TEDx Semester At Sea

For those who may not know, TED (which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) has been this series of lectures, held in London, where people comes to share ideas of how to change the world. Here on Semester At Sea, we had the opportunity for our teachers and students to share their projects and ideas with the other students, and through the magic of video and the internet, the rest of the world. TEDx is a program where TED lightly sponsors similar events and conferences across the world. Today is the first time the MV Explorer has ever had a TEDx event.

The highlight of the event was Andrew Kahn, a Theater professor from Buffalo State College, who shared his Anne Frank Project. It started from a play of The Diary of Anne Frank he organized on his campus, where they paralleled it with the struggles of a Tutsi girl during the Rwanda 1994 Crisis. It has expanded to a week long celebrate at Buffalo State where they confront issues of racism and bigotry though song and dance. It has attracted the attention of activists of both the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. The college has even developed relations with Rwandan students, videoconferencing with them monthly and sending students to the country.

The rest of the program was... okay. One student gave out her philosophy of life, "Share the secret, Pay it forward, smile," ultimately culminating in a sense of destiny control.

A riveting video of an English teacher in Dubai was played, confronting how languages are dying, and how while we need to teach English to people, we cannot suppress their own language development. In ninety years, we will have but a fraction of the languages we have now, and with each unique language come unique concepts that Chinese and English simply do not have words for. We lose an ability to express ideas every time a language dies. As a linguist, I found this profound.

A student named JP Sullivan shared his project of starting a financial literacy curriculum in his local high schools, seeing how essentially nobody knew about money in high school, and lack of education was the major cause of the past recession.  (he sounded like he believes we may be out... but really?) His points were valid, and I commend his work.

A businessman named Spencer Frank talked about how he started a business designed to help build cheap, effective housing after disasters such as the Indian tsunami. It was cool, but as someone who doesn't touch business or money, I found it less riveting.

The conference concluded with a collaboration video of "Stand By Me" using people from across the world to make the video. I've seen similar things, but it rings of the common thread of music and commonality amongst all people.