TEDxKC - Michael Wesch - From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-Able

Summary

In this TEDxKC talk, Dr. Michael Wesch addresses the urgent need for a new educational paradigm. He uses the metaphor of a world on fire to highlight global crises and the inadequacy of current teaching methods. Wesch advocates for moving students from passive knowledge absorption to active knowledge-ability, emphasizing the importance of critical thinking and creative problem-solving in the digital age. He showcases examples of global connectivity and collaboration, urging educators to embrace technology and real-world problems to prepare students for the challenges of the 21st century.

Takeaways

• 🌍 The world is facing multiple crises, including hunger, economic, and energy crises, with a significant portion of the global population living in poverty.
• 🔥 The metaphor of the world being on fire is used to illustrate the urgent need for change in how we prepare the youth for future challenges.
• 📚 Current educational systems are criticized for not effectively engaging students or preparing them to deal with real-world problems.
• 🤔 The questions students ask often reflect a focus on grades and requirements rather than on meaningful learning and understanding.
• 📈 Surveys reveal that students are not fully engaging with assigned readings, with a significant percentage finding them irrelevant to their lives.
• 💻 The pervasive presence of technology in classrooms has created new distractions and a shift in how students interact with their educational environment.
• 🌐 The new media landscape enables global conversations and the easy dissemination of information, which challenges traditional forms of education and assessment.
• 🔑 The speaker argues for a shift from simply being knowledgeable to being knowledge-able, emphasizing the ability to find, analyze, and create information.
• 📺 Media shapes our communication and relationships, and the advent of new media requires us to rethink how we approach education and learning.
• 🎼 The power of new media is demonstrated through examples like the 'Free Hugs' campaign and the virtual choir, showing how it can facilitate global connections and collaborations.
• 🌳 The script highlights the impact of media on identity formation and the importance of critical thinking, especially in the context of advertising and societal messages.
• 🏫 The classroom environment and traditional teaching methods are critiqued for not fostering the necessary skills for students to navigate the modern world effectively.
• 🌟 The potential of new media is underscored by its ability to mobilize people for social good, as seen in the examples of Ushahidi and the response to the Dove commercial.
• 📝 The importance of embracing real-world problems in education is emphasized, along with the need for students to practice knowledge-ability through active engagement and collaboration.
• 🕊️ The Aztec story of the world on fire concludes the script with a message of hope and the power of individual and collective action to effect change.

Q & A

What is the central metaphor used by Dr. Michael Wesch to describe the current state of the world?

The central metaphor used by Dr. Michael Wesch is 'the world on fire,' symbolizing the various crises such as hunger, economic, and energy crises, as well as environmental issues like islands of trash in the oceans.

What does Dr. Wesch suggest is the current state of youth engagement in higher education?

Dr. Wesch suggests that the current state of youth engagement in higher education is lacking, as evidenced by their disinterest in class and the types of questions they ask, which are more focused on grades and requirements rather than learning and understanding.

How does Dr. Wesch describe the failure rate of university assignments in terms of relevance to students' lives?

Dr. Wesch describes a 74% failure rate, as students find only 26% of the assigned readings relevant to their lives, based on a survey conducted across the university.

What is the 'new media landscape' that Dr. Wesch refers to and how does it affect education?

The 'new media landscape' refers to the digital environment where nearly the entire body of human knowledge and digital artifacts are accessible. This affects education by making traditional teaching methods seem outdated and by providing students with easy access to information, thus requiring a shift in how knowledge is taught and acquired.

What does Dr. Wesch argue is the difference between being 'knowledgeable' and 'knowledge-able'?

Dr. Wesch argues that being 'knowledgeable' is about knowing a bunch of stuff, while being 'knowledge-able' is about being able to find, sort, analyze, criticize, and create new information and knowledge.

How does Dr. Wesch relate the changes in media to changes in relationships and society?

Dr. Wesch relates changes in media to changes in relationships and society by stating that media shape what can be said, who can say it, who can hear it, and how it can be said, thus mediating relationships and allowing us to connect with one another in different ways.

What is the significance of the Dove commercial in the context of Dr. Wesch's talk?

The Dove commercial is significant as it demonstrates the power of media to influence perceptions, particularly about beauty standards, and how media can have a negative impact on individuals, especially during critical moments of identity formation.

What example does Dr. Wesch use to illustrate the power of new media in organizing global social movements?

Dr. Wesch uses the example of 'One Man' from Sydney, who started the 'Free Hugs' campaign. This campaign went viral on YouTube, leading to thousands of events worldwide, illustrating how new media can easily connect and organize people globally.

