Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Anant Agarwal runs EdX.org, the Harvard-MIT open-education site, and he’s here to talk MOOCs, those “massively open online courses” that have generated both excitement and skepticism throughout the chattering world of the digital classes.

Agarwal shows a picture of a lecture hall in MIT from 50 years ago. Then one of the scene from today. What has changed? Not much, it seems. “The seats are in color?” he offers. “Whoopdie do.”

Classroom education hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years. EdX and similar programs are an attempt to be the change the education field needs to see, an attempt to disrupt a calcified industry that Agarwal says needs no less than to be shattered and rebuilt from the ground up. He wants to share some insights gleaned since the launch of EdX, when 155,000 students from 162 countries signed up for an MIT course on circuits and electronics. That’s more than the total number of MIT alumni across the university’s 150-year history. “I would have to teach 40 years before I could teach this many students,” he says.

A blended model of learning isn’t just smart because it’s possible; it’s smart because it’s appropriate for the new generation of students. Agarwal tells the story of trying to communicate with his daughter, who he says began speaking a new language as soon as she turned 13. “I call it Teenglish,” he says. “It has two sounds: grunt and silence.” There are clearly some other parents of teenagers in the audience: knowing, hearty laughs fill the room. More so when Agarwal describes adopting a new system to communicate with her: texting. “Our lives have changed. I text her, she responds. It’s been absolutely great,” he says happily. 

There’s a serious message here: why don’t teachers use these forms of technology in the classroom too? “Let’s not fight this in classroom,” he says. “Let’s embrace technology and the millennial generation’s natural predilections.” Just because old people suffered and had to go to school at eight in the morning doesn’t mean we have to inflict this system on our children. Shifting the emphasis and manner of teaching might just influence the amount of learning that actually happens.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

It’s early days for MOOCs and online learning, but Agarwal shares some of the key things he and his team have learned so far:

1. Active Learning. Rather than have students sit in class watching a lecture, teach by asking questions. This is hardly a new idea — Craik and Lockhart wrote the seminal paper on the topic in 1972. Nonetheless, it could still use being adopted more broadly. “Students learn much better when interacting with material.”

2. Self-pacing. Agarwal recalls his own undergraduate experience, of scrambling to make notes and promptly missing half of a lecturer’s insights. With online engagement, students can hit the pause button. “They can rewind the professor,” he says. “They can even mute the professor.”

3. Instant Feedback. The green check mark telling online students they’re heading in the right direction has become an icon of the courses, he says. “Instant feedback turns teaching moments into learning outcomes.”

4. Gamification. It’s a terrible buzzword, but integrating principles of gaming and interaction into learning is not a bad idea. Agarwal shows some video of students interacting with Lego-style games to learn about building circuits.

5. Peer Learning. He tells of sitting up to monitor the online forum when EdX first launched. He’s a slow typist, he confesses, so by the time he’d typed an answer to a student, someone else had already answered the question. Incorrectly, true, but then someone else popped up with their take. Fascinated, Agarwal refrained from adding his opinion and watched as the students figured out the answer together. “I just had to bless it as a good answer. This was amazing to me.”

It’s early days for MOOCs and online education, but Agarwal’s dream is no less to reimagine the entire discipline of education, to move from lecture halls to e-spaces, from books to tablets, from bricks and mortar school buildings to what he describes as digital dormitories. “We will still need one lecture hall in our universities,” he says. “Otherwise, how else do we tell our grandchildren that their grandparents sat in that room in neat rows like corn stalks? And didn’t even have a rewind button.”

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Fifteen months ago, a small device called Raspberry Pi was put on the market. Despite the glut of gleaming, do-everything devices available today, this credit-card sized, £25, Linux-run computer with nothing but a microprocessor, 512MB RAM, some ports and an SD card slot has sold more than 1 mllion pieces since its launch. What’s it for, and what’s the appeal? Bruno Giussani sits down with Raspberry Pi inventor Eben Upton to get the scoop. Here are few things we found out.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

What is a Raspberry Pi?
It’s a credit-card sized computer with very few of the features you imagine a computer would have, says Upton, but it’s designed to plug into things you already own — your television, a mouse, a network. It’s powered using a mobile phone charger, and storage is on an SD card.

