Clay Shirky (TED Talk 4)

As opposed to every other TED Talk I have listened to, Clay Shirky uses very minimal humor or comedy in his talk. On the flip side, his serious tone is very fitting for his personality and the topic that he is speaking about. I did like that he used his arms, physical expressions, and voice fluctuations to make certain parts of his speech stand out. He also uses visual backups throughout his talk. Not many of the other talks I have watched have done so, and I will try to make my visual aid similar in quality to his. The one thing that I did not like at all about his talk was that, I felt this way anyway, is that he left me in the dark about what he is getting at until the final statement at the end of his talk. I will be saying something at the beginning of my talk to give everyone in the audience a good idea of what I will be talking about. What I took away from his talk is that if you use your extra time to do something good for the community abroad instead of for yourself of a small group of people, you should be rewarded for your actions. Again, I like the point he was trying to make, but I don't like that he didn't officially make it until his last few sentences. The impact that this has on education is that it demonstrates for students how some of their extra time should be spent on the community, not all of it needs to be theirs. I think that if students are told this, they will sacrifice some of their time for community service, which will better them and their community in one shot.