How does Dr. Wesch describe the impact of new media on the traditional classroom environment?

Dr. Wesch describes the impact of new media on the traditional classroom by highlighting the ease of access to information and the ability to connect and collaborate globally, which makes traditional exams and lectures seem outdated and out of place.

What is the key message Dr. Wesch wants students to learn from his classroom experience?

The key message Dr. Wesch wants students to learn is to move beyond just seeking meaning and to realize that meaning is not something you find but something you create, both in themselves and in the world.

How does Dr. Wesch conclude his talk with the Aztec story, and what lesson does it impart?

Dr. Wesch concludes his talk by recounting the Aztec story where a small bird's efforts to put out a world-consuming fire inspire other animals to join in, ultimately saving the world. The lesson imparted is that even small actions can make a significant difference, and it's about doing the best one can in the face of overwhelming challenges.

Outlines

00:00

🌟 The Disengagement of Youth in Education

Doctor Michael Wesch begins his talk by addressing the pressing global issues such as hunger, economic, and energy crises, and the need for a change in the way we live and educate our youth. He illustrates the lack of student engagement in a traditional university classroom setting, where students are more focused on the mechanics of the class rather than the material itself. Wesch highlights the disconnect between the importance of the issues at hand and the questions students ask, which are often trivial and not reflective of the depth of the subject matter. He emphasizes the need for students to be more than just knowledgeable but also knowledge-able, capable of finding, sorting, analyzing, and creating new information.

05:03

📺 The Impact of Media on Identity and Critical Thinking

Wesch delves into the influence of media, particularly television, on society's conversations and the shaping of culture. He discusses how television has historically dictated the format of discourse, reducing complex issues to sound bites and promoting a culture of irrelevance. The speaker connects this to the challenge faced by young people in finding their identity amidst a media-saturated environment. He uses a Dove commercial as an example of media's power to shape perceptions, and the subsequent spoofs to show the participatory nature of new media. Wesch argues that in the new media era, we need to go beyond critical thinking to engage with and navigate the global conversation facilitated by digital platforms.

10:04

🌐 The Power of New Media for Global Connection and Social Change

This section showcases the transformative power of new media through examples like the 'Free Hugs' campaign and the spoof response to a Dove advertisement. Wesch highlights the ability of new media to facilitate global conversations and social movements, as evidenced by the rapid spread of ideas and the collective action they inspire. He also discusses the success of Ushahidi, a platform that enabled citizen reporting during crises in Kenya and Haiti, demonstrating the life-saving potential of collaborative technology. The narrative emphasizes the ease of connection and organization in the digital age, while also acknowledging the creative and serious layers of commentary that new media can inspire.

15:09

🏫 Rethinking Education for the Digital Age

In the final paragraph, Wesch reflects on the traditional classroom setup and its message of authority and passive learning. He contrasts this with a collaborative Google document project involving 200 students, which became a viral critique of higher education. The speaker emphasizes the importance of embracing real-world problems in the classroom, using technology to connect, organize, and publish collaboratively. Wesch concludes by urging educators to help students move beyond seeking meaning to creating it, suggesting that the true test of education is not classroom exams but the 'test of our lives', as symbolized by the Aztec story of a little bird attempting to extinguish a world on fire.

Keywords

💡Disengagement

Disengagement refers to a lack of interest or involvement. In the video's context, it is used to describe the students' lack of connection with the educational process, as evidenced by their questions about grades and test requirements rather than engaging with the material's substance. The script mentions, 'They're not really engaged,' highlighting the disconnect between the students and the critical issues of the world.

💡Knowledge-able

The term 'knowledge-able' is a play on 'knowledgeable,' suggesting the ability to manage and utilize knowledge effectively. The video emphasizes moving from passive accumulation of facts to an active capability to find, sort, analyze, and create new information. The speaker argues for the necessity of students becoming 'knowledge-able' to navigate the modern information landscape, as opposed to just being knowledgeable.

💡Media Landscape

The media landscape refers to the environment in which media is created, distributed, and consumed. The video script discusses the new media landscape enabled by digital technology, where nearly the entire body of human knowledge is accessible, and people can connect, share, and collaborate globally. This concept is central to understanding how media shapes our interactions and the world's problems.

💡Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous computing, also known as pervasive computing, is the concept of computing technology being integrated into everyday objects and environments. The video mentions this term to illustrate a future where information and communication are seamlessly available everywhere, influencing how students learn and engage with knowledge.

