Voicing transformation through song, scholarship and social media, TED Fellow 2009: Racism as a Resource, Prize-winning author, singer-songwriter, jazz vocalist, and a Character @ #140Conf London Nov 2009
Are you peeling bananas wrong? - By Steven E. Landsburg - Slate Magazine
via slate.msn.com
Liz Danico opened her workshop WAYS OF SEEING: INSTRUCTIONS ON GETTING LOST by examining the way Americans peel bananas to discuss the limits on the ways we see or perceive things. This was the STAR MOMENT of the afternoon at the Day of Interaction Feast Workshops yesterday. http://www.feastongood.com/Events. I will never look at a banana the same way ever again. Thx Liz!
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AN APPLE FOR THE TEACHER - A LAPTOP TO EDUCATE THE WORLD
Remember the old idea of bringing an apple for the teacher? According to aboutapple.com, the juicy fruit was a traditional present for teachers in the United States, Denmark, and Sweden. Some think the practice originated as a simple gift of food for poorly paid teachers.
Rather than becoming an "apple-polisher" -- a student who flatters the teacher, I have been inviting my cultural anthropology students at Baruch College in the City University of New York to pass the fruit of their education along to 6-12 year olds in developing countries through the One Laptop Per Child campaign originally launched by Nicholas Negroponte at TED. As one of the most diverse colleges in the nation, I think it's a great way to talk about technology in the classroom, use the classroom as a tool to a new kind of global studies, and to have the people in the classroom do more than teach and learn. Why not give away what we got! I call it GOING PUBLIC with our teaching and learning, which i do the last two weeks of many of my classes.
A FILM SHOOT FOR TED FELLOWS
This past Saturday, July 11th, I participated in a professional film shoot for an ad that will feature TED Fellows. The shoot featured eight Baruch students and I acted out a class discussion to launch the next phase of our One Laptop Per Child/Class Fundraising campaign this fall. Last December 2008 we raised almost $700 dollars (I inaccurately mentioned $800 earlier) and made a viral video for the beta of the campaign to exponentially increase our fundraising. Since we did this the last week of classes, were did not do any promotion or marketing of the YouTube video. But the amount we raised with only two classes (52 students) allowed us to easily donate 3 laptops in the first phase.
The simplicity of the game is that any class--including faculty--can band together to donate a laptop for just $10 or less per person (20 students + instructor @ $10 per person; 100 students + instructor @ $2 per person). With this project we can provide access to education for the 5 billion people who do not have the luxury we in the core nations have. Roughly 1 billion of the 6.8 billion ppl on the planet have access to a computer. Access to a computer can lead not only to education but self-sustaining development in peripheral economic nations or what we once called the Third World.
For the film shoot last Saturday, the students and I also practiced doing some street video interviewing with actual Baruch students and ordinary passers-by. We used a Flip Ultra video cameras while the film crew used the real stuff on all the action. The interviewees were asked how much $199 US, the cost of the XO Laptop, would buy in their home country since Baruch has students from over 120 countries, or there answer could pertain to here in the US.
THREE ON STREET INTERVIEWS: WHAT COULD YOU BUY WITH $199US?
Carlos from Dominican Republic:
That's about 700 pesos and you could pay for a month's rent or a month's worth of food.
Two men of Haitian descent, one from US and one from Canada
Wesley from US: I would pay for cell phone bill (Kyra: would it cover it?) Ye...NO!
Steven from Canada: In Haiti, a $199 would probably buy ...about 20 meals, 20 good meals, good Lambi a seafood meal. And in Canada...I would buy a iPod. I would buy something to put my music on. This big (he articulates with his fingers about 2 inches).
Xiwe from China:
I am from China...Sichuan. For most people they can live for one month, a whole family. About a family of two.
Our overall aim? To get 140 classes (20% of our 700 classes) to band together and donate to a 6-12 year old in a developing country. If we meet our goal we could raise $50K, we could donate over 250 laptops while also inviting other colleges to play along with a new viral video this fall.
Every Child, Everywhere, Has the Right to Rducation.
Some students register a concern: why laptops and not food. Here is a great response by Jeremy Allison on ZDNetNews:
Every Child, Everywhere, Has the Right to Rducation.
Some students register a concern: why laptops and not food. Here is a great response by Jeremy Allison on ZDNetNews:
Critics of the OLPC project focused on two things. Firstly, that developing countries need development, food and medical aid, not laptops. Secondly, that what they describe as "cut-down computers" are patronizing to people there. To answer the first point, the goal is to provide education, not simply computers. Educated people don't stay poor people for long, and lack of education is behind many of the developing world's problems. The second point shows how little people in the first world -- myself included -- understand the infrastructure of the developing world.
"Children learn fast.
Let's give them the right tools." Find out more about the One Laptop
per Child project at www.laptop.org.
