TED is an annual conference of the best thinkers of our time. It has been going for 18 years and getting more and more popular. It has a famous deadline: no speech can be over 20 minutes. Here is what they say about TED at the website:
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.
People like Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Bill Gates, Tim Burners-Lee have all talked at TED. (a few did get more than 20 minutes). Recently, videos of these presentations have all been put on line.
So you have a wonderful resource of the smartes people on the planet putting as much information as they can into a 20-minute presentation, and making it understandable to a world-wide audience. How do you teach with this?
Some teachers have pooled their ideas into a wiki (see Tool #58) to use this wonderful resource in class most effectively. Mostly to create discussion topics that are very relevant to our students today, TeachingWithTed can give you materials as well as ideas for particular presentations made at TED.