💡Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue to form a judgment. In the video, it is presented as an essential skill in the television era, where media messages bombard viewers, and the ability to filter and evaluate information is crucial. However, the speaker argues that in the new media era, we need to go beyond critical thinking.

💡New Media

New media refers to digital and internet-based forms of communication and storytelling. The video discusses the power and influence of new media, such as YouTube, in facilitating global conversations, social movements, and the creation of content by everyday individuals, which contrasts with traditional one-way media like television.

💡Global Conversation

A global conversation implies the ability of people worldwide to communicate and share ideas. The video uses this term to describe the interconnectedness enabled by new media, where local actions, like the 'Free Hugs' campaign, can spark global responses and movements, transcending geographical boundaries.

💡Virtual Choir

A virtual choir is a group of singers who perform together without being physically present in the same location. In the script, it is used as an example of new media's ability to bring people together from around the world to create something collectively, symbolizing the collaborative potential of technology.

💡Ushahidi

Ushahidi, meaning 'witness' in Swahili, is a platform that allows people to report incidents via text messages, which are then mapped and shared. The video highlights its use during the 2007 Kenyan election crisis and the Haiti earthquake, demonstrating how new media can be harnessed for crisis response and citizen journalism.

💡OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. The video mentions its use in Haiti by Ushahidi, emphasizing the power of collaborative tools in providing critical information during disasters, where traditional mapping services might not be sufficient.

💡Meaning Creation

Meaning creation is the idea that individuals actively construct their own sense of meaning and purpose in life. The video suggests that students should move beyond seeking meaning to recognizing that they can create meaning, both for themselves and the world, by engaging with real-world problems and utilizing their knowledge-ability.

Highlights

Doctor Michael Wesch is invited to the TEDxKC stage to discuss the world's current crises and the need for a new approach to education.

An old Aztec story of the world on fire is used as a metaphor for today's challenges, emphasizing the urgency for change.

The current state of education is criticized, with students appearing disengaged and focused on superficial questions rather than meaningful inquiry.

A survey reveals that students complete only 49% of assigned readings and find only 26% relevant to their lives, indicating a disconnect in educational relevance.

The pervasive presence of digital media in classrooms is highlighted, suggesting a new landscape for learning and knowledge sharing.

The concept of moving from being 'knowledgeable' to 'knowledge-able' is introduced, emphasizing the ability to create and critique information.

Media's role in shaping communication and relationships is discussed, with examples of how television has historically influenced cultural conversations.

The impact of media on identity formation, particularly in young people, is explored through the lens of advertising and its potential negative effects.

The importance of going beyond critical thinking in the era of new media is argued, suggesting a need for new literacies and competencies.

The story of 'One Man' and the 'Free Hugs' campaign illustrates the power of new media to catalyze global social movements.

The potential of new media for spoofing and commentary is shown, with examples of how it can influence corporate responsibility.

The story of Eric Whitacre and the virtual choir demonstrates the creative possibilities of new media for collective artistic expression.

The role of new media in crisis response is highlighted through the example of Ushahidi, a platform for citizen reporting during emergencies.

A classroom exercise where students collaboratively create a document critiquing higher education is shared, showcasing student engagement and creativity.

The challenge of creating meaningful connections and collaborations in the digital age is discussed, emphasizing the difficulty beyond the technological ease.

Three strategies for fostering knowledge-ability in students are suggested: embracing real problems, collaborating to solve them, and leveraging relevant tools.

The narrative of the Aztec story concludes with a message of hope and collective action, inspiring the audience to consider their role in addressing the world's challenges.

Transcripts

Transcriber: Gabriela Ahearn Reviewer: Tanya Cushman

It's with great pleasure, actually,

that I invite Doctor Michael Wesch to the TEDxKC stage.

(Applause)

All right.

So as I was preparing this talk for what the world needs now,

I was reminded of this old Aztec story.

The story starts off with the world on fire,

and it seems like such an apt metaphor for our times.

As the world's on fire and all the animals are running away,

all hope is lost.

We have this similar situation now.

We have a hunger crisis, an economic crisis, an energy crisis.

We have half the world living on less than $2 a day.

We have islands of trash growing in our oceans.

And this has to be a message to our youth and to all of us

that we cannot live the next 100 years

the way that we've lived the past 100 years.

And so, if you think about this world-on-fire metaphor,

and you think, okay, we really need to get our youth ready for this,

how do you think we're doing this?

I'll just give you a picture here.

This is my class at Kansas State University.

