[Music]
I’m delighted to be here let me begin by
asking you to consider what it is that
drives humans of all ages to want to
learn what is it that motivates them to
explore their world to discover and to
innovate it all begins with curiosity
now curiosity has been known to
sometimes kill the overly curious cat
but it is an element in the learning
process that is critical to motivation
focus and retention I’d like to
introduce you to someone who exudes
curiosity we all have it but some people
seem to have more of it
this is max Deutsch he’s a 25 year old
technological entrepreneur from San
Francisco and I recently interviewed him
in my research into the world that
curiosity plays in in the learning
process now I was interested in his tech
innovation he has a number of
award-winning tech programs computer
programs and apps but I was particularly
interested in his unabashed zest for
learning and not just learning about
technology but learning about a lot of
different things in 2016 Deutsch began a
challenge an endeavor that he called
month to master he picked 12 extremely
challenging tasks and dedicated a year
to try to develop expert level skills in
each of them so he devoted one month to
each task and at the beginning of the
month he would chronicle his progress
and the process he was using and at the
end of the month he chronicled the
outcome and he usually did that in the
form of a video or a picture so he had
great empirical evidence as he was going
through the process he he vowed that he
was going to number one continue to work
out regularly of course he kept his
full-time job he wanted to continue to
see family and friends he even wanted to
continue to medic
hate each morning that was important for
him and he also wanted to get eight
hours of sleep a night I know it seems
impossible let’s take a look at his list
you can see that they’re vastly
different but the thing they have in
common is that they are just
ridiculously ambitious now for the sake
of time I’m not going to go through each
one but I want to highlight a few of
them the very second month are the
pardon me the first month of November he
wanted to be able to memorize a deck of
cards in less than two minutes now that
seems impossible they are randomly
shuffled within two minutes he’d know
the order and he was actually successful
at this one by harnessing the amazing
visual power of the mind so he dedicated
52 spots in his childhood home and so he
thought about 52 different places that
he could vividly see in order as he went
through his tour now if you think back
to your childhood home you could
probably do that right vividly envision
52 spots and then he put a visual on
each card and for him the most effective
one was to put a face on each card so it
was either someone he knew or someone
who was famous so for example the four
of hearts could be his mom the 12 of
clubs Mick Jagger if his bed is the
first spot in his house and the
bookshelf in his room is the second if
the second card in the deck was his mom
he’d imagine her standing by the
bookstore or if the second card in the
deck pardon me was the four of clubs
he’d imagine his mom by that bookshelf
if the second card was the 12 of club
he’d imagine Mick Jagger it’s a system
that usually uses the visual powers and
again you might be thinking I’m heading
to Vegas with that system but remember
it’s one that you could use to remember
a lot of different things in February he
wanted to stand our land a standing
backflip he did it the month before that
he wanted to solve a Rubik’s Cube in
less than 20 seconds he not only did it
but he was able to memorize the pattern
so we actually did it behind his back in
20 seconds
in April halfway through he said he
wanted to be able to speak a language he
didn’t speak for at least be conversant
at least for 30 minutes
so he picked Hebrew and by the end of
the month he has a video of him talking
to his friend Josh who speaks Hebrew for
30 minutes on the future of technology
halfway through his challenges he was
six for six hundred percent but the
seventh month this is the one I thought
was way out there he wanted to be able
to build a self-driving car now this is
his area of expertise of course but it
just seemed so difficult
he actually crashed the car a few times
but by the end of the month
he was successful in writing the program
in July his goal was to finish the
Saturday night crossword puzzle our
pregnant a Saturday New York Times
crossword puzzle in one sitting and this
was the one he actually was getting to
near the end of the month he didn’t
think he was going to get through it he
couldn’t use any resources and he’d get
stuck and had absolutely nowhere to go
so he had to begin studying the patterns
of crossword puzzles and he had to
improve his vocabulary he was eventually
successful right at the end of the month
and interestingly after that challenge
he wrote two apps that people can use to
sharpen their skills for crossword
puzzles he did do the 40 set of 40
pull-ups consecutively he had to change
his diet and he had to change his
exercise a little bit when he got to the
12th month he was a hundred percent
successful he’d been 11 for 11 but he
knew that that 12th one was going to be
the most challenging I’m gonna come back
to that one let’s take a look at the
second month of December at his