My students and I are out to teach other Baruch students and faculty
- about the comparative value of $199 and the value of accessing local knowledge about the world from students from 120 countries--diversity looks very different at Baruch College and we can highlight class not just race or ethnicity through this simple question.
- to have our community see how simple it can be to give back what we have--access to education and knowledge--and to use technology as an aid to our own education as leaders in the world.
- To appreciate that $10 or less to educate an entire school and arm its children with their own laptops is PRICELESS!
Also check out the latest prototype of the next XO laptop- AMAZING!
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS AS A TED FELLOW
Being part of this film shoot made me realize how several key things in my life coming together for me. - The Baruch President paid for several faculty to be trained in dealing with film, TV and print media two years ago and I was well prepared for the brief answers needed for a 30 sec spot.
- I participate in leadership training with Landmark Education which has trained me not only how to be present under any circumstance but also how to be responsible when in front of an audience of people as people not as strangers. I highly recommend reading THE THREE LAWS OF PERFORMANCE (a biz book and bestseller that is an encapsulation of Landmark's training and results).
- Our TED fellows training during our 2009 Long Beach conference--the powerpoint training in particular--has me thinking how to get my ideas across in narratives that matter.
Best, Kyra Gaunt
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Polymath-magician: Tricks, Pitches, and TED Fellowship
TRICKS
This is a film by Peyton Wilson whom I will meet this weekend as part of a post-TED opportunity that came my way. Speed and Angels is the name of the film. Description: From dogfights in the Nevada desert, to night landings on aircraft
carriers in the Atlantic what begins as a story of realizing a
childhood dream turns into a story of fighting for one's life.
Peyton will be filming me this weekend for a documentary by a major telecomm company affiliated with the TED Fellows. I am so grateful for the post-TED opportunities that keep coming my way. This is the way life should work for my students. Heck, for all students in US colleges and universities. Being able to expand their network of influence to leverage opportunities that really change the way you see what's possible in the world--that's when real change happens--and students today are so deprived of that amazing moment when people come together and something incredible and unpredictable comes of a connection with someone you just met, or sat next to at TED or in the classroom, or randomly made conversation with a stranger for 5 mins and that connection becomes a collaboration for life. That's the TED magic. The TED moment to me. The trick is to be ready to make something happen when the moment comes and to not resist because you are not sure what it might look like. That's TED!!
PITCHES
Learning to pitch your idea to an audience of influence or to your colleagues who don't get what TED is about is an art. As a professor at a public university, I am expected to publish not perish. And while I resist that game at times, I realize that getting the word out about my thinking--and I do have some wonderful things to write about from research with Africans and African Americans in a Harlem nightclub or hip-hop or black girls' musical games--is key. Pitching how other people think about your ideas is even more key. It's the tonic of scaling up your idea, if I can borrow a musical analogy (tonic: relating to or being the keynote of a major or minor scale; the central pitch of "tonic harmony").
This week as I prepare for the film shoot with Peyton, who is from LA, and others coming from London, as I coordinate bringing some of my students into the mix of the documentary, I had to deal with pitching the opportunity this documentary can be not only to my college and its administrators who don't get what TED brings to all whom it touches, but I also had to pitch the educational value of being involved with a documentary made by a major telecomm company. I learned that saying "commercial ad" vs. "documentary" changes the entire listening for what's possible with the Chief Legal Counsel who has to give us a site license for approval to use the college. The commercial ad suggests a particular reaction. He wrote: "I hope that _____ hasn’t been led to
believe they can just walk on campus and start filming."
What I am learning from all this is that when new things come our way, the only thing we have to relate it to is the past and that breeds a kind of cynicism as if people are only out to take advantage. All this came from me throwing a loose pitch to my administrator about a commercial (a base hit) instead of what it really is a documentary (strike 1!) about me (strike 2!) but about my students ingenuity (strike 3! Next batter up!). The aim is to win the game of getting new ideas to students, faculty and administrators that the use of social media and user-generated content from collaborations between a professor who is a TED Fellow and her students can make a world of education come alive (HOMERUN!)
TED FELLOWSHIP
Here's a bigger glimpse of what's come from having TED Fellowship (LONG BEACH CLASS OF 2009 RULES!!). "TED Fellowship" can be heard as an award or as a verb, an action. So far, I have fellowshipped with other TEDsters in the following ways:
- By bringing Ruth Ann and Bill Harnisch to speak to my Intro to Cultural Anthropology course in the Spring 2009 to simply share about their connections to Baruch and TED (Bill is major player at Baruch College and a former graduate whose life story is amazing). Ruth Ann is THE advocate for living life to be happy, fulfilled, and taking smart risks (much better than smart bombs).
