TED Talk #8: Scott Kim

Scott Kims's TED Talk is about how he designs puzzles. He designs puzzles for big companies like Discovery, kids' puzzles, and computer game puzzles. He says he first got hooked on puzzles in the sixth grade when his teacher asked him to make a puzzls. Here's what it was:

He says that he got hooked on puzzles because he felt awesome because he had invented something new and unique. Kim also says he likes puzzles because they had a definite answer, no options. And he said he enjoys finding and creating those answers.

Kim, later in life, invented the game  called Traffic Jam. In this game there are many cars all blocking the red car's way of getting out. The task is to move the cars to get the red one out. He said that his was difficult to make because you have to make the puzzle hard enough that it will take some time to solve, but also not too hard that it actually becomes unsolvable.

Kim also explains how puzzles are extremely helpful for the brain. He says that cross word puzzles and sudokus are some of the best things that you can do to help your brain stay in shape over the years. These games can help stimulate your brain and prevent alzhiemer's disease. This information is very valuable to the world and will incourage people to do a puzzle a day to keep their brain in top shape.

The information in Scott Kim's TED Talk matters to education everythwere. Whether it's teachers giving their students puzzles to do to start off the day, or a parent at home looking for a chance to do some learning of their own.

Throughout his TED Talk, Kim uses the power point a lot to interact and show the audience many different types off puzzles. He even uses his laptop connected to the screen to move things around and show people how to solve the puzzles.

After watching this TED Talk, I have a new found respect for puzzles and puzzle makers because their job certainly is not easy but they make puzzles fun and educational so I take my hat off to them.

TED Talk #7: Aimee Mullins

Mullins's talk is one that I won't soon forget. She starts it off by talking about legs. And behind her, there are pairs of prosthetic legs just there on the stage. She tells the audience a story about how she brought in the same legs to a group of elementary school kids and let them all poke and prod at them without their teachers there. Then she asked them what kind of legs would be best to have if she wanted to jump over a house. The kids responded with kangaroo and frog. Then, one kid said "Wouldn't you rather fly than jump?" She said that those kids changed the way she looked at life. She thought that kids no longer had to be disabled, but maybe even super-abled.

Mullins tells the audience how she was at a TED Talk 11 years ago and the legs she presented then were amazing at the time, but she wanted them to be even more. Her request for creators to come and help her create a new generation of prosthetic legs was fulfilled and now her legs are even better.

Aimee, being disabled herself, then tells how people always tell her how pretty she is and that she doesn't look at all disabled. Mullins takes that statement and challenges, "What is beauty? And for that matter, what makes someone disabled?" I personally think that these are two very important points. Beauty can mean many different things to many different people and beautiful to one person might not be to another. She also talks about what makes someone disabled. I think that you're only disabled if you let that take over your entire life and you stop trying.

Her TED Talk then flows into her ideas about how prosthetic legs don't only have to be functional, they can also be a work of art. Mullins shows pictures of a few pairs of legs that stand out among everything. For example:

Some of these may be weird looking but Mullins says that people can now combine the new technology of prosthetic legs with age old poetry to make truly unique legs for the disabled.

Mullins says that she is now very excited that people with disabilities can now design their own bodies by combining new technology with age old poetry to make their legs truly their own.

During her TED Talk, Mullins used hand motions and walked around the stage for the whole time. By the way she walked you would have no idea that her legs are prosthetic.

Aimee Mullins's TED Talk was amazing and empowering. Her ideas about prosthetic legs will change the way people look at disabled people around the world forever, for the better.

TED Talk #6: Dave Eggers

Eggers's TED Talk is about a tutoring business that he opened called 826 Valencia. His main purpose for this tutoring business is to give children the one-on-one time they need to really learn all that they can in reading and writing.

When it was first opened, the space they bought had to be open for retail so they decided to open a pirate supply store. The pirate store front took away from the customers because people at first thought that the tutoring center couldn't be very good if they sold pirate supplies. That changed over time of course and the pirate supply store ended up bringing tons of money for their tutoring center and paying for rent.

