TED Community » Tiffany Ard

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Allowing young children to be the artists and scientists that they were born to be.

An idea worth spreading

Most early childhood education focuses on teaching lists of skills and disassociated facts. My thoughts about this traditional approach A) won't fit in this space and B) contains swear words.

I am developing a curriculum that gives young children context for every new thing that they learn. We start at the beginning of the universe and every year we cover the same topics in greater depth. Week by week we talk about the big bang, then atoms and molecules and the four main forces, then stars, then formation of planets, formation of Earth, early life, dinosaurs, mammals, all the way through modern human life. We spend each week learning all that we can about each topic and nest it within the context of everything we've covered so far.

Every day my kids are learning the scientific method, the idea that our understanding of how things work can (does) change over time, and that they are part of a world that is unimaginably big and old and beautiful.

Talk to me about

The brain, learning, creativity, evolution, anything my kids might find interesting

People don't know that I'm good at

keeping up with laundry and dishes. It's a secret I will take to my grave.

My TED Story

I am addicted to TED talks and fantasize about someday giving a talk, even though I'm shy.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +0.70 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +3

  A comment on Talk: Colin Powell: Kids need structure

  Jan 29 2013: But are we really talking about structure -- rigidity, schedules, uniformity, rules, etc? Or is it simply that kids respond to attention and feedback?

• A comment on Talk: Ariel Garten: Know thyself, with a brain scanner

  Jan 29 2012: Interesting talk, but from the title I was hoping for something more than neat games or meditative relaxation applications. To me the exciting story would be to have researchers taking leaps into using this technology for deeper things like: can we make predictions based on brain wave patterns? Can we diagnose difficult-to-pin-down things like autism spectrum disorders, personality disorders, ADD? Can a person have baseline data stored and check periodically for early signs of neurological problems? Could we make an app that would use the wireless headset to catch and record absence seizures?
  
  I can also see marketing departments using the idea somehow to find out how people feel about their brand. How hard would it be to develop games that reward users for thinking happy thoughts about Coca-Cola and mean thoughts about Pepsi?

• A reply on Conversation: How do smart people "find their level" in conversation?

  Aug 14 2011: This is a common misconception. Uh and um and other verbal stumbles (sometimes including curse words) are thought to be indicators that the person is putting together their thoughts as they speak. Speech that's free of uh, um, ehhh could be memorized, pre-planned, or simply an expression of ideas that the speaker is not thinking much about.
  
  They are sort of meta-words that mean "I'm thinking about this" or "I'm about to tell you something new"
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: How do smart people "find their level" in conversation?

  Aug 14 2011: My husband says that you can measure someone's intelligence based on the lies they tell. He believes that a person will only tell a lie sophisticated enough that *they themselves would believe it.* If a lie is so ridiculous that only a person with no logic skills would believe it, then you can assume that the liar has no logic skills because he would find that lie believable. If a person tells lies that are complex in a very believable way, then you know that this person knows how reason works, and also that person understands a lot about what the listener might be thinking.
  
  This approach has a bonus: If you meet someone whose lies convince you, you won't even realize they were lying. So you get to go through life thinking that you never meet anyone smarter than yourself. :-P
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: How do smart people "find their level" in conversation?

  Aug 14 2011: When I meet someone, I gauge our relative IQs based on:
  Does this person contribute spontaneous insight and original ideas to the conversation?
  Are their jokes sophisticated, original and surprising? (or literal and unoriginal?)
  Is this person curious about the world?
  Is this person open to new ideas?
  How does this person act when he doesn't know something or turns out to be wrong?
  Can this person deal with grey areas?
  Does this person follow side trails in the conversation?
  Does the person acknowledge nuances?
  Am I hearing a lot of bad logic? Does the person defend failed logic?
  Has this person tried to convince me to attend their church and/or try homeopathy?

• A comment on Talk: Eve Ensler: Suddenly, my body

  Aug 12 2011: Holy hell. How is any talk ever going to top that?
• +4

  A reply on Talk: Anil Gupta: India's hidden hotbeds of invention

  May 11 2010: There are "many forms of wealth" only after you have your basic needs met. I do agree that physical work has value, but there is a big difference in doing healthy physical work that you find meaningful and rewarding vs doing painful or demeaning work because you have no other way of meeting those most basic needs. Hard enough for anyone, but there's an extra layer of soul-crushing pain for creative people and intellectuals who are stuck in those jobs. (As an aside, the same thing happens in the first world too where low-level workers' input is rarely taken seriously and where very little value is placed on people who make non-commercial art.)
• +4

  A reply on Talk: Adora Svitak: What adults can learn from kids

  Apr 12 2010: I'm not sure about schools doing this -- perhaps Sudbury schools -- but our homeschool is built on give and take. I've learned more about history and geography in the last year than I did in all of my years of formal education, and I never keep this a secret from my kids. They see me look things up, get things wrong, guess and experiment, adjust my approach, ask other people, seek their ideas every day.
  
  Not only that, but one of my kids is sort of a natural teacher. He processes information best if he can lead others to understand it. So quite often I will present a lesson, then I will pretend to be a stranger or friend from another planet and he will teach me the same lesson in his own way.
  
  How could this be expanded to a full classroom? One idea would be to assign problems and challenges to classrooms -- problems that the teacher does not have the answer to.

• A reply on Talk: Mae Jemison on teaching arts and sciences together

  Oct 28 2009: Ed, contact me or check out my blog -- I am homeschooling younger children but there may be some ideas there to help get your started. Everything we do is a blend of creative/analytical. I'm working on formalizing our activities into downloadable lesson plans that could be adapted to any age group.