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 […]
To 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. […]
By 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 […]
By Bill Gates I spend a lot of my time working to help improve America’s schools. I’m also a big fan of TED Talks. So when TED’s Chris Anderson asked me to give a talk as part of a special TED session on education, I jumped at the chance. The show premieres on PBS this […]
The analog-to-digital shift that has seen e-readers booting out books, smartphones trumping landlines and tablets making desktops look fuddy-duddy is also bringing new tech tools to the classroom. Last month, I read this New York Times article about CourseSmart, an app that allows teachers to track whether students have done their reading in digital textbooks, […]
This weekend, we opened up the Style section of The New York Times to see a very familiar face — renegade gardener Ron Finley, whose talk “A guerilla gardener in South Central LA” now has more than 900,000 views. In the article, Finley describes what he calls “the TED effect” — the slew of interest […]
Timothy Bartik says that investing in early childhood education is not just good for the children involved — but for communities as a whole. In today’s talk, he offers a detailed look at how preschool education boosts local economies in colossal ways. “Early childhood education can bring more and better jobs to a state and can […]
Take a bike ride down the 27-kilometer Large Hadron Collider — thanks to a lucky Google Glass winner, whose ride-along video premiered Friday during TEDxCERN. Andrew Vanden Heuvel always dreamed of being an astronaut; he ended up becoming a pioneering online physics teacher. So when he was selected to be one of the first to […]
Sir Ken Robinson is not just an amazing orator — he is the most-viewed speaker on TED.com. His three talks have been viewed an astounding 21.5 million times, making him the sneezing baby panda of the TED ecosystem. Naturally, this made us curious: what talks does Robinson absolutely love? In this new playlist, Robinson selects […]
As the daughter and granddaughter of educators, teaching is in Rita Pierson’s blood. In this talk — a teaser of next Tuesday’s TED Talks Education on PBS — Pierson is going to make you wish you had been lucky enough to be her student. Pierson believes deeply in forming strong bonds with her students: through […]
The extent of human creativity/weirdness always baffles me, but I have to say the Internet really won my heart this week. Here are some staff picks of weird, beautiful, smart stories and videos from the interwebs this week. Today was the final day to tweet #TornadoWeek to turn up the winds on interns at the […]
It’s TEDx … from space. This unique vantage point of TEDxSanaa’s amazing mountainside signage is brought to you with some help from Google Earth. Take a look for yourself on Google Maps. We take this image as proof that TEDx has become a global enterprise. This week, from events held across the world, we’ve handpicked […]
Particle physics. To some, the words may produce anxiety. And while, yes, it is complicated — it is far from incomprehensible. Today, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, better known as CERN, held its first TEDx event, an illuminating look at how particle physics intersects with other disciplines. As part of TEDxCERN, physicists from the […]
Our minds and bodies constantly master lessons from our surroundings. In other words, we seem to have a natural inclination to learn. That is the idea behind this week’s TED Radio Hour: “Unstoppable Learning,” brought to you by NPR. This episode explores that dynamic experience of learning that begins in the womb and how recognizing […]
In recent months, That Game Company’s downloadable PS3 game Journey has swept up an armload of awards — the Game Developers Choice Award for Game of the Year and BAFTA Video Game Award for Best Game Design, to name just two — not to mention a Grammy nomination for Best Original Soundtrack. Company co-founder and TED Fellow […]
Rita Pierson is the kind of teacher you wish you had. An educator for 40 years, she is funny, sharp and simply has a way with words — so much so that today’s talk feels a bit like a sermon. In this talk, Pierson shares the secret to teaching students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds […]
TED Senior Fellow and architect Mohammad Tauheed runs ArchSociety.com, a nonprofit community resource for architects and designers in developing nations. When the Rana Plaza building in Savar, Bangladesh, collapsed last week, killing hundreds of garment factory workers, Tauheed supported the rescue efforts. Here, he tells us his experience of the disaster, how corruption and greed […]
The asocial side of social media: TED Book author Damon Brown on our “virtual shadows”
