TED Community » Jeff Weitz

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• A comment on Talk: Mitch Resnick: Let's teach kids to code

  Feb 9 2013: Well, I CAN code, but not well enough to create any of the projects that we see here. "Code" has different meanings depending on context. "Scratch" is a much higher level environment than HTML, say, or Java. That means everything. I agree that kids should learn to DESIGN and to BUILD and to IMAGINE, but we have to give them the right building blocks and tools. "Scratch" seems to be a step in that direction. Bravo!
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Janna Levin: The sound the universe makes

  Mar 16 2011: Well, I love this talk and I look forward to sharing it with my students. Gravity waves can be sound just as a vibrating string can be sound. We argue: Is the string the sound or does the string produce something else, vibration, that is the sound? No matter; the art is with the master, with Yo-Yo Ma, producing the vibration. But appreciating the sound, finding the nuance, the pattern, the reflection of life and living, this requires sensitivity and awareness in the listener, as well.
  
  There is great art in the universe and we are fortunate to have Professor Levin to help us appreciate it. There is also art in the inspiration, the creativity, to model gravity waves as sound, true to the physics, and, yet, was that a rhythm I heard from that black hole, a pattern? The artist finds more than the superficial, as does the scientist, and so must we. Art and science may not solve the problems of the world, but they give us reason to try.
• +7

  A comment on Talk: Bill Stone: The caves and the moon

  Jul 17 2009: This is one of my very favorite TED talks. We need the Bill Stones of this world. Those who say "clean up your room before you get the ice cream" make very good room cleaners, and we need them, but without the Bill Stones of the world nobody would imagine the ice cream.
  
  I echo, "go, go, go."
• +3

  A comment on Talk: Saul Griffith: High-altitude wind energy from kites!

  Mar 23 2009: I was fortunate enough to attend TED2009 and found this little talk the most exciting and inspirational of all, which is saying a lot. I went home and worked up a project assignment for my high school physics students to design and build a kite, design and build a generator with appropriate output, and use the motion of the kite to power the generator and charge a cell phone.
  
  Nothing I've done in the classroom in recent years has excited my students as much as this project assignment. Suggestions welcome.
  
  Thank you Saul and TED.

• A comment on Talk: Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

  Dec 23 2008: I agree completely with Peter. I also think that teaching arts, music, dance, painting and drama, can be means to develop critical thinking, just as teaching science or literature. And might we think of critical thinking as creativity?
  
  I wonder whether it's possible to spend so much time on the "facts' and "skills" needed to figure things out that the "figuring out" gets lost. It does seem so. One of my current inspirations is the media lab at MIT, where designers work with scientists to solve problems in teaching and learning. I'm intrigued by the interplay of design and knowledge, and wonder whether I can apply this in the high school science courses that I teach. That's one reason I find TED so important for me.
  
  I recently had an interesting experience: I am chair of a faculty curriculum group that has identified several issues to work on this year. We divided into subcommittees. The subcommittee on innovative teaching has proposed to reorganize the schedule. There is no mention of the different teaching that we might do given the changed schedule.
  
  When we discuss education, we do tend to think of the things we adults do rather than what the students do. So our "innovations" involve smaller school, larger schools, merit pay for teachers, and on and on. Meanwhile, "creativity" is placed somehow at odds with the basic learning kids really do need. It will be interesting when someone is able to merge the two in a way that satisfies "necessary information and skills" people and the "creativity" people.

• A comment on Talk: Martin Seligman: The new era of positive psychology

  Aug 13 2008: I would like to talk with people about how Seligman's ideas would play out in education. As a classroom teacher I try hard to find activities sufficiently engaging to produce flow, at least now and then, and when my students report that it does, I encourage them to do similar things. My high school students have to do "community service"; there are many ways to do this and the students don't always think about their strengths and interests before signing up to do service. Imagine if my students could consistently experience flow in class and service activities. I'd be happy to hear the thoughts of TEDsters on this question. It also seems to me that thinking about Seligman's three dimensions of happiness might well lead in the direction of more creativity, as another TED speaker, Sir Ken Robinson, points out. These two talks seem related to me.
  
  Incidentally, Seligman's comment about socializing resonated with me. Superficially, my students mostly seem to socialize quite happily, but much of it is online, as I am socializing now. I wonder whether anyone has looked at the question of relative benefits of online socializing vs. face-to-face. My students are certainly aware of the physical implications of this question! Yet, they spend increasing time with their networks on Facebook et al.