“The perfect child” | Tharinya Rangajeewa | TEDxYouth@GatewayCollegeNegombo
[Music] what if children didn't have to study this way what if we could come home and spend the rest of the day - what if we only had to work and learn in school and what if you could come home and enjoy ourselves like sports games spiritual activities and family Quixote and if they could do that then how my name is terenia and I will be telling y'all that if we put our thinking caps on it is not impossible to find a practical and pertinent way to do this and that is of course using the emerging technology all right let me get straight to the point mr. Ken Robinson a prominent educationist in one of his death speeches said that the typical education system doesn't require reformation or renovation but instead it requires transformation and this transformation I believe is becoming closer and closer with the dawn of artificial intelligence and virtual reality so the big question is how do we employ technology to learn effectively during school hours enjoy ourselves when we come back home and finally show excellent results in our exams first off I think we should make education more enjoyable let me magnify this to a neuroscientific level dr. Scott Borland a very renowned cognitive scientist and the founder of new dawn technologies once said that we all are wired to be lifelong learners from the stage of infancy to being a toddler we see how a child learns on his own simple things like crawling walking and even crying now I have a question for all of you while this is known as learning as well we refer to coming across a new science theory in school as learning as well but why was were these childish things so easy to grasp so enjoyable whereas those science theories that we learned in school required required a bit of studying at home and then only could be faced the exam why was that the reason behind this is very simple this is mainly because we learn crawling walking and such by itself directed exploration and play and in theory this is how our brains are naturally coded to learn whereas the science theory wasn't really odd to us that's really wasn't really explored by us and another interesting fact stated by dr. Boland is that most of her endorphin recep's are found in the learning centers of our brains and this in fact indicates that since endorphins are a chemical produced in our brains that make us feel happy this indicates that were supposed to learn and be happy we're supposed to be happy by quenching our thirst for knowledge but why don't why doesn't this happen in school all the time well some lessons make some of us take a little nap from sight from time to time this is due to a mismatch between how the typical education system works and how our brains are naturally meant to learn and this mismatch or difference is where education and/or learning becomes unentertaining for most of us so we have to make education or learning enjoyable in the language of the brain right this is exactly where modern technology comes in handy in fact many schools try to do this try to amend their curriculums according to these recent findings using traditional methods but today I'm here to make a more technological approach towards this one such branch of the fourth Industrial Revolution that we can use is virtual reality or VR a few months ago my parents took me my brother and my sister to a place with VR rights and to be honest it was amazing and believe me I still remember most of the things I saw in that short VR right why did this happen this was mainly because it appeared to me by engaging my sensory organs and creating a real life a realistic picture around me so I figured if we could do this same thing in a classroom setting bring other sense life make it feel more realistic perhaps we could make education and learning much more easier and entertaining as well because we are using we are we the students explore and learn instead of spoon feeding them and the additional ultimate benefit is that since the content is fixed into the mind of a child then and there no extra time is consumed at all trying to memorize books and study notes another way in which we can eliminate the extra time consumption at home memorizing for your exams is by using artificial intelligence or AI this method in fact ensures that and reassures that after students learn with VR they will remember all the content that they need to for an exam so that is we need to do a bit of a field survey in every subject a student is taught math sciences geography history English and so on we need to collect and analyze all the exam papers carefully done within say the last three years and taking science as an example if we find that a large number of students have done particularly poorly at a section such as DNA structures and their formation perhaps we now know that this area needs to be more stressed upon and with this collected data we can make a software we can create an AI based program which can be used to conduct AI base eLearning recent research also suggests that space repetition is in fact the best method of testing a child's knowledge which is basically holding continuous tests every week or so and many schools try to stick to this initiative using paper-based exams but I'm talking about taking that to the next level as well I'm talking about eliminating the paper and using technology instead so in this case it's a very simple theory firstly teachers observed students in the classroom and monitor and analyze their contributions and participation during lessons because their contributions and participation is actually indicative of whether or not and the degree of familiarity of the students understanding next these daily observations will be entered by the teachers into an AI based system which can be developed in such a way that it can assess the levels of students in assess the levels of student based upon their performance during classes and finally students will be issued a personal username and password where they can log into this program and complete a set of questions meant for them according to the areas that they've been struggling with and using this theory schools can now analyze how students progress day-by-day let me take a moment to correct a very misleading common theory and code in the minds of some of us today teachers can be replaced by AI anyone over here who agrees with the statement please tell me genuinely look teachers are not like technology technology is merely made up of chunks of metal multicolored coils of wire and possibly computer data put together well if teachers aren't and if they aren't the obvious can't be replaced by that right so I would like to address you all about this matter as well teachers are like our parents without their affection students cannot succeed on their own because a teacher is more than just a content provider teachers mold and shape students integrate citizens I would like to tell you all that technology entering the stage cannot replace teachers from their jobs so I urge all of you to not give in to that misunderstanding but rather understand how technology can revolutionize the education field and make their jobs make the teachers jobs easier and more convenient for them as well nowadays technology keeps on enhancing and revolutionizing our day to day lives in every aspect in ways we never thought of and invest we can never think of as well people developed technology and continued to develop technology due to various reasons [Music] and I firmly believe that education will always be among the top five of those reasons whilst wrapping up I would like to present to all of you a perfect childhood thank you [Applause]