Thomas Warfield teaches dance at a distance

This was easily one of the more interesting talks presented at TEDxRochester, but that was diminished by a simple fact: we could’ve been a little clearer as to what was going on….

A lot of TEDx talks, I’ve noticed, have revolved around the changes in society most notably the education of the latest generation of students (tentatively dubbed “Gen M” for “Media”). These are kids who grew up with technology and their lives revolve around it. They use it, they multi-task with it, they understand it. But beyond that, the old paradigms of teaching them are failing because they’re not up to the task of educating this generation. One speaker makes the point that one of his students is a Rhodes Scholar that never reads books.

One paradigm that’s seeing a lot of revamp in recent years is the “teacher at the bottom of the well” concept, where you have a single instructor on stage at the bottom of an amphitheater imparting their wisdom to the masses above. This model just doesn’t cut it for Gen M.

In Tomas’ talk, he demonstrates how technology can help overcome these transitional issues. In it, he teaches dance to a class of what appears to be be virtual students. In fact, and this is the point that wasn’t too clear, all of these students were in the lobby of the Geva or back on campus at RIT’s Virtual Theater Project.

If you attended TEDxRochester and weren’t too sure of what to make of this presentation, please re-watch it with this new knowledge. I think you’ll find it as entertaining and important as we did.