This is where most of the preparation of our youth is happening.

Certainly, the most serious types of preparation that are happening.

They're not really engaged.

It was actually like a real test you can do for this

to find out just how engaged they are

and how much they are engaging in these really important questions.

And that is just to pay attention to the questions they are asking.

A good question is something that leads people on a quest.

If you pay attention to the questions students are asking in this environment,

they turn out to be questions like these:

How many points is this worth?

(Laughter)

How long does this paper need to be?

What do we need to know for this test?

I mean, these are like the worst types of questions around.

And it's not that this group is lazy and disengaged.

I mean, this is the same group here.

I don't know if you see the difference.

(Laughter)

So something's gone wrong here.

I've actually done surveys with the students.

One day we just set up a camera and just panned it around,

and students can give confessions and that kind of thing.

We got things like this:

I buy $100 textbooks that I never open.

My neighbor paid for class but never comes.

We did a survey and found that across the university,

they are completing 49% of the readings that were assigned to them.

But even worse, they are finding only 26% relevant to their life,

which is like a 74% failure rate on our part.

It goes on - I bring my laptop to class, but I'm not working on class stuff.

This was nicely illustrated

in the fact that, like, her IM actually popped up

just as she was presenting this.

I Facebook through most of my classes.

And these last two present something else to us,

a new sort of disruption in the classroom,

and that is that there's something in the air -

literally, something in the air - it's in the air all around us.

And most of us can access it

from at least one device on us now, if not multiple devices.

Our students are the same way,

and what's in the air is nearly the entire body of human knowledge.

It's the digital artifacts of about 2 billion people on the planet,

connecting and sharing, and collaborating.

And iIf you could picture it, it might look something like this.

It's like the new media landscape.

But this is just the beginning

because we're headed towards ubiquitous computing,

ubiquitous communication, ubiquitous information

at unlimited speed about everything, everywhere, from anywhere

on all kinds of devices,

and this makes it ridiculously easy

to connect, organize, share, collect, collaborate, and publish,

and it makes exams like this seem really silly and out of place.

This is a multiple choice Scantron exam,

for those of you who've never seen one.

(Laughter)

So this is way out of place here.

I'm going to make the argument that we need to move our students

from simply being knowledgeable, knowing a bunch of stuff,

which is what we are trying to do

when we line them up in these big lecture halls

and dump information on them.

We need to move them to being knowledge-able,

that is able to find, sort, analyze,

ultimately criticize, and even create new information and knowledge.

We have to recognize that knowledge ability changes over time

based on the communication environment they are in.

That's because media are not just tools,

media are not even just means of communication.

Media shape what can be said,

who can say it,

who can hear it, how it can be said.

And in that way, they also, in a sense, mediate relationships.

Ultimately, media are what allow us to connect with one another,

and to connect with each other in different ways

depending on the medium.

So in media change, our relationships change.

There's a great analyses of this from the television era,

from Neil Postman.

Just think about what television did

when it came in and became the dominant medium of our culture.

It totally rearranged our living rooms, first off.

We had to rearrange the furniture around the television,

and let's face it, that's the dining room too, often.

So this is a massive shift in our relationships at home.

The conversations of our culture start to happen here.

The conversations are controlled by the few and designed for the masses.

They are always entertaining -

that's how you keep the audience engaged, even the serious ones.

So our political debates go from long reasoned analyses

to 30-second sound bites.

The conversations are punctuated by 30-second commercials,

and the conversations

create our culture of irrelevance, incoherence, and impotence.

Those are Neil Postman's words.

And Neil Postman, in 1985 when he was writing this,

he asked you to imagine you're watching a very, very important news program,

the most important news program you can imagine.

You're sitting there, and he asks this series of questions:

So what steps do you plan to reduce the conflict in the Middle East?

Or the rates of inflation, crime, or unemployment?

What do you plan to do about NATO, OPEC, the CIA, etc.?

Then he follows this by saying,

"I shall take the liberty of answering for you:

you plan to do nothing."

In 1985, that's basically what you could do

because in that time with television,

it's a one-way conversation.

You have to be on TV to have a voice.

You have to be on TV to be significant.

So it's really no wonder,

in a world dominated by television media,

that we'd have all these young people clamoring to be on stage,

to be significant.

I mean, essentially, when you look at this group of young people,

regardless of how we imagine the project of education,

their primary goal when they're sitting in this room

is they're basically trying to figure out

who they are, what their place in this world is.

They're seeking a meaning in life,

they're seeking meaning and recognition in a world and society

in which identity and recognition are not automatically given,

so they have to find it.

