10 Ted Talks That Will Help You to Make ELearning Meet Modern Learners’ Needs

Does your learning correspond with modern learner’s needs? Recent Bersin by Deloitte research on changes transforming learners’ needs inspired us to share with you informative TED lectures that will help you to make your eLearning project satisfy modern learners’ needs and be appealing to society and market changes.

Does your learning correspond with modern learner’s needs? Recent Bersin by Deloitte research on changes transforming learners’ needs inspired us to share with you informative TED lectures that will help you to make your eLearning project satisfy modern learners’ needs and be appealing to society and market changes.

Inspire, reinvent, revolutionize!

"Someone, at some point, came up with this very bad idea that an ordinary individual couldn't make a difference in the world. I think that's just a horrible thing."

John Skoll

Rapidly changing environment, globalization, scarcity of resources and growth rates of human knowledge makes critical thinking and creativity the primary skills students need to obtain to get ready for an adult life. In many countries around the globe there is a gap between the things taught at school and the knowledge necessary for a real life. That is why problem solving, creativity and cross-disciplinary skills need to be developed.

Ken Robinson in his inspiring speech provides compelling reasons of necessity to develop students’ creativity and help them not to be afraid of making mistakes.

1) Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

A one-size-fits-all learning model is no longer working. To make education system effective a standardized approach should be replaced by a personalized one. ELearning like no other sphere is flexible in what concerns personalization and this advantage should be used to meet the needs of modern learners.

Ken Robinson draws an analogy between traditional education system and fast food model. Fast food industry is where everything is standardized. But people have different abilities, interests and talents which means education needs to be revolutionized.

"Every education system in the world is being reformed at the moment, and it's not enough. Reform is no use anymore, because that's simply improving a broken model. What we need...is not evolution, but a revolution in education. This has to be transformed into something else."

Sir Ken Robinson

2) Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution

To correspond with constantly developing environment and growing market demands modern learners need to have wide opportunities for a lifelong learning. Technology development and eLearning popularity growth enables students to join the lections of prestigious universities online, watch educational videos on their way to work and develop new skills to succeed in modern world. Make education process available to everyone to meet the market’s demand.

John Green inspires everyone to learn online, join communities of learners worldwide and stay lifelong learners during our lives.

3) John Green: The nerd’s guide to learning everything online

With so many distractions around (text messages, social media, emails etc.) it is becoming more and more challenging to keep modern learners engaged in the learning process. Modern learners are constantly under the pressure of information overload, busy daily life and lack of time. To make them engaged teachers need to step back from generally accepted theories and implement new experimental approaches that will be solutions in their personal cases.

Chris in his short talk discovers a secret of making students engaged in learning and willing to acquire new skills and knowledge.

“And if we could transform teacher education to focus on teaching teachers how to create that magic then poof! we could make dead classes come alive, we could reignite imaginations, and we can change education”

Christopher Emdin

4) Christopher Emdin: Teach teachers how to create magic

The teacher’s role has changed over time. Now there is a student in the center of learning process and he is in charge of the learning path. Taking this into consideration conditions for self-organized learning environment should be created.

Sugata Mitra encourages people all over the world to adapt SOLE concept to help students to get prepared for future. Work in collaboration, encouragement and help of technology are the main component of the technique.

5) Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud

Internet gave teachers a chance to share their knowledge with students all over the globe. Thanks to web technologies teaching became multinational and multilingual. A student from New Zeeland can take a course at American college and then get a job in Europe.

Peter Norving in his speech shares his experience of moving his traditional classroom online and giving a chance for students all over the world to join his class.

6) Peter Norvig: The 100, 000-student classroom

Modern learners need inspiring teachers to learn from. Not teachers that are paid to teach, but teachers who do their best in bringing difference into students’ lives.

Rita Pierson is an inspiring teacher with 40 years of experience. In the video she talks about personal connections importance and finding personal approaches to each student.

“We’re educators. We’re born to make a difference.”

Rita F. Pierson

7) Rita Pierson: Every Child needs a champion

There is a bunch of existing eLearning models aimed at helping teachers to make learning appealling to each student: blended learning, flipped learning, microlearning, storytelling etc. To be successful a teacher needs to make experiments to find the approach that suits his modern students best.

8) Salman Khan: Let’s use video to reinvent education

In the world of globalization and industrialization it is difficult to imagine that there are places in the world where people don’t have a chance to study as opposed to students in developed countries. But thanks to devoted people the situation can be changed.

Charles tells an incredible story about students in the slums and says what schools need to become.

9) Charles Leadbeater: Education innovation in the slums

And finally…

The real goal of education is to help students become successful in their lives. There is a common belief that without a good degree it is almost impossible to get a well-paid job but a few know that completely different things lead to this success.

Richard St. John cut two hour presentation to three minutes to unveil the secret of success you need to share with your students.

10) Richard St. John: 8 secrets of success

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