Saturday, April 21, 2012

Hey TED...Let's Talk


I have recently become acquainted with watching and learning new ideas and concepts from watching various TED Talks on an assortment of topics.  TED, by the way stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design.  Watching the videos can provide you with free ideas, free thoughts, and free lessons on tons of topics ranging from entertainment to education to science to technology.  The number of videos that you can watch is actually quite astonishing.  You can search for TED talks using various tags and categories.  You can also view them in many different ways if you have an iPhone or iPad or even an Android phone or tablet, you can get an app to watch the videos. 

If you are interested in getting the newest information from TED, you can follow TED Talks and TED News on Twitter to stay on top of the latest videos that are available.  You could also follow TED on Facebook as well.

What I really like about TED is the ability to search through the Tags and find videos that might relate to a topic that I am teaching.  I am getting ready to teach a lesson in Economics about Affects on the U.S. Economy.  So I decided to search through TED and see what I could find about Economics and Trade.  Within that search I found a video about how consumerism is changing in a post-crisis world.  Perfect for my students as we were discussing what affects consumer confidence and consumer spending. 

When looking through the videos, I decided to check on "Most Viewed" as well.  The most viewed video on all of TED is the talk with Sir Ken Robinson about how "Schools Kill Creativity."  It has been shared numerous times, but I thought I would share it below as well. You can find more videos tagged for education HERE.
 


TED is not just for adults....TED can be for your classroom as well.  Here are videos for your subject matter that you can search through and watch:

Science (I recommend looking for certain topics within your content as well)
Physics
English (Writing)
Mathematics
Business
Marketing
Agriculture
History
Government
Economics
Global Issues
Technology Education
Art
Health and Physical Education (Sports)
Sociology
Psychology
Religion

Have you used TED Talks before?  What do you like about them?