Schools Kill Creativity

Recently, I viewed a speech given by Ken Robinson in which he expressed his belief that schools kill creativity. His speech really made me think about the flawed structure of the education system. He explained that there is a hierarchy of subjects that places the highest level of importance on the maths and sciences, leaving the creative subjects like music and art on the bottom. When I was in high school, I was required to take Maths, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Earth Science in order to graduate. I was not required to take any courses that taught me how to balance a checkbook or how a loan works, how to make a budget or even how to make dinner. These are things I know I'll need to do at some point, where on the contrary, I'll never look at the Periodic Table of Elements again in my life, nor will I need to know how long it will take a marble to hit the floor after being dropped.

He talked about killing creativity. He gave the example of Gillian Lynne, who choreographed "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera." When she was a child, her school informed her parents that she possibly had a learning disability because she couldn't stop moving. After seeing a specialist, her parents realized that she didn't have a learning disability, she was just a dancer. Later in her life, she opened her own dance studio, did choreography for many performances, pleasured millions, and is now a multi-millionaire. In the present world, we would have put her on medication and told her to settle down.

I encourage you to watch his speech. It was very intriguing, funny, but most importantly, it will make you think!

Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity

New Apple Products

This past Wednesday, September 1, 2010, Apple Inc. held it's annual conference to announce the release of its newest products. The biggest announcements were the introduction of the new AppleTV, and also the new line of iPods.

The greatest improvements of the AppleTV include the incredible size reduction, and also the significant price reduction. For those who don't know, AppleTV connects to one's television and allows the user to stream content from a computer to the TV such as pictures, music, or movies. AppleTV also allows users to rent TV episodes and movies. This is another change Apple made. Previously, users were able to purchase episodes and movies, but this required storage. By removing the need for storage, Apple's design team was able to reduce the size of AppleTV to a quarter of the size.

The new line of iPods was the highlight of the event, without question. Starting with the iPod Shuffle, Steve Jobs showed that they had further reduced the size of the already-micro Shuffle. Other features include Voice Over, allowing the device to speak playlists to the user, and also integrated buttons (reintroduced after being removed in the previous model). Next was the iPod Nano. As the name suggests, an iPod "Nano" should be extremely small. Apple wanted to do this without sacrificing screen size. Their alternative, remove the circular trackpad and make the screen responsive to touch. Also, by making it so small, Apple added a clip on the back of the Nano to make for easy carrying. Lastly, the iPod Touch was upgraded. Steve Jobs demonstrated that the Touch now has both a front-facing camera (users may now video chat on the iPod Touch) and also an HD camera on the front of the device. This actually throws the iPod Touch into the compact camcorder market, and makes itself a pretty legitimate contender, considering the fact that users can purchase Apple's award-winning video editing software iMovie and edit movies right on their iPod Touch.