At that critical moment that they're trying to find it,

they're bombarded with media.

Dove made this great commercial that I want to show you here

that sort of illustrates this and the effect that this can have,

sometimes a negative effect.

Some of you may have seen this before.

(Music: La Breeze by Simian) Ah, here it comes.

Here it comes.

La breeze will blow away

all your reason and your sane,

sane mind.

[Transform.]

[Your skin]

So do your best to run away.

You'll look younger, smaller, blonder, firmer, tighter, thinner, softer.

(Music)

[Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.]

(On stage) Michael Wesch: Obviously, this demonstrates

the power of media very well,

and obviously this media can be very damaging

at the critical moment when people are trying to find their identity.

This, of course, is one of the reasons

why in our schools, we've always talked about critical thinking.

Critical thinking is like setting up that filter, that barrier,

to all this media blast that's hitting them.

So critical thinking is very important, especially in the television era.

But it's not enough for this era.

In an era of new media, we need to go beyond critical thinking,

and that's going to be my argument from here on out.

What I want to do is I want to jump into an old classic on YouTube -

this appeared in 2006 -

just to sort of set the stage for what this new media world looks like.

Here's "a hero for our mediated culture" that emerged in 2006.

He goes by the name of One Man.

He comes home to Sydney from England,

and there's nobody at the airport to hug him,

so he goes down to the mall, and he holds up this Free Hugs sign,

and he just carries it around here, looking for somebody to give him a hug.

And you'll see here,

finally somebody gives him one.

(Music)

And so now it gets interesting:

it starts to spread.

Other people start taking up the sign, other people start getting hugs.

(Music)

But this is where it takes a turn; it gets really interesting,

(Laughter)

It gets posted to YouTube, gets over 40 million views,

and then it goes global.

So there's these events still happening four years later,

thousands of these events, all over the world.

And it demonstrates something really quite fundamental about this media,

that it's a global conversation,

that it shows how ridiculously easy it is to connect and share

and ultimately organize these global social movements.

But we also have to recognize

that in this media environment, there's always the spoofster,

there's always the commentary coming back.

So here's the spoofster now:

[Deluxe Hugs $2.00]

"These are really, really good,

and they're not as smelly as the hippie hugs."

(Laughter)

Some of these get really serious, like these spoofs you see.

This is what's so interesting about new media -

some of these get really serious.

So, remember that Dove commercial?

You might have thought,

Isn't it ironic that this beauty company is making this kind of commercial here?

Well somebody has spoofed it quite effectively, and here is that.

(Music: spoof of La Breeze) There they go.

There they go.

There they go.

[98% of Indonesia's lowland forest will be gone by the time Azizah is 25]

[Most is destroyed to make palm oil, which is used in Dove products.]

(On stage) So two weeks after this was produced

and about a million YouTube views later,

the Greenpeace activists who created this video

were at the table with Unilever, Dove's parent company,

and Unilever signed a moratorium on rain forest deforestation for palm oil.

So this stuff is quite effective.

(Applause)

And, of course, the point of saying that and showing that

is to point out that this is not a one-way conversation anymore,

and it's not even just a conversation.

I'm not sure exactly how to, like, picture this for you,

but there's like layers and layers of creativity happening

all over the world right now

that's coming into this network.

The only way I can really describe it

is through music

because music has these layers as well.

So I want to show you the story of Eric Whitacre.

Eric Whitacre is a composer;

he's been presenting music for quite some time.

At one point last year,

somebody sang a song on YouTube, his own song, to Eric.

And Eric was so inspired by this,

he thought,

"I could create a whole virtual choir."

So what he did is he actually recorded himself conducting the song.

He put the sheet music up online,

and then anybody in the world could actually join this choir here.

And metaphorically, it's kind of interesting, right?

Because it shows how different contributions from all over the world

can add up into something quite beautiful.

I see this metaphor playing out in all kinds of different places,

even really serious cases.

This is the 2007 Kenyan election crisis.

In the aftermath, four Kenyans get together,

and they put together this website called Ushahidi,

which means "witness" in Swahili.

It allows people with cellphones to report something on their cellphone.

It gets mapped on the map, and then can get sent out.

These alerts could get sent out, based on where you are, to your cellphone

so you get the critical information you need at that particular moment.

It created 45,000 citizen reporters

giving life and death information when they needed it most.

So then, three years later in Haiti -

the Kenyans actually gave away the software -

anybody can use it.