What was the problem you were trying to solve?
Upton explains that at the University of Cambridge, where he was once director of computer sciences at St. John’s College, the numbers of applicants to study computer science were dropping. “From 1995, when we had 500 applicants for 80 to 90 places, by 2005 we had 250,” he says. And the skills of those applicants had dropped — many who felt “technical” had only ever written a web page. Compare that to those who came of age in the Commodore 64 era — or, in the UK, who had access to the state-subsidized BBC Micro — who arrived at university with 10 years of programning experience. So the Raspberry Pi was built in order to counter the sense that the pipeline was drying up. “Our idea was to build something cheap, powerful and available for children’s bedrooms so they could have the same experience we had.”

Why should someone like me get one?
The Raspberry Pi was intended for kids, says Upton, and it was with this in mind that Raspberry Pi was developed — from the child-friendly price tag up. “The whole story for Raspberry Pi is what we can squeeze in there? Can we squeeze something interesting enough that it will become a part of a child’s life?”

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Having said that, the vast majority of the 1.3 million units have gone into the hands of tech-literate adults, and about about 30 to 40% into the hands of kids. Upton reckons those adults will be key to helping make the Raspberry Pi exciting for children. The risk, he says, is that governments are underinvesting in giving teachers the skills required to teach children, something that he is lobbying to improve in the UK. “This is a great platform for children of engineers,” he notes. “If your mother or father is an engineer, you’re going to have a great experience.”

And what are people doing with the Raspberry Pi?
Being a software engineer, Upton thought that people would want to write 3D graphical demos, but people have been using the I/O to create physical projects. “There’s a wonderful guy in the south of the UK who puts them onto high-altitude balloons, sends them up and sends down pictures from 40 kilometers up. I’m a child of the ’80s, a real space cadet… It puts a space program within the reach of every primary school in the world.”

Last word:
“This is not just about computing any more. it’s about getting people excited about a broader range of what we call STEM education — science, technology, engineering and mathematics.”

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Mathemagician Arthur Benjamin says that there are three reasons we learn math: calculation, application and inspiration. Yes, inspiration.

Arthur Benjamin does "Mathemagic"Math is the science of patterns, and learning it teaches us not just logic but creative thinking, says Benjamin. So why, when math is beautiful and exciting, is so much of what we learn in school about preparing for tests or passing on to the next grade?

To highlight this point, Benjamin introduces us to Fibonacci numbers — a name-drop that gets loud applause on the TEDGlobal stage. The person we call Fibonacci was actually “named” Leonardo of Pisa and he pioneered much of the arithmetic we use. The Fibonacci sequence is:

1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 …

Arthur Benjamin: Teach statistics before calculus! Each number in the sequence is the sum of the two that came before it. This sequence of numbers occurs in nature surprisingly often (like in the number of petals on a flower), and the sequence has other special properties too — if you square the sequence, remarkable patterns emerge. Benjamin shows us this spatially through a simple diagram — all the numbers in the sequence form a rectangle made of smaller squares.

“I show all this to you because, like all of mathematics, there’s a beautiful side of it that doesn’t get attention in school,” Benjamin concludes. “Mathematics is not just solving for x, it’s also figuring out why.”

On the Friday of the conference, Benjamin returned to the stage to perform a mathemagic trick. He pulls an attendee out of the audience and onto stage and asks her to tell him her birthday. He creates a 4×4 grid and adds the digits of her birthdate together in the top row. The sum is 41. Benjamin takes just a few seconds to fill in the rest of grid with numbers. Then, testing the audience’s arithmetic skills, he adds up each column and row. They all add up to the magic number 41. The same is even true of the diagonals on the grid … and amazingly of the center square. In fact, the corners add up to 41 too. How?

Inspiration, indeed.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

By Courtney E. Martin

What do sperm donation, marathon runners, disabled rockstars, and yacht racing have in common? They’ve all been subjects of the careful eye and artistic vision of British director Jerry Rothwell, the winner of the first annual Sundance Institute | TED Prize Filmmaker Award, who has received $125,000 to spend the next 18 months documenting TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra as he builds a School in the Cloud.