self-portrait you can see from his early
picture I mean he’s not a bad drawer but
I wouldn’t say that’s a realistic
self-portrait but you can see his
progression through the month he gets
better and better as he goes and by the
end of the month he literally draws a
realistic self-portrait we can
definitely tell that it’s him in that
second challenge and in all of his
challenges Deutsch really leveraged
technology he scraped the internet for
all the information he could find he
read what he could he watched videos he
even consulted experts but his go-to
method as he learned the skill
with trial and error there were two
things that drove that trial and error
one was a mindset that looked at
mistakes of powerful learning tools and
the second was reflection and curiosity
about the learning process itself he
thought about what he could change or do
differently and then he applied what he
learned about the process to the next
challenges by the time he got to the
last challenge which was which was the
chess match against Magnus Carlsen he’s
the Grandmaster champion the world
champion in chess he knew that that
might be different because he was facing
someone who devoted years of his life to
playing chess and practicing chess
he knew that he needed to try to develop
a system that would speed up the process
of learning something at an expert level
so from the very beginning Deutsch
decided to approach that challenge by
trying to build an algorithm similar to
what you might see in a chess game on a
computer but it wouldn’t be an algorithm
that humans could learn in use
interestingly Magnus Carlsen said that
he accepted joy deutsches challenge
because he too was interested in the
algorithm if we want to understand what
drives people like Magnus Carlsen or max
Deutsch
we need to understand the process of
learning and understand that the role
the role that curiosity plays curiosity
begins very early in life young kids
have loads of curiosity we see infants
reaching for things looking for familiar
faces listening for familiar voices by
age 1 12 months of age they begin the
systematic pointing at things around
them as they invite others to engage and
share in their curiosity when children
begin to talk we see that curiosity and
their incessant question asking children
between ages 4 and 8 ask an average of
about 76 questions an hour that’s over a
question a minute and that doesn’t even
include questions that involve things
they want or things that they need that
know that the extent to which children
are able to learn about the world around
them and learn knowledge in their
everyday lives is in part dependent upon
the extent to which adults notice and
detect their expressions of curiosity
and respond to them the more answers
that children get to their questions the
more questions they ask and the more
knowledge they build the more knowledge
they build the more their curiosity is
heightened to learn more so what happens
when their queries go unanswered when
parents are too busy and don’t respond
in time children will begin to
reciprocate that unresponsiveness
infants are sometimes known to simply
stop pointing but on the other hand if
parents are willing to not only respond
but to actually elaborate with
additional information amazing things
happen we know that there’s a positive
correlation between language and
cognitive development and the number of
times that children get answers to their
questions usually the questions begin
lower order you know what is that or who
is that but has the exchange occurs and
those rich language interactions happen
the questions build in complexity and
that’s what leads to higher order
thinking as we give them answers they
begin to ask deeper questions and form
deeper curiosities the more they they
realize what they don’t know the more
they seek it when my education students
my graduate students are doing research
in the classroom they’ll often test a
pedagogy either a curriculum or a
teaching strategy and they’ll often use
a model that is a pre post test and they
have to be very careful to guard against
the minds tendency to want to seek what
it realizes it doesn’t know after that
pretest students can sometimes begin to
focus more deliberately on what is being
taught and have a curiosity to learn
what they now know that they do
No and so we might see a positive
increase in academic performance but in
fact it may not be the pedagogy at all
it might be the fact that their
curiosity has been Pete so they mitigate
against it they have to have control
groups and they have to have
participants in their studies who get
post tested only when it comes to
learning difficult cognitive concepts
it’s extremely important that teachers
are careful not to under teach we’re not
likely to be really curious about things
we know absolutely nothing about without
a foundation of knowledge we don’t even
know what to ask and at the same time we
have to be careful not to over teach if
you consider the just delightful
curiosity of Max Deutsch and the power
of his learner led inquiry it’s a good
reminder that learners need voice and
choice in their learning they need time
to explore they need time for trial and
error to make mistakes they need time to
fail sometimes and not give up from that
it’s particularly important in the sense
making process and in that that stage of