So some students at Tufts University implemented it for Ushahidi Haiti.

They get, you can see here, hundreds of thousands of messages from Haiti.

Some of these messages say things like this:

"We are looking for Gaby Joseph,

who got buried under Royal University,"

and they're able to get these on the map,

and then people on the ground are actually able to get these as well.

They're not using Google Maps.

They're using OpenStreetMap,

which is collaboratively produced by volunteers all over the world.

That's the map that ends up on the ground,

and these people are getting these alerts through the Ushahidi system.

Here's a US Marine Corps comment on this:

"It is saving lives every day.

I wish I had time to document every example, but there are too many.

I say with confidence there are hundreds of these success stories.

The Marine Corps is using your project every second of the day

to get aid and assistance to the people that need it most."

(Choir music)

So that's what's possible.

And then you walk into the classroom.

(Sound of opening door)

All right, so this is what my classroom looks like.

I want you to think about what's the message of the walls.

So it's not about what I'm saying up front.

The walls are saying something too.

So what are these walls saying?

If you think about this old Dewey point,

John Dewey used to say that students learn what they do.

So if students learn what they do,

What are they learning sitting here?

It's not just what I say, it's also the message of just sitting there.

The message is the information is up at the front of the room

with the authority,

that they should follow along.

The message of this room is pretty clear:

that you should bow to the authority and follow, follow, follow.

So, of course, walls or desks cannot talk; students can.

What we did was we just created a Google document.

We called it A Vision of Students Today.

I just started the first line,

"What is it like being a student today?"

I invited all my students to join in, so we had 200 collaborators on this.

We started writing about what it's like being a student today -

basically a critique of higher education generated by all these 200 students.

We did some surveys as well that we developed along with this.

The video looks something like this.

You've already seen some of these images at the beginning of this talk.

[18% of my teachers know my name]

So you've seen a lot of this already, so I'm going to skip the rest of that.

Here's another interesting little side story.

A month after we produced this, it had raced to almost 3 million views.

It had been translated into Spanish, Italian, Greek, French, and Arabic.

It was on ABC News.

I mean, it was like this weird example of just how ridiculously easy it is

to connect, organize, share, collect, collaborate, and publish.

Yet at the same time, I think this is a little misleading,

because it's technologically ridiculously easy to do these things,

but it's actually really hard to do these things,

to really connect with people, to really collaborate,

to really publish something of worth.

Those are actually really hard things to do,

and they're not learning to do those things in this environment.

So to move our students from being knowledgeable

to being knowledge-able,

we're going to have to recognize

that knowledge-ability is a practice;

it's not a list of things that you can just tell somebody,

"This is what you do to be knowledge-able."

It is a hard thing to do; it takes practice.

The three things that I try to do in my classroom to make this happen:

Number 1 is you try to embrace real problems,

problems that I don't know the answer to.

I don't stand up and pretend I know the answers

to the "world on fire" questions

that we have.

We do it with students, so we bring all of them together to collaborate,

to solve these real world problems,

and we do it harnessing and leveraging the relevant tools whenever we can.

In this way, we connect, organize, share, collect, collaborate, and publish

together,

and ultimately if we are going to solve this crisis,

we have to recognize that we have to convince our students

to move beyond just seeking meaning

and help them realize that meaning is not something you find,

but it's ultimately something you create:

you create yourself, you create the world.

Ultimately, we need to move them beyond the question of

What do we need to know for this test?

And move them to this question:

What do we need to know for this test, the test of our lives?

If I can return back to that old Aztec story to finish off.

So the Aztecs had this idea that the world is on fire,

all hope is lost, and so on.

Well, it turns out all hope isn't lost.

As all these animals are fleeing this fire that threatens to engulf the entire world,

all the animals are fleeing,

and the birds are up overhead fleeing,

and an eagle looks back,

and he can see this tiny little bird back by this little stream near the fire.

The bird is just hopping up to the stream, filling its beak with water

and then fluttering over the fire

and dropping a single drop of water over the fire.

The eagle comes racing back and says,

"You're crazy. You're going to die.

What are you doing?"

and the little bird says, "The best I can."

The eagle gets really inspired by this

and starts swooping down and picking up water in its beak

and flying back over,

and some other birds see this and the animals see this,

and pretty soon the earth starts to shake as the animals flow back to the fire.

And they start digging a fire line,

and the sky becomes so thick with birds

that you can't see the sun,

and the water falls like rain from their beaks,

and this is why we can sit here today

and still talk about the little bird that saved the world.

Thanks.

(Applause)