- During a classroom visit by TEDsters Bill Jensen (Mr.Simplicity) and Joshua Klein, who met in a random conversation at TED 2008, we started a conversation about HACKING SCHOOL. What would that look like? Josh shared his own hacker's approach to getting through college. At least 2 of the 28 students said that conversation changed their life. It changed my outlook too!
- TEDster Kirstin Kreuk (formerly Lana on the CW show Smallville) came all the way to my home in Brooklyn from Toronto to record me for a podcast for her new project Girls by Design. She attended TED Palm Springs and simply read about me in the TED Fellows handbook.
- Michael Karnjanaprakorn Co-Founder of All Day Buffet which connects, develops, and launches purpose-driven ventures found me through a Twitter search of profiles. Mine reads TED 2009 Fellow. Michael runs the "little brother TED" called The FEAST conference in NYC. They are hosting some summer events leading up to their October conference. I will be giving my workshop RACISM AS A RESOURCE in August.
Will post my 3 min TED Talk called HOW TO TRANSFORM YOUR VIEW OF RACE IN 3 MINS OR LESS created from my training at our TED Fellows Conference asap.
Agree to Be Offended(TM) and stay in the conversation
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KYRA D. GAUNT, Ph.D.
What I am working on in 2009:
How might racism be a resource for our humanity and courage?
2009 TED Fellow http://www.ted.com/index.php/profiles/view/id/27884
"Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind." -- Henry David Thoreau
http://kyraocity.com
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Vote for TED Fellow Darius Weems of Darius Goes West in the DO SOMETHING YouTube Competition for $100,000
You may have seen my recent posts about my friend Darius Weems, who is another TED Fellow. He is a finalist in the YouTube DoSomething competition for $100,000 towards his interest in ending Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Not many ppl live as fully as Darius when they are not diagnosed with a terminal illness. Please vote for Darius today!!! He is only 19.
His brother died of DMD at 19.
GO VOTE!! VOTE EARLY & OFTEN!!
SUPPORT DISABILITY RIGHTS & SUPPORT LIVING LIFE FULLY
TO VOTE VISIT: http://www.dariusgoeswest.org/how-to-vote-for-darius-to-win-100k/
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KYRA D. GAUNT, Ph.D.
What I am working on in 2009: RACISM AS A RESOURCE (Agree to be Offended and Stay in the Conversation)
Henry Ford once said, “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.”
My website: http://kyraocity.com
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TRANSFORM YOUR VIEW OF RACE IN 3 MINS or LESS + Another great unveiling coming soon...
I'm just back from winning the outstanding poster award with a revision of my TED Fellows talk renamed HOW TO TRANSFORM YOUR VIEW OF RACE IN 3 MINS or LESS (video coming asap) at the 2009 Conference for Global Transformation (#CGT09) in SF sponsored by Landmark Education. It was called Racism as a Resource
at TED2009 but this is more like a Racism in Plain English Common Craft
video. Encourage all the fellows and others to learn how to give a 3
min talk because you can carry it anywhere and call it a poster! LOL
If you want to know more about #CGT09 follow my twitter updates from May 15-17 at http://twitter.com/kyraocity. You might also be interested, esp. if you are in NYC, in my tweets from Baruch's School of Public Affairs #Nonprofit Seminar on Arts & Cultural Orgnizations in Times of Financial Crisis that took place May 18, 2009.
My real purpose for blogging this morning is to announce a new video about us TED Fellows
that I am so excited about. Really captures our energy and the spirit
of the program. Just got it minutes ago and sent it out as quicktime
and flash in earlier version of this post but just got word moments
later that we should wait for embedded version later this week.
Stay tuned for another GREAT UNVEILING in video form.
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Is the Honeymoon Over in Policy Matters re: Race with the Obama Administration?
Be curious what others think about that the US Administration will not be attending the UN Conference on Racism this year. This despite the US Attorney General Eric Holder stating we are a "nation of coward" (See my previous post).
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TED Fellow as Polymath (or What Hacking Culture, South Pacific, and Smallville Have in Common)
A polymath (Greek polymathēs, πολυμαθής, "having learned much")[1] is a person whose knowledge is not restricted to one subject area. In less formal terms, a polymath (or polymathic person) may simply refer to someone who is very knowledgeable. Most ancient scientists were polymaths by today’s standards.[2] (From Wikipedia).
Being a TED Fellow, or a "polymath" as Tom Rielly dubbed us, has been a life-altering experience for me. I've become one of those "you-don't-know-about-TED-yet-let-me-tell-you-all-about-it" kind of people. I check out the website daily to see the latest video release and then say "OMG, I forgot about that talk. That was AMAZING!!" Being at TED was like 4 years of grad school in Ann Arbor, Michigan (the best parts in and outside the classroom) in 4 days. They say it's a "brain spa". I got it. When Dan Emmett's talk on "Cute, sweet, sexy and funny" was posted yesterday I said it again: "OMG, I forgot about that talk. That one was AMAZING, too!!"
