Talk less – listen more is the advice Chris Kennedy gives to teachers in his TED talk about “Real world learning at the 2010 Olympics”. The talk is about the project students engaged in during the Olympics in Canada 2010, but it is more about the skills students needed to master real life projects and how technology isn’t going to make teaching easier but different. The students got to engage a real life audience and found that the real world is addictive! Good writing skills matter! When writing on blogs they found that the better they wrote, the more interesting the topic and the lager the audience. They also got to see other students’ work and that helped make their work better! Learning could look like something different! Mobile technology can change learning, and social media needs to be taught.
This makes a lot of sense to me. Take the 17 minutes to watch and then discuss with your colleagues, does this change how you see learning with technology? Social media needs to be taught is a reminder about the responsibilities schools have! You can find the slides he used for his presentation here.
Thanks Ann for posting my TEDxUBC presentation. It was absolutely the most amazing teaching experience of my career working with the students during the Olympics.
Thanks again for sharing it with a wider audience.
Chris Kennedy @chrkennedy
Thank you for commenting on my post Chris! I loved you presentation. Since my students all write blogs I have found that writing for a real audience is such a new experience for them and as you say it is much more rewarding!