learning when I interviewed max Deutsch
it was clear that his parents had a role
in developing his curiosity and and in
nurturing it but in his own words he
said that his parents were not pushy or
outcome-focused he remembers a guitar
showing up in the corner of his room
when he was a young man and he said he
didn’t even really pick it up or play it
for about a year there were there were
no directives that he had to have him
practice for 30 minutes a day when he
finally picked it up it was kind of out
of his own curiosity and one of his
challenges was a guitar solo max Deutsch
and every young child values and
deserves that time for free play and
exploration and sometimes that shared
exploration is extremely important as
well that shared exploration with family
allows children the time to develop
social curiosity where
they learn to care enough to be curious
about the people around them what are
they thinking what did what is she
feeling how am i what i’m doing impact
them into adulthood
Joyce’s learning process really
developed a mindset where he looks at
new learning as simply a data point that
he connects to what he already knows in
making those connections he’s exposed to
a lot of different domains and he said
that it is that connecting type of
thinking that has really allowed him to
make accurate predictions about the
world it’s that kind of critical
thinking that’s so important today in a
time when performing just automated or
closed skills makes it very difficult to
make a living the jobs not being
replaced by computers or those that
involve problem-solving critical
thinking creativity the ability to think
outside the box and innovation when we
think of innovation we sometimes think
of it as something that’s sort of
exclusively done within a certain
expertise but when you think about
innovation innovation is putting
together things that no one has thought
to put together before it’s really
different than discovery and it requires
a real t t-shaped approach if you look
at the vertical part of the T that’s
that deep expertise it’s our training
it’s our education it’s where our deep
passions and curiosities and our
experiences lie but at the horizontal
crux of that T our curiosity must lead
us to learn about a lot of different
things to develop a broad base of
knowledge and skills especially
transferable skills like collaboration
and the ability to communicate within
that very broad range we must also be
willing to work with a lot of different
individuals in different professions and
fields it doesn’t matter how deep your
expertise expertise is in technology
you’re not likely going to be able to
develop an app
that will help someone become better at
crossword puzzles if you’ve never done
crossword puzzles if you know nothing
about them and vice versa and in the
same respect if you want someone who’s
paralyzed to be able to use that app
even though he doesn’t have the use of
his hands you need to be willing to work
with people from different fields maybe
an occupational therapist innovation
begins with curiosity and it’s fed with
skills and knowledge both deep and wide
now before I close by finally revealing
the outcome of the last challenge which
was the chess match I’d like to quickly
recap five things that I think are most
important that we can all do to nurture
curiosity in our children and in our
grandchildren and in ourselves number
one learn about a wide array of things
and perspectives make connections that
will allow you to be innovative in your
thinking number two make time for quiet
reflection we want to use technology
it’s so critical to our learning but we
also have to be willing to unplug
sometimes number three remember that
knowledge feeds curiosity and curiosity
feeds knowledge it’s a reciprocal
relationship and our youngest learners
are counting on all of us to fuel it
number four
reflect on the learning process
especially within your own personal
sense making think about how you best
learn when we get out of that comfort
zone and we’re in that groan zone where
we’re feeling anxiety like we’re not
very good at things that’s when we have
to be willing to make mistakes maybe
even fail to get to the growth zone and
lastly don’t let your perceived
limitations can find your curiosity and
learning that I learned from Max Deutsch
and I’m very grateful for that so how
did he do against mat or against Magnus
Carlsen in the chess match well first of
all he realized that in 30 days it was
not nearly long enough to learn an
algorithm so although he spent most of
the month on the algorithm he abandoned
it at the end and decided he just needed
to step up to the chess board and do his
very best alt
his first 12 moves were perfect but he
lost to magnus carlsen and carlson
retained his grand master title but even
though max lost he said it was the last
challenge that was his most interesting
the 12th one was the one that heightened
his interest for developing the
algorithm further at the end of the
match magnus carlsen shook his hand and
said i’m really curious as to how the
algorithm is going to work out
max smiled at him and said well if it
works are you up for another match
Magnus replied yes and then he signed
his chess board with a note underneath
that said till next time may your next
time always be filled with curiosity
thank you
[Applause]
you [Music]
I’m delighted to be here let me begin by