The only other experience I had that hit me that way was when I spent the summer at the Aspen School of Music (I was a classically-trained singer in another lifetime). After growing up in D.C., the mountainous terrain was amazing to my very being. Everyday I'd wake up in the summer and wake to class saying "OMG it's so beautiful here!" I was there 9 weeks. Even though the feeling was true 2 weeks into my stay, saying it everyday started to get mundane. But there's nothing mundane about what's been showing up related to TED since February 8th.
About a week after TED ended, Bill Jensen of Simpler Works aka Mr. Simplicity contacted me. We had met at TED in the precious anticipatory time before they open the doors before one of the main session started. We spoke for no more than 5 mins. Exchanged cards and made a connection talking about emptying your email everyday. I told Bill I am out to purge my files as well. He phoned me to see if there might be any mutual interest in a book on HACKING CULTURE he's writing with Josh Klein (he's the one who did the Intelligence of Crows TED talk -- one of my favs). He met Josh in a chance meeting at TED the year before. Bill and/or Josh will be coming to speak to my Anthro class about Hacking Culture in college and academia.
This week I met with Harriet Balkind. She's the founder & director of Secrets No One Ever Told You. We had lunch this week at the best Mexican restaurant in Soho called Papatzul. Excellent food and margueritas. I shared my vision of RACISM AS A RESOURCE and she coached me on getting a master plan together--a five-year plan so to speak. Do I want to take R-and-R to the schools or turn aspects of it into music to perform? What is my long-term strategy for bringing it to life?
Harriet shared about growing up in Arkansas as a white, Jewish woman and I shared about growing up as an only child in a home with a, as she put it, "a white collar" drug dealer. My mother's boyfriend sold drugs to the East Coast distributor of Nike and Columbia Records. We really connected and it so spoke to my promise about the remarkable oneness of humanity. We got to experience that in each other. Then she gave me some homework: watch/listen to the song "You Got to Be Carefully Taught" from South Pacific. She knew all the music and never got when she was younger that the musical was about racism.
A side note: she shared a link to a wonderful piece in the NYTimes I want to share with those concerned about the recession or about the transformation we are going through:
Op-Ed Columnist The Inflection Is Near?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: March 8, 2009
What if the crisis of 2008 represents
something more fundamental than a recession, and 2008 was when we hit
the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”
Lastly, this morning I got an email from Kirstin Kreuk. Who is Kirsten you ask? Well, she saw my bio in the TED Fellows booklet and contacted me. She wrote:
Firstly I would like to commend you on your amazing work. Your mission is beautiful.
My name is Kristin Kreuk... I am actress, most well-known for my role on the series Smallville. Which you may have never heard of having been overseas as consistently as you appear to have been. I was reading my TED Fellows booklet searching for inspiring young women, and you were one of the ladies that jumped out at me. I so love that you are utilizing art to help people build deeper connections to themselves and their communities.
What you have to know is...I LOVE SMALLVILLE...TV Tube baby that I am. (I also love Young & the Restless and YouTube). Kirstin plays Lana who is in love with Clark (Clark Kent). It's Superman during High School. Kirstin is inviting me to work on a project about young girls called GIRLS BY DESIGN and we are speaking tomorrow by phone. Talk about polymath experiences.My name is Kristin Kreuk... I am actress, most well-known for my role on the series Smallville. Which you may have never heard of having been overseas as consistently as you appear to have been. I was reading my TED Fellows booklet searching for inspiring young women, and you were one of the ladies that jumped out at me. I so love that you are utilizing art to help people build deeper connections to themselves and their communities.
So what does hacking culture, South Pacific, and Smallville have in common with a black woman raised in the DC area who teaches Anthropology and Hip-hop, sings on the side, and is committed to transforming the conversations of racism by an idea called AGREE TO BE OFFENDED? EVERYTHING!!
TED -- "many million strong, focused on exchanging and spreading ideas. Whoever you are, wherever you live, you can join the TED community". I so get why I fell in love with TED Talks and why I wanted to be a Fellow. It's everything and a place to create from scratch the most amazing collaborations.
PS. My Dean said about 2 weeks ago, "You know you won't get tenure for going to TED." So I am doing my scholarly duty but getting tenure WITH the TED experience is like a launching pad every tenured not to mention tenure-track professor desires. Thanks, Chris, Tom and Logan!!
Best from a Polymath on the Move,
TED Fellow Kyra Gaunt
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KYRA D. GAUNT, Ph.D.
What I am working on in 2009:
How might racism be a resource for our humanity and courage?
If you could really accept that you weren't ok
you could stop proving you were ok.
If you could stop proving that you were ok
you could get that it was ok not to be ok.
If you could get that it was ok not to be ok
you could get that you were ok the way you are.
You're ok, get it? - Werner Erhard
My website: http://kyraocity.com
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