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TEDx Talks
Published: 2016-06-30
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cYIvfS-knA
sometimes the things that affect you the most as a child other things have become much passion about as an adult for me it's education I was doomed to fail from the stock you see when my mother was pregnant she suffered a series of complications and the doctors told her that there was only a fifty percent chance that I was going to make it and if I
did I'd probly be brain damaged I will achieve much in life the best thing that she could do was take me home and just above me true to the doctor's predictions are slow to walk slow to talk and slow to learn I struggle to maintain a C. average and promise school in high school I scraped into university with a lost right miscible so given this fantastic
track record everything was going to do that that unique well I ended up with a PhD in Congress signs the scientific study of how the mind works I end up with the university medal for outstanding academic achievement and I ended up with GPI that will be the top one percent of the student population so from a C. average brain damage student high school top one percent
I've not so what was the secret well the secret is I am nobody special I have to thoroughly convinced you of that by the end of this talk instead I stumbled across some fundamental truths about learning some basic principles if applied to the education would change millions of lives and it comes down to basic neuroscience truth is what all fantastic winners and we all have an
a night for us for knowledge from infancy nobody teaches us how cruel grasp objects or walk we learn such things through self directed exploration and fly interestingly the highest concentration of of the brain's endorphin percepts rex he found in the learning centers of the brain rexi hardwired to learn and to find great joy in learning but if this is the case why is it that so
many kids struggle at school and the answer is that there's a mismatch between how we teach and how the brain naturally lands now if we look at the learning center is the brain they release endorphins with an inverted U. shaped with respect familiarity so things that are too familiar a boring things that are too unfamiliar are aversive but things on the proofread on knowledge that stand
out capabilities are actually hardly pleasurable not only are endorphins released making running enjoyable but die from Maine is also released making learning highly addictive let me just check Facebook today so if everybody write the same things every single die on Facebook it would be too boring to be too familiar and you wouldn't do it if it was written in some sort of foreign language that you
didn't understand me too unfamiliar and you wouldn't do it Facebook is pleasurable and addictive because you're always getting new information on the periphery of your knowledge you're always learning and it's this natural first for knowledge which is how kids naturally learn and how competencies naturally emerge take for instance how kids learn to physically interact with their worlds a few years ago I I ran some experiments
using robots taxi test some of the theories and what we did we gave these robots bisik vision and hearing and basic reflexes like a baby but we also get these robots happiness so that is the preference for exploring on the periphery of knowledge and what happened like a baby the initial explorations were completely random but over time what this was actually teaching in that random activity
doesn't really do that much and once it looked that it got bored of it and actually stopped by having randomly but there were some cases where interesting things actually would happen particular when you put your hand in front of your face what blob so over time instead of acting randomly it started learning hand eye coordination and this is basically what children do as well but again
all over time became boring and it stopped doing it very similar to how a child splashes in the Baath we don't do that because we know what it actually does and gets boring right but all the time again there were some interesting things will that was happening what when it put its head of Harvard's its face particular when there was an object present so when there
was a hanging object if you hit it would swing if you hit a button music reply in the skies toward explorer which is very surface and kids and if you turn around and bid on a chew toy it would activate the senses in your mouth so over time this robot learn to muster its environment none of this was pre programmed it lets her happiness in the
same way that the child learns finding joy in self exploration play so we all hard wired to find learning incredibly pleasurable so not of us if given the choice would stare blankly at a at a wall what we'd rather do is engage in activities such as reading what taking taking five spoke all watching you two or even going it's head so things that that actually activate
the learning centers of the brain so if this is the case again why is it that some students don't do well at school well let's fill a classroom of thirty students and see what happens so we have a teacher of the front teaching a set curriculum to a set price unfortunately every student is different some students are gonna be ahead in board others behind finding work
lending critically aversive very few students are actually getting the information on the proof of that knowledge that's required for optimal learning and pleasure and as a result of this millions of children are getting left behind one study of north in North America to show that sixty three percent all the student population I disengaged right and this is not a fault of the student this is the
fault of the system so thinking about back about my own lending Jenny actually makes a lot of sense in prom in high school I was just one of the sixty three percent bored out of my mind's I was sitting there just waiting for the data and but it harm was a different matter said harm I had freedom tracks explore things and I had quite a natural
interest in computers so the the age of ten I started teaching myself how to carve I read every book that was until myself nearly every language that they once and by the time I hit university as an expert my wife profess to to use the term geek but she's not here solved pretend the correct terminology is expert Sir what happened when I got to university one
us only do well because I had freedom of choice those things are always interested in which was all the geeky things of what cognitive neuroscience philosophy not to choose the subjects at all as a result I love going to class and I did well unfortunately my students and not given this up and as a result stuck in a system that diminishes rather than inspires them so
