Web 2.0 - Adora Vittey on How Adults Should Learn From Kids

Have you ever felt so motivated by a video that you just want to stat doing what that person is? Furthermore, have your students be as motivated as well?

Adora Vittey, is a 12 year old girl who inspires people by sharing her thoughts related to educational topics through her blogs and videos. Adora shows us that teaching has become a both way activity, from teacher to student and student to teacher. Schools are not the only place where you go to learn anymore. Students learn better by collaborating, developing web skills, creating, and personalized inquiry. She even says that students are asking for more freedom. The role of teachers is to be mentors and the role of students is to develop their learning and application of it. Adora presents us with the format of allowing students also to teach us, breaking the model that traditionally has been ruling the way we learn. She has taken a great advantage of Web 2.0 by creating an engaging teaching platform and the resources she uses such as blogs, the cloud, videos, and intelligent boards. Her video “What Adults Can Learn From Kids from her Ted talk ion February 2013 she shows us how the thought of irresponsibility and irrational thinking should not be thought as only related to age, because adults have clearly shown those traits as well with wars, imperialism, colonization among others. Another aspect to be taken into account is that when you normally become an adult you disregard your dreams because you find them too difficult to achieve.

In my class I would like to do 2 things that Adora has inspired on me. Firstly I would like my students to develop as much as they can, pursuit accomplishments in different areas as Adora has shown it is possible. She has taken a great advantage of Web 2.0 by creating an engaging teaching platform. I will encourage my students to create projects, social bookmarking, sharing and consuming. Although we already have many of these in class, it is important to continue evolving and giving students the support they actually need, rather than just having them sit through a lecture where their understanding might be scarce and the knowledge will be lost eventually with no application. The role of teachers is to be mentors and the role of students is to develop their learning and application of it. Secondly, I would like all of my class including myself to think about our dream, about different ways to approach problems and allow ourselves to go through our ideas despite of how impossible they may sound.

TED. (2010, April 2). Adora Svitak: What adults can learn from kids. Retrieved January 12, 2014 from http://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitak.html.