asking you to consider what it is that
drives humans of all ages to want to
learn what is it that motivates them to
explore their world to discover and to
innovate it all begins with curiosity
now curiosity has been known to
sometimes kill the overly curious cat
but it is an element in the learning
process that is critical to motivation
focus and retention I’d like to
introduce you to someone who exudes
curiosity we all have it but some people
seem to have more of it
this is max Deutsch he’s a 25 year old
technological entrepreneur from San
Francisco and I recently interviewed him
in my research into the world that
curiosity plays in in the learning
process now I was interested in his tech
innovation he has a number of
award-winning tech programs computer
programs and apps but I was particularly
interested in his unabashed zest for
learning and not just learning about
technology but learning about a lot of
different things in 2016 Deutsch began a
challenge an endeavor that he called
month to master he picked 12 extremely
challenging tasks and dedicated a year
to try to develop expert level skills in
each of them so he devoted one month to
each task and at the beginning of the
month he would chronicle his progress
and the process he was using and at the
end of the month he chronicled the
outcome and he usually did that in the
form of a video or a picture so he had
great empirical evidence as he was going
through the process he he vowed that he
was going to number one continue to work
out regularly of course he kept his
full-time job he wanted to continue to
see family and friends he even wanted to
continue to medic
hate each morning that was important for
him and he also wanted to get eight
hours of sleep a night I know it seems
impossible let’s take a look at his list
you can see that they’re vastly
different but the thing they have in
common is that they are just
ridiculously ambitious now for the sake
of time I’m not going to go through each
one but I want to highlight a few of
them the very second month are the
pardon me the first month of November he
wanted to be able to memorize a deck of
cards in less than two minutes now that
seems impossible they are randomly
shuffled within two minutes he’d know
the order and he was actually successful
at this one by harnessing the amazing
visual power of the mind so he dedicated
52 spots in his childhood home and so he
thought about 52 different places that
he could vividly see in order as he went
through his tour now if you think back
to your childhood home you could
probably do that right vividly envision
52 spots and then he put a visual on
each card and for him the most effective
one was to put a face on each card so it
was either someone he knew or someone
who was famous so for example the four
of hearts could be his mom the 12 of
clubs Mick Jagger if his bed is the
first spot in his house and the
bookshelf in his room is the second if
the second card in the deck was his mom
he’d imagine her standing by the
bookstore or if the second card in the
deck pardon me was the four of clubs
he’d imagine his mom by that bookshelf
if the second card was the 12 of club
he’d imagine Mick Jagger it’s a system
that usually uses the visual powers and
again you might be thinking I’m heading
to Vegas with that system but remember
it’s one that you could use to remember
a lot of different things in February he
wanted to stand our land a standing
backflip he did it the month before that
he wanted to solve a Rubik’s Cube in
less than 20 seconds he not only did it
but he was able to memorize the pattern
so we actually did it behind his back in
20 seconds
in April halfway through he said he
wanted to be able to speak a language he
didn’t speak for at least be conversant
at least for 30 minutes
so he picked Hebrew and by the end of
the month he has a video of him talking
to his friend Josh who speaks Hebrew for
30 minutes on the future of technology
halfway through his challenges he was
six for six hundred percent but the
seventh month this is the one I thought
was way out there he wanted to be able
to build a self-driving car now this is
his area of expertise of course but it
just seemed so difficult
he actually crashed the car a few times
but by the end of the month
he was successful in writing the program
in July his goal was to finish the
Saturday night crossword puzzle our
pregnant a Saturday New York Times
crossword puzzle in one sitting and this
was the one he actually was getting to
near the end of the month he didn’t
think he was going to get through it he
couldn’t use any resources and he’d get
stuck and had absolutely nowhere to go
so he had to begin studying the patterns
of crossword puzzles and he had to
improve his vocabulary he was eventually
successful right at the end of the month
and interestingly after that challenge
he wrote two apps that people can use to
sharpen their skills for crossword
puzzles he did do the 40 set of 40
pull-ups consecutively he had to change
his diet and he had to change his
exercise a little bit when he got to the
12th month he was a hundred percent
successful he’d been 11 for 11 but he
knew that that 12th one was going to be
the most challenging I’m gonna come back
to that one let’s take a look at the
second month of December at his
self-portrait you can see from his early
