Natasha Scripture is a bestselling self-help author, journalist, poet, photographer and former UN Spokesperson based in New York. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, The Boston Globe, The Huffington Post, The Atlantic, The Evening Standard and Daily Worth, among other publications. Natasha has a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and a BA in Communications from New York University. She has studied creative writing at the University of Southern California Masters in Professional Writing program, Gotham Writers Workshop, Bethesda Writers Center, London College of Communication, and New York University.
Picture a classroom teacher without a lesson plan — a teacher who instead asks students an open-ended question to explore: Can animals think? Did dinosaurs exist? What is a soul? With the opening of Newcastle University’s SOLE Central on Monday, this vision is coming to life, in a research center where the concept can be tweaked […]
In 2012, the TED Prize was awarded to an idea: The City2.0, a place to celebrate actions taken by citizens around the world to make their cities more livable, beautiful and sustainable. This week, The City2.0 website evolves. On the relaunched TEDCity2.org, you’ll find great talks on topics like housing, education and food, and how […]
David Swancott is a retired biology teacher who lives an hour southeast of Bordeaux, France. He spends his free time bicycling, traveling and, for the past two years, being a “Skype Granny.” Swancott is a part of the “Granny Cloud,” a project created by 2013 TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra to make teachers available online to mentor children participating […]
In March, anti-corruption activist Charmian Gooch stood on the TED stage in Vancouver to make a bold TED Prize wish: to shed light on anonymous shell companies that shield corrupt activities. “My years as a field investigator and campaigner at Global Witness have shown me how the corrupt deals that destroy the environment and rip off […]
“Thousands have lived without love; none without water,” said Sylvia Earle as she stood on the TED stage five years ago, accepting the 2009 TED Prize. Wearing a blue blazer and an aura of resolve, Earle quoted this verse from poet W.H. Auden as she laid out a bold wish for the world: that we […]
Fisher Stevens produced The Cove, the 2009 Oscar-winning documentary about dubious Japanese dolphin-hunting practices, and his latest film takes him back into familiar waters. Stevens co-directed the newly-released doc Mission Blue, spending the last four years trekking around the world—from the Galapagos Islands to the Chesapeake Bay to the Great Barrier Reef—with unstoppable oceanographer Sylvia […]
Sylvia Earle is a fearless 78-year-old woman. In the new documentary Mission Blue, we watch her dive with sharks in the deep blue sea and fearlessly dodge fishing nets as she swims through the middle of a major fishing operation. The film offers a bold new view of the famed oceanographer whose relentless pursuit of […]
Earlier this month, the Queen announced legislation to clamp down on corporate secrecy in her speech at the opening of Parliament in the United Kingdom. This may be news to the rest of the world, but it was a hard-won victory for the campaigners at Global Witness, an international non-governmental organization known for hard-hitting field investigations […]
Sylvia Earle is always on a mission. She launched the ocean conservation campaign Mission Blue in 2010 after winning the TED Prize, establishing protected marine “hope spots” around the world. And last weekend, Earle dove 63 feet beneath the ocean’s surface to visit Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of legendary underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau, on his Mission 31. Earle, […]
On a drizzly spring day in Boston earlier this month, three dozen musicians mingled in the President’s Library of the New England Conservatory (NEC), one of the most prestigious music institutions in the country. The weather did not dampen the infectious enthusiasm in the room. After all, 10 of these musicians were about to mark […]
Jamie Oliver’s third annual Food Revolution Day is tomorrow on Friday, May 16. This year, among the many other food-filled activities lined up, the healthy eating activist and 2010 TED Prize winner is looking to break the Guinness World Record attempt for the ‘Most participants in a cookery lesson in 24 hours.’ The current Guinness World Record stands […]
Eleven-year-olds running a classroom? That could sound outlandish to some elementary school teachers, but not to Joe Jamison, or “Mr. J” as he is affectionately called by his fifth-grade students at Lawrence Intermediate School in central New Jersey. “I learn from my kids,” says Mr. J, as he dips his hand into a Philadelphia Eagles […]
British director Jerry Rothwell, the winner of the first annual Sundance Institute | TED Prize Filmmaker Award, has spent the past year trailing TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra as he sets up the first locations of the School in the Cloud. Traveling between a remote village in India and a forward-thinking elementary school in the U.K., Rothwell has watched Mitra, a Newcastle University professor, plant the […]
What do a British chef, an education technology professor and a pioneering ocean researcher have in common? They’re all winners of the TED Prize – a cash award of $1,000,000 that’s given annually to a forward-thinking individual with a fresh, bold vision for sparking global change. The Prize begins with a big wish – one that will motivate people […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFdqvCL2W2k&w=586&h=330] By Natasha Scripture Sugata Mitra thinks big. At last year’s TED, he unveiled his dream to transform primary education. Instead of a teacher, a chalkboard and a generic curriculum, the recipient of the 2013 TED Prize asked us to imagine an environment that empowered children to learn on their own, with the guidance of […]
“Early one morning last February, a man turned up on my doorstep who had travelled through the night to get there,” said Sugata Mitra, the education reformer who received the 2013 TED Prize. “This schoolteacher wanted to do something positive for his village, which had no electricity, health care or primary education … It was […]