Clay Shirky | TED talks | Cognitive Surplus

Clay Shirky’s TED talk about Cognitive Surplus chimes with my belief that we are entering a new time as teachers. The internet takes away the teacher’s role as a gatekeeper of knowledge, any literate student can now test the facts we used to be the guardian’s of with ease. The new paradigm is a world of creativity and collaboration where our time, in school as well as at our leisure, can be used to improve the quality of information out there in the wider world. To me this means students recreating the textbooks, adapting, collaborating and improving on work previously done. And that means the end of textbook companies. David McCandless’s infographic interpretation of Shirky’s idea is a stark reminder of what can be achieved in a fraction of the time we waste.