TED Community » Adam Maikkula

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Cultural Studies, Learning, Reality, Education, Innovation, Global Studies, Creativity, Change, Problem Solving, Unique Life Experiences, The Future, Interesting People, Double Entendres, You

An idea worth spreading

"If you want truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between "for" and "against" is the mind's worst disease." — Sent-ts'an

Talk to me about

Synchronicity, Sisu, Reality, Cultural Studies, Innovation, International Baccalaureate program, Entrepreneurship, Education, Social Media, Drawing, Hip-Hop culture, Comedy

My TED Story

Stumbled upon my first TEDtalk of Sir Ken Robinson's "Do School's Kill Creativity?" while I was bored and passing time in the library in college...which, I guess is ironic.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +1625.10 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Conversation: Is infiltrating hip hop culture with rap/music about science/mathematics a good way to motivate minorities/women to achieve in those areas?

  Mar 3 2011: William, the first thing I thought about was that you should check out the recent documentary Waiting for Superman. There is a scene from the the beginnings of KIPP where a teacher is performing a song with her students to help them remember their multiplication tables and a few other items.

• A comment on Conversation: Crowdsourced syllabus for global open education initiatives to flourish

  Feb 27 2011: Steven, great point. Thanks for the comment. Yes, I also believe that a scoring system or incentive program would be an ideal addition once the syllabus were created. I envision a time when someday my kids would include the educational materials they interact with (and create) online as a part of their future school applications, resumes, and digital identities. Very similar to TEDcred, but maybe linked with something like MIT's Personas Project http://personas.media.mit.edu/
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: What gives you WONDER in your life? ( TED2011 Theme )

  Feb 25 2011: Knowing that one day it will be over (in a positive sense)... like Steve Jobs said in his '05 Stanford Commencement http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Let students be teachers and curriculum developers

  Feb 18 2011: Students already learn a lot from each other (directly and indirectly). The only thing keeping this from happening is adults/educators thinking that kids and students are incapable of teaching themselves. As soon as that (humbling) paradigm shift occurs, some educators will learn to be more hands-off and teach kids HOW to learn. Look at the good ol' show-and-tell parts of early education. Kids get exposed to public speaking, teaching, and diversity through something so subtle. We've all had teachers who clearly had not adapted to the younger generations, and quite frankly, should have never been allowed to influence the youth. When you look at the great teachers you've had, they all had a certain cool factor with the students and most likely took more of an andragogical approach to teaching. I think the biggest failure that public education has consistently had is that they fail to focus on the "customer". This is a very simple rule of thumb borrowed from business to focus on what the user wants and everything else will fall in place. Once again, with that, you have to get over the misbelief that kids don't know anything...As tech savvy as the youth are today, they can maneuver around the internet to find and learn anything they need to. The teacher is no longer the monopoly of knowledge in the classroom.
• +2

  A comment on Talk: Kaki King rocks out to "Pink Noise"

  Jun 5 2009: This is awesome. It immediately reminded me of the first time I saw Raul Midon play. They are both amazing!
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzaClXAt3aY