One of my all-time favorite talks (video) about education. It is by Sir Ken Robinson. It is titled: Do Schools Kill Creativity? and was presented at the 2006 ted conference. Two quotes that always stand out: "we have got to radically rethink our view of intelligence", and, "creativity is as important as literacy". He makes many other good points as well. Especially about valuing our children.
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Here is another video from the ted conference, 2004, also about creativity. It is by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and titled: Creativity, fulfillment and flow.

I am not enamored with the talk entirely but at about the 15 minute mark he displays a diagram. "Flow" is highlighted. That flow lies between "arousal" and "control" is what drew my attention. In the diagram, this area is represented by a triangular wedge. It reminded me of Vygotsky's zone of proximal development.

I imagined flow as "learning". Then to one side lies arousal (curiosity) and to the other side lies control (ability). To me illustrating that the best place for learning is when curiosity is high but we also feel somewhat in control. That is, we are stretching but we also have the ability/means to interact with the present environment (whatever it may be). In other words, being on the edge but still having a toe or two on the ground.

The perfect place for a student.

I suppose the opposite is when you don't know how to spell a word, you ask and the teacher's response is just tell you to go look it up in a dictionary.

Also germane I thought was his point about the mind only being able to process so much stimulation. If one is too bored, or one is too overloaded ... not much good is going to come from it.

And that lead me thinking about Universal Design -- everywhere. "...equal access to learning, not simply equal access to information. Universal Design allows the student to control the method of accessing information". (Universal Instruction Design, and here, and here, and here, and here, and ....)