Rothwell is a documentary filmmaker whose work includes the award-winning feature docs Donor Unknown, about a sperm donor and his many offspring; Heavy Load, about a group of people with learning disabilities who form a punk band; and Deep Water (co-directed with Louise Osmond), about Donald Crowhurst’s ill-fated voyage in the 1968 round-the-world yacht race. His latest film is Town of Runners, about young runners from Bekoji, an Ethiopian highland town that has produced some of the world’s greatest distance athletes.

Rothwell is a pioneer in participatory production, working with people to tell their own stories on film. He played a lead role in developing Hi8us Projects’ improvised dramas with young people for Channel 4, in establishing First Light, the UK Film Council’s scheme for young filmmakers, and in setting up digital storytelling exchanges among marginalized communities across Europe.

We caught up with Rothwell to ask a few questions about his vision for the project ahead.

What attracted you to the project?

From the beginning of my filmmaking career, I did a lot of work with communities and in schools with kids on making films about themselves. That kind of educational methodology has always really interested me. As I’ve moved into more traditional forms of filmmaking, I’ve tried to keep that participatory element in what I do. For that reason, I found Sugata’s TED talk very inspirational.

What was your own experience of education?

When Sugata talks about Britain’s “empire education,” that’s me. I didn’t get on badly in that system, but I am really aware — from my own work in schools — how the institutional structure of the school system fails some kids. My view is that the English education system, in particular, fails boys between the ages of about 8-13. It tries to work with them in a way that they are not very adapted to working.

It seems like there is a big trend in documentary films being intentionally tied to action campaigns (like Girls Rising, Waiting for Superman etc.). What are your thoughts about the role of films in this regard?

In general, my feeling is that films that directly campaign don’t make the best films. The best films are complex, nuanced, and engage the viewer in a thought process rather than hitting them with a message. At the same time, films are a powerful catalyst for action.

It’s a mistake to force the film to carry the message; instead you want to develop empathy in the viewer through a human story. If people are engaged in that process for an hour, or even 25 minutes, they will desire to do something, especially if it’s emotionally engaging. The task of making a film is about, first and foremost, making the film, but also to account for the power of filmmaking to galvanize people around a certain issue.

Filmmaker Jerry Rothwell (center) with (from left) TED Prize Director Lara Stein, producer Daniel Demissie, TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra and TED Curator Chris Anderson.

Will Sugata’s theories influence, not just the subject matter, but the actual making of the film in any way?

There is potential to make the film a counterpart of the methods that Sugata uses — take that notion that children may be able to self-organize and see if they can self-shoot and tell the story through the Schools in the Cloud.

Do you see any thematic threads from your past work to this project?

A lot of work that I’ve done in the past focuses on the subject matter in a unique way. Whether I’m looking at sperm donation or runners in Ethiopia, the common theme is about how you build empathy between audiences and people they may never encounter, how you get them to walk in the shoes of someone else for 90 minutes and come out with a totally different idea about what they knew.

What do you anticipate will be your biggest challenges?

I wonder, is a year enough time to show the real potential of the method and the project? It’s also hard to make films remotely. I’m going to try to work with Indian filmmakers and local kids. I also don’t want to make a film that’s promotional. I want to make a film that is true to the experience.

You’ve just met Sugata here at TEDGlobal. What is your first impression of him as a subject?

He’s all you’d hope for as a filmmaker. He’s funny. He’s very engaging. He’s humble, despite the enormous amount of attention that is thrust upon him, which would turn anyone’s head. He’s very grounded and able to keep things in perspective. Every talk we have gives a slightly different dimension and makes me realize a new possibility for the project.

How can the TED community, and those reading this, support you in this effort?

I would love help from the tech community here to think about how we embed ways of shooting in the communities. Any ideas they have about how to break the conventional ways of documentary using remote technologies would be great. We want to keep it personal and keep it owned by the kids.

Courtney E. Martin is the author multiple books, including Do It Anyway. She is also a member of the TED Prize team and co-lead of The City 2.0, the 2012 TED Prize focused on the future of cities.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Talking as fast and fervently as a circus busker, TED Fellow Greg Gage introduces the world to RoboRoach — a kit that allows you create a cockroach cyborg and control its movements via an iPhone app and “the world’s first commercially available cyborg in the history of mankind.”

“I’m a neuroscientist,” says Gage, “and that means I had to go to grad school for five years just to ask questions about the brain.” This is because the equipment involved is so expensive and complex that it’s only available in university research labs, accessible to PhD candidates and researchers. But other branches of science don’t have this problem — “You don’t have to get a PhD in astronomy to get a telescope and study the sky.”

