TED Weekends dissects our collective notion of beautyCameron Russell wants to have a discussion about the way that we, as a society, perceive beauty. Media representations of women, she says, are replete with racist and sexist representations, encouraging women to live up to a standard that is both oppressive and unattainable. Russell’s profession offers an insider’s perspective on the topic – after […]
TED Talks Education speakers make playlists for youOn Tuesday night, PBS and TED joined forces to air TED Talks Education, a one-hour televised special, featuring passionate teachers, students and researchers from the field who shared their ideas about transforming the US education system. We were so inspired by these spirited speakers that we asked them to curate playlists of their favorite TED […]
X marks the spot: This week’s TEDx Talks all about educationFrom dancing math to teaching in languages other than English – this week’s X marks the spot is a selection of TEDx Talks about rethinking education. Each week, TEDx chooses four of our favorite talks, highlighting just a few of the enlightening speakers from the TEDx community, and its diverse constellation of ideas worth spreading. Below, find […]
The guerilla astrogardener: Fellows Friday with Louisa PrestonAstrobiologist and geologist Louisa Preston looks for analogues to possible life on Mars in the most extreme environments on Earth. Now she’s also considering how humans might someday make a home on the red planet, and is raising funds on Kickstarter in support of AstroGardening – an educational exhibit designed to explore how we might someday […]
From communism to the threat of cats: This week’s TED ConversationsTED Conversations is a unique space where any member of this community can get feedback on an idea, pose an interesting question, or start a debate with their fellow TEDizens from around the globe. This week, dozens of new conversations were started. Many of them were about issues brought up in our first television special, TED […]
Meet the three new TEDGlobal speakers, and a few others making the newsWe are excited to introduce you to three new speakers who’ve been added to the program for TEDGlobal 2013, themed “Think Again.” First, jazz-pop singer Jamie Cullum will take the stage to perform during session 10, “Imagined Beauty.” Just last week, Cullum released this nerdily adorable video — shot in one continuous Steadicam take — […]
The secrets of TED’s (award-winning!) designIt is, indeed, a monumental day here at TED Towers. We’re winners! Or, as June Cohen, executive producer of TED Media, described this morning’s news of our winning the 2013 National Design Award for corporate and institutional achievement: “We’re thrilled!” “Design and design thinking has always been core to TED’s mission. After all, it’s the ‘D’ […]
A video that will give you hope in the next generationWalt Cochran, a teacher in Kansas City, shared this touching video with us for Education Week about his children — one disabled, one not — who make you think about the depth of the sibling relationship. Lindsay, 10, suffers from a form of Muscular Dystrophy called Spinal Muscular Atrophy and has been in a wheelchair […]
7 talks for inspiring transformed curriculumsWith more colleges shifting courses to the online classroom and high school teachers and students alike expressing a strong desire to move away from rigid, mandated lesson arcs, it’s clear — classes don’t have to be exactly as they are. Educators across the globe have begun to look at ways of transforming curriculum to suit different […]
TED wins a National Design AwardWe’re thrilled to announce: TED is one of the 2013 winners of the National Design Awards, given by the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt. The National Design Awards celebrate design “as a vital humanistic tool in shaping the world” — which is how we feel about it too. Great design, like great writing and great speaking, is a […]
Meet five New York high school students with fascinating storiesNo television special exploring ideas on improving education in the United States would be complete without hearing from students themselves. And so it was essential that students be able to tell their own stories during our first television special, TED Talks Education, which premiered on PBS last night. To that end, we invited Market Road […]
Playlist: 7 education ideas from unlikely placesGeoffrey Canada gives a very interesting analogy in today’s TED Talk: He compares the current education system in the United States to the era when banks were only open between the hours of 10am and 3pm. “Now, who can bank between 10 and 3?” asks Canada to a big laugh. “It went on for decades. […]
Join the conversation about #TEDTalksEdWant to talk about education? Inspired by TED Talks Education, our one-hour TV special that aired on PBS night, and this morning’s batch of TED Talks, here’s a roundup of some great TED Conversations you can join: High school freshman Colin Petre asks: Is college really as important as our society today has made it […]
Bosons, bicycles and big data: 7 things I learned from TEDxCERNThere’s a place in Switzerland where scientists travel on bicycles through tunnels filled with atom-smashing tubes, where the first webpage was born, and where a giant wooden globe watches over researchers replicating the very beginnings of our universe. That place is CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, and last Friday, it held its first […]
The asocial side of social media: TED Book author Damon Brown on our “virtual shadows”Are your endless tweets, status updates and Instagrams robbing you of enjoying what’s special about the moments you’re trying to share? Damon Brown fears they may. In the TED Book Our Virtual Shadow: Why We Are Obsessed With Documenting Our Lives Online, he lays out a compelling case for mindfully balancing your online presence with being present in […]
5 mnemonic devices for reading Chinese charactersTo an outsider, the Chinese language “seems to be as impenetrable as the Great Wall of China,” says ShaoLan Hsueh in today’s talk, given at TED2013. Hsueh’s mission over the past few years has been to break down that barrier, making reading and writing in Chinese accessible to people who didn’t grow up doing it. […]
Op-Ed: Moving beyond dropout statistics and toward solutionsBy Patricia Harrison When I attended the taping of TED Talks Education last month at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, I knew I was witnessing an innovative collaboration with the potential to make a difference in the lives of many young people. This milestone collaboration between TED, WNET, PBS, and the CPB American Graduate “Let’s […]
