Following a rousing introduction from Sir Ken Robinson, education innovator Sugata Mitra accepted the first-ever $1 million TED Prize at TED2013. As soon as the TED Prize winner’s identity was revealed, the Twittersphere buzzed about Sugata’s vision for the future of learning. People around the world answered Sugata’s invitation to help reinvent the way kids […]
We’ve seen a number of “the young” of the conference’s theme in this session of TED2013. Now, to play us off out into the night are Sleepy Man Banjo Boys, a trio of brothers from New Jersey, the youngest of whom became a YouTube sensation in 2011 when he was only eight years old. “They’re […]
It’s a question on so many minds: what will the future of education look like? It’s something Sir Ken Robinson has asked for decades. And tonight in Session 3 of TED2013, Robinson got the opportunity to announce the winner of the 2013 TED Prize, someone who has a bold answer. “So many kids are disengaged […]
Richard Turere is 12 years old, and he lives in Kenya, in Nairobi National Park. It’s a park with lots of animals that roam freely, including lions. The lions kill livestock. So he say, “I grew up hating lions.” Turere, who took part in the Global Talent Search last year, tried to solve the problem. […]
TED’s own Lisa Bu takes the TED2013 stage now to tell a very personal tale of a journey through literature that began, well, with a shattered dream. Growing up in Hunan, China, in the 1970s, Bu’s parents (yes, she had a Tiger Mother) believed there was only one sure way to happiness: a safe and […]
In her 20s, Meg Jay saw her first psychotherapy client, Alex, who was there to talk about her guy problems. Jay didn’t take the sessions all too seriously at first. But then her supervisor gave her a wakeup call. While Jay said, “Sure she’s dating down and sleeping with a knucklehead. But she’s not gonna […]
Freeman Hrabowski is president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), which has made an extraordinary name for itself educating students of all types in science and engineering. “What makes our story especially important,” says Hrabowski, “is that we have learned so much from students who are typically not at the top of the academic ladder.” […]
An indefinable quality lies at the heart of any successful idea or project … a spark of intuition, genius or insight that acts as the driver of all later action. Our speakers in this session all possess such a spark, from the educator who’s made it his mission to help high-achieving minority students to a […]
Watch all of TED2013 Session 3 for free at 5pm PST today: http://tedlive.ted.com/webcasts/2013 See the 2013 TED Prize revealed!
Monday on the TED Fellows stage, Tom Rielly did something unprecedented in the history of the Fellows — he singled out one for recognition. Presenting the newly minted TED Fellows Hero award to Iranian-British filmmaker Taghi Amirani, he said, “This person has gone above and beyond in writing, participating, a certain amount of kvetching, mentoring […]
In art school, Phil Hansen developed a shake in his hand. He couldn’t so much as draw a straight line anymore. After years of excelling in pointillism, his tight grip of the pen had caused permanent nerve damage. “To me this was doomsday. This was the destruction of my dream of becoming an artist,” says Hansen in […]
Beardyman, né Darren Foreman, is a London-based beatboxer and inventor who has always been frustrated by the limitations of the human voice and body. After all, Beardyman’s instrument is his voice — and he only has one. No one, for example, can sing two notes at the same time. So naturally, Beardyman built a machine […]
Saskia Sassen thinks deeply about the world’s cities, and she’s on the TED stage to share some of her provocative theories about how we should think about urbanizing technology, that pervasive force that has impacted so much of the way in which we live and work. She starts by pointing out an amazing fact: there […]
There are giants in the ocean, and we can prove it, begins marine biologist Edie Widder on stage at TED. Widder first became involved with TED when she gave a talk on life in the underwater world at Mission Blue in 2010, as part of Sylvia Earle’s TED Prize wish. There she met the late […]
Stuart Firestein begins with an ancient proverb, “It’s very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, especially when there is no cat.” Firestein, the chair of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, thinks that this is a good metaphor for science. Generally we think science is orderly, a collection of knowledge. But real […]
Sebastião Salgado has worked as a professional photographer since 1973. And he arrives on the TED stage with extraordinary gentleness and humility. He doesn’t think everyone is necessarily familiar with his work, so he starts by showing some of his incredible pictures, and we watch in silence. The images make for powerful, often difficult viewing. It’s clear that […]