TED Talks

While on Spring Break this year my friend told me about TED Talks. He himself is not an education major but had stumbled upon a few videos on education while surfing the site and said they were very interesting and informative. I had not even heard of TED Talks till that point and decided they were something I should probably look into.

Recently I read a blog post by Richard Byrne on his Free Technology for Teachers blog about TED Talks titled TED on the Radio. He announced that he had heard TED Talks was going to be on the radio now, which is exciting. He also attached one of his favorite TED Talks by Sir Ken Robinson. We watched an animated video in my Curriculum and Instruction class that featured a speech by Robinson that he made at the RSA. From then on I became a fan of Robinson and found his videos on TED Talks. For that reason I wasn't really surprised when Richard Byrne posted one of Robinson's talks as one of his favorites.

Am earlier post on the Richard Byrne's blog was linked to this recent post titled 15 TED Talks for Teachers to Watch Before 2010. While looking through these recommended TED Talks I recognized some people and names. Bill Gates' name caught my eye and I found it interesting that he had a speech about education. The other name that got my attention was John Wooden. I had a flashback to the days that my junior high basketball coach would have us bring quotes by Coach Wooden to our games to talk about and analyze. Each one of us had a game that we were responsible for the quote, we would then write it up on a whiteboard in our locker room and tell our teammates our thoughts on the quote and take theirs. Not until I got older did I realize how beneficial this was for us and did not understand until now how it would help me in my career. Having an idea of who Coach Wooden was and how important his ideas are has been beneficial to me in my studies.

I really find these TED Talks interesting and beneficial to my future career. They bring about new ideas and make me think about things in a different way. I will definitely continue to watch these as I continue on this path to my career!

This is the animated RSA Sir Ken Robinson video we watched in my class