The store and tutoring center also became a hub for young people who want to publish books. The writers would work side-by-side next to the kids in the tutoring center in harmony and be a great influence on the kids.

Their on on one approach to tutoring was very effective. 826 Valencia even had camera in the tutoring room so that parents could see how well their kids were doing on their homework. Eggers talks about how the kids getting done with their homework helps build a strong community. He says that happy kids make happy families which make a happy community. That strive to make a happy community is amazing and inspiring.

But, since kids would only be at the tutoring center after school, Eggers wanted to have kids their during the day. They started having kids come with their class for a field trip and write a little book that everyone would have fun participating in. Here's a picture of a class with their own book they made at 826 Valencia:

This video matters to education because his one-on-one technique helps kids learn better and get their homework done without distractions and get it done better which will make the education system much better in the long run. This video matters to the world because it can change the education aspect for children around the world.




Eggers is nervous during his TED Talk and he shows it by playing with his hands at first. This is something that I should not do during my TED Talk. His talk is very funny though. He has a lot of jokes about Valencia and he just uses humor in general. He has a power point running behind him with many pictures about Valencia and all that goes on there. Eggers also uses tons of had gestures to express a point.

Eggers's TED Talk is truly inspiring to education and teachers everywhere.

TED Talk #5: David Blaine

David Blaine is an incredible magician who attempts amazing and terrifying stunts like being buried alive and going 44 days without food. But today, he talked about how he held his breath for a full 17 minutes.

Blaine first talks about all the ways things that he could do to make an allusion that he was holding his breath for a really long time, but then he said he really just wanted to actually do it on his own. He did a lot of research about pearl divers and the person who held the record for the longest time to hold their breath.

After his research was complete he wanted to try to break the record. His first attempt ended in failure but he was determined to try again. So, he then went to Oprah and asked if his next try could be on her show. She agreed and then helped him train his body to attack his next attempt at breaking the record on live TV.

He did break the record by 32 seconds. But, in that process he experienced almost having a heart attack and loosing blood in his fingers and many strange things like that. Doctors immediately ran many blood tests to check everything and make sure that his body and brain were o.k..

Blaine expresses that he thinks magic is showing people incredible things that they haven't seen before and didn't think were possible and that's why he really loves being a magician. His passion for magic, I think, inspires people to do what they love even if it doesn't seem possible to accomplish at the time. This means a lot to me because I always thought of magic as something that little kids do for fun but now I think about it as an incredible show of believing in yourself and doing what you love.

David Blaine used some humor in his TED Talk to take away from the complete intensity of his incredible, terrifying challenge of holding his breath for 17 minutes.

His story in this video was quite amazing. I think that it matters to the world because it will inspire kids to follow their dreams and do what they love, even if it means scaring their parents by doing crazy stunts like David Blaine. He may be a little crazy, but he is a truly incredible person with amazing stories to tell.

TED Talk #4: Clay Shirky

Clay Skirky's TED Talk was very interesting and gave everyone food for thought. His ideas about motivation and  cognitive surplus are unique and quite interesting. However, I found some of the terms he was talking about hard to follow and understand.

Shirky, unlike the other speakers, doesn't use humor in his TED Talk. He also tends to talk with his hands and makes a lot of gestures to the screen behind him but he doesn't focus on the screen, it's just there for the audience to look at while he talks. 


Shirky talks about something called Cognitive Surplus. This means that people can share their ideas and other people can interact with them through the internet. Like global websites to wall cats:

He says that we can and should use cognitive surplus to create civic values in the world.


Shirky says that a single idea can become a global deployment in less than 3 years, as proved by a certain website called Ushahidi:

Skirky talks about a few things in his TED Talk, one of them is about motivation. And he says: motivation ideas state that a punishment should make someone do something less. However, due to an experiment where there was a fine to parents who picked up their kids late changed this idea. Many would've said that the amount of parents picking up late would've decreased but that number actually increased. What does this mean for ideas about motivation?


