TED Community » Bob Allen

More About Me

An idea worth spreading

Using Agile practices and principles to teach K-12. When kids get out on their own, they already have plenty of practice collaborating, managing priorities, work-life balance, etc. Wouldn't that be refreshing.

Talk to me about

Whatever you're passionate about, but especially Agile in K-12 classrooms.

Comments

• TEDCred score: 0.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Conversation: TEDTalk Public Schools

  Apr 7 2011: A wise person once told me that while better hardware will get you incremental improvements, a better algorithm will get an order of magnitude improvement. The topic was software, but the same thinking applies to how we teach and learn. Example: the Socratic method doesn't require any hardware. But the results can be astounding in terms not only of what is learned, but also how the student feels about it. After all, they had the answers all along. They just needed someone to ask the right questions.
  
  Don' get me wrong; better and more hardware, whether its brick and mortar or computer hardware, can make a lot of difference. But it's not the most important thing. It's more like Daniel Pink's take of economic incentives: they're only important up to the point where money is no longer an issue. Having very basic needs resolved leaves us at the heart of the dilemma; how best to educate kids. Increasingly the answer that is emerging seems to be "get out of the way".
  
  While cold fusion may or may not ever provide endless energy, just get a kid truly engaged on a topic, give them the tools they need to investigate further, and stand back, i.e. lead from the back of the room.