picture I mean he’s not a bad drawer but
I wouldn’t say that’s a realistic
self-portrait but you can see his
progression through the month he gets
better and better as he goes and by the
end of the month he literally draws a
realistic self-portrait we can
definitely tell that it’s him in that
second challenge and in all of his
challenges Deutsch really leveraged
technology he scraped the internet for
all the information he could find he
read what he could he watched videos he
even consulted experts but his go-to
method as he learned the skill
with trial and error there were two
things that drove that trial and error
one was a mindset that looked at
mistakes of powerful learning tools and
the second was reflection and curiosity
about the learning process itself he
thought about what he could change or do
differently and then he applied what he
learned about the process to the next
challenges by the time he got to the
last challenge which was which was the
chess match against Magnus Carlsen he’s
the Grandmaster champion the world
champion in chess he knew that that
might be different because he was facing
someone who devoted years of his life to
playing chess and practicing chess
he knew that he needed to try to develop
a system that would speed up the process
of learning something at an expert level
so from the very beginning Deutsch
decided to approach that challenge by
trying to build an algorithm similar to
what you might see in a chess game on a
computer but it wouldn’t be an algorithm
that humans could learn in use
interestingly Magnus Carlsen said that
he accepted joy deutsches challenge
because he too was interested in the
algorithm if we want to understand what
drives people like Magnus Carlsen or max
Deutsch
we need to understand the process of
learning and understand that the role
the role that curiosity plays curiosity
begins very early in life young kids
have loads of curiosity we see infants
reaching for things looking for familiar
faces listening for familiar voices by
age 1 12 months of age they begin the
systematic pointing at things around
them as they invite others to engage and
share in their curiosity when children
begin to talk we see that curiosity and
their incessant question asking children
between ages 4 and 8 ask an average of
about 76 questions an hour that’s over a
question a minute and that doesn’t even
include questions that involve things
they want or things that they need that
know that the extent to which children
are able to learn about the world around
them and learn knowledge in their
everyday lives is in part dependent upon
the extent to which adults notice and
detect their expressions of curiosity
and respond to them the more answers
that children get to their questions the
more questions they ask and the more
knowledge they build the more knowledge
they build the more their curiosity is
heightened to learn more so what happens
when their queries go unanswered when
parents are too busy and don’t respond
in time children will begin to
reciprocate that unresponsiveness
infants are sometimes known to simply
stop pointing but on the other hand if
parents are willing to not only respond
but to actually elaborate with
additional information amazing things
happen we know that there’s a positive
correlation between language and
cognitive development and the number of
times that children get answers to their
questions usually the questions begin
lower order you know what is that or who
is that but has the exchange occurs and
those rich language interactions happen
the questions build in complexity and
that’s what leads to higher order
thinking as we give them answers they
begin to ask deeper questions and form
deeper curiosities the more they they
realize what they don’t know the more
they seek it when my education students
my graduate students are doing research
in the classroom they’ll often test a
pedagogy either a curriculum or a
teaching strategy and they’ll often use
a model that is a pre post test and they
have to be very careful to guard against
the minds tendency to want to seek what
it realizes it doesn’t know after that
pretest students can sometimes begin to
focus more deliberately on what is being
taught and have a curiosity to learn
what they now know that they do
No and so we might see a positive
increase in academic performance but in
fact it may not be the pedagogy at all
it might be the fact that their
curiosity has been Pete so they mitigate
against it they have to have control
groups and they have to have
participants in their studies who get
post tested only when it comes to
learning difficult cognitive concepts
it’s extremely important that teachers
are careful not to under teach we’re not
likely to be really curious about things
we know absolutely nothing about without
a foundation of knowledge we don’t even
know what to ask and at the same time we
have to be careful not to over teach if
you consider the just delightful
curiosity of Max Deutsch and the power
of his learner led inquiry it’s a good
reminder that learners need voice and
choice in their learning they need time
to explore they need time for trial and
error to make mistakes they need time to
fail sometimes and not give up from that
it’s particularly important in the sense
making process and in that that stage of
learning when I interviewed max Deutsch
it was clear that his parents had a role
in developing his curiosity and and in
nurturing it but in his own words he
said that his parents were not pushy or
outcome-focused he remembers a guitar
showing up in the corner of his room
when he was a young man and he said he
didn’t even really pick it up or play it
for about a year there were there were
no directives that he had to have him
practice for 30 minutes a day when he
finally picked it up it was kind of out
of his own curiosity and one of his
challenges was a guitar solo max Deutsch
and every young child values and
deserves that time for free play and
exploration and sometimes that shared
exploration is extremely important as
well that shared exploration with family
allows children the time to develop
social curiosity where
they learn to care enough to be curious
about the people around them what are
they thinking what did what is she
feeling how am i what i’m doing impact
them into adulthood
Joyce’s learning process really
developed a mindset where he looks at
new learning as simply a data point that
he connects to what he already knows in
making those connections he’s exposed to
a lot of different domains and he said
that it is that connecting type of
thinking that has really allowed him to
make accurate predictions about the
world it’s that kind of critical
thinking that’s so important today in a
time when performing just automated or
closed skills makes it very difficult to
make a living the jobs not being
replaced by computers or those that
involve problem-solving critical
thinking creativity the ability to think
outside the box and innovation when we
think of innovation we sometimes think
of it as something that’s sort of
exclusively done within a certain
expertise but when you think about
innovation innovation is putting
together things that no one has thought
to put together before it’s really
different than discovery and it requires
a real t t-shaped approach if you look
at the vertical part of the T that’s
that deep expertise it’s our training
it’s our education it’s where our deep
passions and curiosities and our
experiences lie but at the horizontal
crux of that T our curiosity must lead
us to learn about a lot of different
things to develop a broad base of
knowledge and skills especially
transferable skills like collaboration
and the ability to communicate within
that very broad range we must also be
willing to work with a lot of different
individuals in different professions and
fields it doesn’t matter how deep your
expertise expertise is in technology
you’re not likely going to be able to
develop an app
that will help someone become better at
crossword puzzles if you’ve never done
crossword puzzles if you know nothing
about them and vice versa and in the
same respect if you want someone who’s
paralyzed to be able to use that app
even though he doesn’t have the use of
his hands you need to be willing to work
with people from different fields maybe
an occupational therapist innovation
begins with curiosity and it’s fed with
skills and knowledge both deep and wide
now before I close by finally revealing
the outcome of the last challenge which
was the chess match I’d like to quickly
recap five things that I think are most
important that we can all do to nurture
curiosity in our children and in our
grandchildren and in ourselves number
one learn about a wide array of things
and perspectives make connections that
will allow you to be innovative in your
thinking number two make time for quiet
reflection we want to use technology
it’s so critical to our learning but we
also have to be willing to unplug
sometimes number three remember that
knowledge feeds curiosity and curiosity
feeds knowledge it’s a reciprocal
relationship and our youngest learners
are counting on all of us to fuel it
number four
reflect on the learning process
especially within your own personal
sense making think about how you best
learn when we get out of that comfort
zone and we’re in that groan zone where
we’re feeling anxiety like we’re not
very good at things that’s when we have
to be willing to make mistakes maybe
even fail to get to the growth zone and
lastly don’t let your perceived
limitations can find your curiosity and
learning that I learned from Max Deutsch
and I’m very grateful for that so how
did he do against mat or against Magnus
Carlsen in the chess match well first of
all he realized that in 30 days it was
not nearly long enough to learn an
algorithm so although he spent most of
the month on the algorithm he abandoned
it at the end and decided he just needed
to step up to the chess board and do his
very best alt
his first 12 moves were perfect but he
lost to magnus carlsen and carlson
retained his grand master title but even
though max lost he said it was the last
challenge that was his most interesting
the 12th one was the one that heightened
his interest for developing the
algorithm further at the end of the
match magnus carlsen shook his hand and
said i’m really curious as to how the
algorithm is going to work out
max smiled at him and said well if it
works are you up for another match
Magnus replied yes and then he signed
his chess board with a note underneath
that said till next time may your next
time always be filled with curiosity
thank you
[Applause]
you [Music]
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