Yet one in five of us will be diagnosed with a neurological disorder — for which we have no cures. We need more people educated in neuroscience to investigate these diseases. That’s why Gage and his partners at Backyard Brains are developing affordable tools that allow educators to teach electrophysiology from university down to the fifth grade level.

Explaining the RoboRoach as it’s being set up for demonstration, Gage explains that the neurons inside the cockroach’s antennas allows it to navigate the world, sending information back to the brain. If the cockroach is touched by an object on the left it moves right, and vice versa. “What if we sent a little pulse of electricity?” asks Gage.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

As he speaks, he and his partner, Tim Marzullo, release a large South American cockroach wearing an electronic backpack — which sends an electrical current directly into the cockroach’s antenna nerves — onto the table on stage. A line of green spikes appear, accompanied by a sound like rain on a tent or popcorn popping. “The common currency of the brain are the spikes in the neurons,” Gage explains. “These are the neurons that are inside of the antenna, but that’s also what your brain sounds like. Your thoughts, your hopes, your dreams, all encoded into these spikes. People, this is reality right here — the spikes are everything you know!” As Greg’s partner swipes his finger across his iPhone, the RoboRoach swerves left and right, sometimes erratically going in a full confused circle.

So why do this? “This is the exact same technology that’s used to treat Parkinson’s disease and make cochlear implants for deaf people. If we can get these tools into hands of kids, we can start the neurological revolution.”

After Gage’s talk, Chris Anderson asks about the ethics of using the cockroaches for these purposes. Gage explains that this is microstimulation, not a pain response — the evidence is that the roach adapts quickly to the stimulation. (In fact, some high school students have discovered that they can control the rate of adaptation in an unusual way — by playing music to the roaches over their iPods.) After the experiment, he says, the cockroaches are released to go back to do what cockroaches normally do. So don’t worry — no animals were irretrievably harmed in the making of this TED talk.

British director Jerry Rothwell has received the first annual Sundance Institute | TED Prize Filmmaker Award, and with it $125K to make a documentary about Sugata Mitra. Photo: Courtesy of Mitra

Sugata Mitra’s TED Prize story may soon be coming to a theater near you. Today during the TEDGlobal 2013 session “Exquisite, Enigmatic Us,” curator Chris Anderson named British director Jerry Rothwell as the winner of the first annual Sundance Institute | TED Prize Filmmaker Award. Rothwell earned a $125,000 grant to follow Sugata Mitra over the next 18 months as he builds his School in the Cloud and to craft a documentary about Mitra’s $1 million wish.

TED and the Sundance Institute launched this collaboration at TED2013 to increase public consciousness about the TED Prize winner’s wish and work. In addition to telling the winner’s story, the award was established to build resources for creative non-fiction storytelling.

“We are thrilled to award Jerry Rothwell the first ever Sundance Institute | TED Prize Filmmaker Award, and are eager to see the vision he brings to document Sugata Mitra’s TED Prize wish,” said Lara Stein, director of the TED Prize. “The Sundance Institute | TED Prize award unites artists, innovators, and thought leaders with a vision for spurring global change. Sugata’s wish to build a School in the Cloud will have an important impact, and Jerry Rothwell’s work will ensure his story is told beautifully, originally and authentically.”

Following a global call for submissions and a competitive selection process, Rothwell and his producers Al Morrow and Dan Demissie’s proposal was chosen by Sundance Institute and TED in partnership with advisory committee members. Their projected film, Like Whirlwinds, will explore the development of the School in the Cloud from the perspectives of underprivileged children in India with limited access to education, a retired teacher in the UK who serves as a virtual mentor for kids in India’s slums, and working class youth in England.

The film will also look at how technology interplays with children’s inherent curiosity and dares to pose a question Mitra himself asks: is the traditional way of “knowing” obsolete in the Google age?

Slated for release in 2015, Like Whirlwinds will follow Rothwell’s latest film, Town of Runners, and previous award-winning features including Donor Unknown, Heavy Load, and Deep Water.

Inspired? Become a part of the story. Help Sugata Mitra design the future of learning by participating in his wish.