This video matters to the world because the world wide web is all over the world and everyone can access it and utilize it in many different ways to accomplish many tasks. It matters to education so kids can learn to access and use the web to help themselves in the world. This video matter to me personally because it's good that I learn skills to use the web so I can stay involved with the world becoming more technologically advanced.

TED Talk #3: Daniel Pink

Daniel Pink started out is speech with humor to really get the audience's attention about his topic. In his speech he talks about motivation and why it works and how it works. He shows the audience "The Candle Problem." This challenges people to think in new and creative ways. He then talks about how people responded to the puzzle when offered a reward if they solved it correctly and the ones who weren't offered a reward. He says that people offered higher rewards did the worst in all the tests than the people offered smaller rewards and the people not offered any reward at all. I personally think that this is really interesting. I would've thought that the people offered the highest reward would've performed the best in the problem they were given because that just seems like the nature of humans to do something for a reward. Daniel talks about how certain companies have days where the employees can do their work when and where they want to do it and that the product of these days was that the outcome of the company increased. Some might think that those days would cause productivity to go down because people were free to do what ever they wanted to but according to Daniel, that is all wrong. His TED Talk is very interesting and may finally change the way people are motivated  and how people do work in their lives.

1. What are your take-aways from this video?

• If people are offered a reward, it may dull creativity in the mind and force them to perform worse in the task at hand.
• Allowing people to do work on their own time may create a more effective environment for a company or school.

2. What are the speaker's effective speaking techniques?

• Daniel uses a lot of humor in his presentaion.
• He also, at some points, got really loud and raised his voice to show his anger and passion about what he was talking about.

3. What is his/her presentation style?

• Daniel Pink uses his hands when he talks to emphasize a point.
• He refers to the power point going on behind him while he talks about it. But he doesn't only focus on what's happening behind him, it's just there as a reference.

4. What matters from this video? How does it connect to you personally? To education? To the world?

•  This TED Talk matters because it addresses the economy and it addresses the very minds of humans and how they work. He claims that too many people are ignoring the facts of motivation and that is hurting the economy and the way people work in the world.
• This video matters to school because schools could start having free days like some companies now do and that could change the way of education.
• This video definitely matters to me personally because he is saying facts that I would've thought to be the opposite of what is. It opened my mind to new ways of thinking about what motivates me, even though that information was probably inside of me the entire time

TED Talk #2: Kwabena Boahen

1. What are your take-aways from this video?

• The Human brain and the fastest computer in the world, Blue Jean, can process at the same speed at 10 to the 16th power bits per second. However, Blue Jean uses the same amount of electricity as 1,200 houses while the human brain uses about as much power as a laptop.
• As the technology capacity of computers and memory chips increases in holding ability but decreases in size, the computer will actually get slower and crash more often.

2. What are the speaker's effective speaking techniques?

• Boahen uses humor in his TED Talk to add some fun to his presentation.
• He doesn't just talk about his topic, he also talks about his power point going on behind him which I think makes it easier to follow what he's talking about because of the complexity of it.

3. What is his/her presentation style?

• Boahen walks around the stage while presenting instead of just standing in one place the whole time he talks.
• He uses a laser pointer to focus the audience's attention on certain things in the slide show behind him.

4. What matters from this video? How does it connect to you personally? To education? To the world?

•  This video matters because it is showing everyone how much more advanced the human brain really is compared to the super computers of the world, even though many people believe that some computer can actually do more than the human brain can.
•  This video matters to me personally because my generation is growing up in a world where super computers aren't science fiction but they are happening now.
• This video matters to education because it may change the way students learn in a class room. More and more schools now have laptops in the classrooms and that number will most likely continue to grow.
• This video also matter to education because this information may open up new jobs, colleges, and research to create new technology that is both spacious, functional, and fast.
• This video matters to the world because  Boahen and his colleagues are trying to build a computer that is modeled after the part of your brain called the retina, which is in the eye, and this could change the world if they succeed.