Ken Robinson has said on various Ted talks that the education system doesn't need to be reformed it needs to be transformed we need less standardize I shin I'm more personalization but the real question is how so given the teaching already ranks as one of the top ten most stressful occupations how is it possible that a teacher could do even more work and personalize doing Jenny for
every student in the class it seems an impossible task until now so I believe the answer to the future lies in technology and in particular my own area of research which is artificial intelligence so I all I can now be viewed as an intelligent you to that will sit on the shoulder and give you personalize education I wanna like to do is give you some very
practical examples of the I don't like to demo or mine software that that I'm currently working on how I don't like to talk about three levels of eye on the different complexity and how they'll be so the first level is around right winning and this is the boring stuff we all have J. right so what is five times seven what's the capital of France was the
French word for happy nine the spine but it's applicable to a whole wide range of tasks so have a students usually when this well we give them an exam and if they're a good student valproic cram for but if you cram for exams there's actually an exponential forgetting curve so most of what you've actually learned is forgotten in the next few days and as a result
the kids have an excellent all that much the best way to write that information is what's called spice repetition so you actually refresh the information just what is about to be forgotten and every time you do this that forgetting curve gets less state and you actually remember more of a time interestingly some studies have shown that was exactly the same in a study time you can
double your performance just by switching to space for the other question is how to study so what to do if you're right letting a lot of students to spread the textbook and Houghton read and re read until I feel that I know it unfortunate put into the silence again this is a really horrible at doing things the best way to write when information is through what's
called active recall so that's actually testing yourself like for example using flash cards so what is the capital of France and when you do this you remember a lot more so given a classroom of thirty seven thirty students to actually optimize rote learning what I need to do is know exactly what every single student that cost knows one dozen are and present exactly the right material
at the exactly the right time optimize performance and this is impossible for teacher but actually quite trivial using technology so this is my answer to system that allows any seat any teacher to actually create their own tutorials upload it to the web and share of worldwide and what we can do is crack lesson plans teachers can use a simple drag and drop interface for inventing things
like I thought you two videos animations for teaching the material but then we have these a flash cards the flesh counts can do anything such as teaching job you know having quizzes such what what's the capital of Victoria we can use I ought to do character recognition so draw the Japanese symbol for five and even audio recognition so playa middle see all the student has to
do is log on to the system choose a topic on which to work and the system takes care of the rest the system actually generates the forgetting curve for every piece of information presenting exactly what the students know at exactly that point optimal learning and retention and of course being a computer system you can kind of fight in whatever way to make it more fun for
kids so that's right learning that's a good start but we want to do better than that we actually won again to active learning such teaching things like problem solving and creativity and this is why generative I are level two comes in and Jennifer hi I can actually create its own questions for the child to answer so for example in teaching music what generative I I can
do is not only listen to the student and provide feedback the Kenexa generate its own music matched the skill level of the student side knows what the student can conjure and actually generates the rock music for that student and again this is applicable to a whole range of of topics from a touch typing through to mathematics it's about generating the right problems for that student at
that point in time and this week we can do with with today's technology so how would we use in the classroom so first of all we get rid of boring lectures and textbooks I would replace this with personalized ally enabled E. learning platforms the really optimize the learning process and this will teach for the children what by any tonight but then the the role of the
teacher becomes more exciting it's around teaching the kids why is this information important why do we need to let all this mess stuff one of the cool things that we can do once we know this information so it's around treading personalized group projects kids I can work on that actually of leak the information to things that they actually care about and again we can use technology
social networking for sharing these ideas of across a blog so you know a single teacher does not have to do all the work so again this is stuff that we can do now with today's technology so the next level is level three which is really what's coming up in the future and this is integrated by Aug where we actually match generative IOI which is the ability
to crack it's on questions with various technologies so for example in teaching a child a foreign language we can use virtual reality and embed the the child in particular contexts and and really interesting scenarios that teach that of subjects in the shortest amount of time we can link this to other existing technologies such as gesture recognition sorry you know the Xbox at the moment has this
wonderful system where I can actually detect movement annual gestures we can link this degenerate IOI so can teach things such as dance %HESITATION masalah it's even sign language so the point is we can use I ought for generating exactly what the student needs to learn at that point in time for optimal learning so I I is he if we can use it now but it is
I guess expanding and improving at an exponential rate there is tsunami of change about to hit our show which I believe will totally transform the way we approach education and if we do this rod will enable every child to unlock the hidden potential and to live a full rich and valued lost but there are some things we will continue in the meantime there's a quote I
found on the internet which are sometimes people fight insightful Socrates actress said but he never did %HESITATION but it's a really nice course and what it says is education as the kindling the flame not the filling of a vessel what every child needs is someone to delight in them someone to help them find the natural joy and curiosity someone to help them ex lord their own
