student of the design college i encountered adults, who actually believed in my ideas, challenged me, and had lots of cups of chai with me. and i was struck by just how wonderful it felt, and how contagious that feeling was. i also realized i should have got infected when i was seven.
so, when i started riverside school 10 years ago it became a lab, a lab to prototype and refine a design process that could consciously infect the mind with the "i can" bug. and i uncovered, that if learning is embedded in real-world context, that if you blur the boundaries between school and life, then children go through a journey of aware, where they can see the change, enable, be changed, and then empower, lead the change. and that directly increased student wellbeing. children became more competent, and less helpless. but this was all common sense.
"when are you going to wake up and recognize the potential that resides in every child. when will you include the child in the city? basically, open your hearts and your minds to the child."
on august 15th, again, independence day, 2009, empowered with the same process, we empowered 100,000 children to say, "i can." how? we designed a simple toolkit, converted it into eight languages, and reached 32,000 schools. we basically gave children a very simple challenge. we said, take one idea, anything that bothers you, choose one week, and change a billion lives.
and they did. stories of change poured in from all over india, from nagaland in the east, to jhunjhunu in the west, from sikkim in the north, to krishnagiri in the south. children were designing solutions for a diverse range of problems. right from loneliness to filling potholes in the street, to alcoholism, and 32 children who stopped 16 child marriages in rajasthan. i mean, it was incredible. basically again reaffirming that when adults believe in children and say, "you can," then they will. infection in india. this is in rajasthan, a rural village.
so, today who is it going to take to spread the infection from 100,000 children to the 200 million children in india? last i heard, the preamble still said, "we, the people of india," right? so, if not us, then who? if not now, then when? like i said, contagious is a good word. thank you. (applause)
day 8: Wikipedia article – (umbriel)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbriel_(moon)
umbriel is a moon of uranus discovered on october 24, 1851, by william lassell. it was discovered at the same time as ariel and named after a character in alexander pope's poem the rape of the lock. umbriel consists mainly of ice with a substantial fraction of rock, and may be differentiated into a rocky core and an icy mantle. the surface is the darkest among uranian moons, and appears to have been shaped primarily by impacts. however, the presence of canyons suggests early endogenic processes, and the moon may have undergone an early endogenically driven resurfacing event that obliterated its older surface.
covered by numerous impact craters reaching 210 km (130 mi) in diameter, umbriel is the second most heavily cratered satellite of uranus after oberon. the most prominent surface feature is a ring of bright material on the floor of wunda crater. this moon, like all moons of uranus, probably formed from an accretion disk that surrounded the planet just after its formation. the uranian system has been studied up close only once, by the spacecraft voyager 2 in january 1986. it took several images of umbriel, which allowed mapping of about 40% of the moon’s surface.
<3
No comments:
Post a Comment