TED Community » Rahim Sajan

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Sustainable Community Development, Civil Society issues, Sustainable and engaging urban environments as well as expanding my thoughtscape.

An idea worth spreading

We need to constantly be aware of the need to check for errors in Judgement, living in a complex and fast paced environment can make us vulnerable to make decisions without understanding the deep structure of the issues we are immersed in.
Deep lasting change only happens if we take great care in making sure we understand the dynamics of the situation we are involved in and think very critically about the position the decisions we are going to be make will have.

Talk to me about

Anything but you will get me going with Civil Society, Education, Economics, Media, Marketing, Politics etc etc.

People don't know that I'm good at

engaging people and making connections across different disciplines very quickly.

My TED Story

I stumbled onto TED about 6 years ago- and immediately adopted it as a teaching tool in my classroom as a Robotics and Astronomy Teacher at the time. I have been a TED supporter for many years and now am contributing to its future as the Curator for TEDxCalgary.
It's a little known fact that TEDxCalgary was one of the first licensees to be granted in Canada though it took us about 1 year to get the first edition launched on April 29 2010.
TEDxCalgary is now a respected voice in the community active on a number of fronts on the civic landscape, largely due to the Amazing Team led by Jonathan Perkins, the heart and soul of TEDxCalgary.
The value of TED continues up to this point to be in the stories that it allows me to be a part of, and the opportunities it allows me to drill down to get deep understanding of issues.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +9195.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Conversation: Journalists brings interpretive frameworks to conflict they report -- frameworks maybe conscious or unconscious; often they are the latter.

  Mar 6 2011: I think this is inevitable- the objective mindset is an ideal- we can never get there and if we convince ourselves that we exist in that plane- I think we do lose site of our essential humanity. The emotions that a Journalist feels have to be acknowledged as indicators of something important that is going on, they don't necessarily mean that the journalist has taken sides- but only if the Journalist doesn't stop there, they have to adopt an investigative attitude to following that emotion to try and understand what brought about that reaction. And in that journey is an even richer story- I get a sense of a 'fuller story' of what the journalist is seeing on the ground- we can connect with a common humanity through the ability to empathize.
  David Brooks TED talk seems to go through interesting terrain on this topic as well- that could serve to extend this line of thinking.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: the Internet with no fee for all developing and poor countries.

  Mar 6 2011: I think this is a powerful idea- access to global knowledge networks for populations can leapfrog the innovative capacity of populations and also allow the rest of us to directly access pools of wisdom which have been inaccessible up till now.
  
  Free and open access to the internet when combined with open learning platforms such as Big History Channel, Sal Khan's Khan Academy, Sugata Mitra's ideas of complex ideas being self taught and for that matter access to learning platforms like TED and TEDx organizations around the world could really help people see and experience the best of what the world has to offer.
  
  How can I help?

• A comment on Conversation: Education is allways buit to serve the current times.

  Mar 6 2011: I would also add some learning from some of my other Journeys- Education is everything a society does to prepare it's members for the problems and opportunities of their time and place in history. (Reference: Ken Low) We know Education is an adaptive positioning system.
  Fernando and Sebastien The key ingredient it seems to dovetail from the French Prof's comments is the growing of resourceful humans rather than human resources (Again attributed to Ken Low- Action Studies Institute). The advancement of technology and work from innovative educators like Sal Khan with www.khanacademy.org is that digital learning environments are amazing for certain tasks- where learning is defined and bounded- though forums such as the Davos Workspace or World Cafe conversations can bridge the gap to 'innovative education' (Reference- Club of Rome, Report- No limits to Learning)
  However simplistic solutions are also the danger- in tracking Sir Ken Robinson's work- I know he relies on an extremely persuasive speaking style and the idea of creativity as the hook to hang his ideas off of. However the approach he is advocating fails to get to the core of Education as being a very systemic enterprise- open ended but it has to be full of rigor in my mind.
  Droves of educators are flocking to it and not critically examining what needs to be done operationally as well as in ways that check for errors as well as systemic processes that makes sure we are performing at a high level- it all hangs on the assumptions - so yes to digitally based learning environments as long as we realize what true learning means- and the distinction between 'innovative learning' vs conventional learning environments with bounded bits of knowledge.
  I am exploring a few of these themes on my blog at www.adaptiveeducation.blogspot.com