On Tuesday night, PBS and TED joined forces to air TED Talks Education, a one-hour televised special, featuring passionate teachers, students and researchers from the field who shared their ideas about transforming the US education system. We were so inspired by these spirited speakers that we asked them to curate playlists of their favorite TED Talks for you to enjoy.

Sir Ken Robinson chose his favorite talks, spanning creative methods of learning and powerful spoken word. Watch his favorite talks »

Educator Angela Duckworth selected inquisitive talks about human behavior and psychology. Watch her talk picks »

Bill Gates’ extensive playlist includes a variety of eye-opening selections on medicine, robots and violence. Watch the talks that inspire him »

Teacher and activist Geoffrey Canada’s playlist reflects his passion for advocacy through an exploration of violence, slums and environmental activism. Watch his favorite talks on social justice »

Poet Malcolm London picked talks from speakers with candor – poets and educators alike. Watch this poet’s selections »

High school teacher Pearl Arrendondo chose motivating talks that reflect her own drive. Watch her inspiring picks »

Ramsey Musallam, chemistry teacher, selected talks on imaginative ways of repurposing education and learning. Watch his inventive collection of talks »

A view of the stage before TEDxDelft. Photo: Roy Borghouts

From dancing math to teaching in languages other than English – this week’s X marks the spot is a selection of TEDx Talks about rethinking education. Each week, TEDx chooses four of our favorite talks, highlighting just a few of the enlightening speakers from the TEDx community, and its diverse constellation of ideas worth spreading. Below, find this week’s edition on education.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ws2y-cGoWqQ

Teaching math through movement: Erik Stern and Karl Schaffer at TEDxManhattanBeach
Erik Stern and Karl Schaffer took their love of dance into the classroom. Now, they promote the teaching of complicated mathematics concepts to kids using the power of movement, as they demonstrate. (Filmed at TEDxManhattanBeach.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jOxRFcCRPPo

Teach for tomorrow’s world: David Garner at TEDxIndianapolis
With new technology, rapid changes in the global economy, and an evolving workforce, we have an urgent need to improve the way we teach, says David Garner. He explains why we should leave behind outdated models like specialization and standardization and move to a more multidisciplinary approach. (Filmed at TEDxIndianapolis.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wqhl9tNDAlM

Language and the wealth gap: Phiwayinkosi Mbuyazi at TEDxSoweto
In a passionate talk, Phiwayinkosi Mbuyazi takes issue with the convention of teaching international students in English, suggesting that this practice often hurts much more than it helps. (Filmed at TEDxSoweto.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=k6BmbdzPcrY

Teach both 007 and MacGyver: Marc Chun at TEDxDenverTeachers
“Why am I learning this?” It’s a question familiar to parents and teachers alike. Marc Chun and other researchers set out to discover how students actually use general knowledge — and he now recommends curriculums that focus on creativity in solving problems. (TEDxDenverTeachers.)

Below, find some highlights from the TEDx blog this week:

• 5 TEDx Talks in honor of teacher appreciation week
• Bosons, bicycles and big data: 7 things we learned from TEDxCERN
• Is it better or worse to drink while exercising? Evidence from Dr. Timothy Noakes at TEDxCapetown
• 5 TEDx Talks on DNA
• The first TEDx playlist featuring TEDx Talks entirely in Spanish

Walt Cochran, a teacher in Kansas City, shared this touching video with us for Education Week about his children — one disabled, one not — who make you think about the depth of the sibling relationship. Lindsay, 10, suffers from a form of Muscular Dystrophy called Spinal Muscular Atrophy and has been in a wheelchair since she was 2 years old. Meanwhile her older brother Trent, 12, sees his role as not just protective older brother, but as an ambassador to remind others that kids with disabilities can do anything they put their mind to with the help of technology and support of loving relationships. Really, we dare you not to shed a tear while watching this.

This video feels especially relevant today given a comment we noticed on John Legend’s performance of “True Colors,” from Caroline Playle, who gave a talk at TEDxKingsCollege. She writes, “This just made me cry. My 5 year old son has Down’s Syndrome and attends a mainstream school. The teachers and assistants have been amazing and he has lots of friends. Little people see a person — not a syndrome — and really do see my son’s true colours and strengths shining through. I hope through inclusion, both at school and within communities, we can breed a new generation of acceptance.”

Watch Legend’s performance below: