Speaker: Monica Menesini
TED-Ed Lessons Worth Sharing
Date: June 2016
Description from TED website:
Human bodies aren’t built for extreme aging: our capacity is set at about 90 years. But what does aging really mean, and how does it counteract the body's efforts to stay alive? Monica Menesini details the nine physiological traits that play a central role in aging. [Directed by Cinematic, narrated by Pen-Pen Chen].
My Review / Notes / Thoughts
We all age… and many of us over a particular age, do not care to be reminded of this fact. However, it is a fact of life that we must deal with.
This TEDEd lesson does a good job of talking about the process (as we currently know it). It also poses some interesting questions about the future, and as such, I believe that this lesson would be an excellent resource to be incorporated into an educational lesson plan. I can see this specific talk being incorporated into either a lesson for high school students who are interested in a medical career or into lessons for first and second-year college students who are pursuing medicine as their field of study.
The following questions are posed in the lesson, and I believe they would make for good discussion prompts or even good prompts for students to write some papers on the topic:
- Ultimately, does longer life as we know it come down to diet, exercise, medicine, or something else?
- Will future technologies, like cell-repairing nanobots, or gene therapy, artificially extend our years?
- And do we want to live longer than we already do?
What do you think? Can you see incorporating this talk into your curriculum?
Until next time … live long, life-learner!