It's not the 18 minutes

[Sean Nash]

Passion
I implore you to take a few minutes of your day to check out a rather passionate professional, Princeton Professor of Molecular Biology, Dr. Bonnie Bassler Ph.D. Dr. Basler's 2009 TED talk is worth watching. If you are a biology teacher, the content is crucial. Even if you just happen to be interested in the world around you- then this talk is for you. It is for anyone. To take it a step further, turn your analysis in the direction of public speaking of any sort. Standing in front of a crowd... trying to make a point. What do you see here?


If you're going to stand there
Ok... 18 minutes.

This presentation takes 18 minutes, not six. 18. In 18 minutes, she conveys the passion for her work in such a way that it is hard to even look away. The thing is, in just this time, I would suggest that she delivers more information than you'd generally try to address in a typical class session. I would also hope that we wouldn't engage in such exclusively one-way forms of communication in our classrooms for even this long. 18 minutes of purely one-way communication in a classroom of 25 humans isn't teaching as much as it is preaching. However, here in her TED talk, it works wonderfully.

So what does this mean for us as classroom teachers? Anything?

CLICK HERE for the "rest of the story" and a healthy set of questions to ponder (and hopefully respond to). ;)



.

[Sharon Padget]

I love her!!!! she is a wonderful scientist who is so passionate about her work and she is easily understood by my students (high school)