Why I Love TED
TED is this brilliant platform online that is essentially a whole lot of awesome all wrapped up into one site. I love it. Some of the best minds out there are on TED. I’m going to include in this, some of the awesome videos, which–for no apparent reason–seem to be playing in higher video quality for me tonight on YouTube. Since they’re playing that way for me, I have included the link to TED (which is the best way to search for things) and some of my favourite talks that I use with my students.
The first one, “Sarah Kay: If I Should Have a Daughter”, is something that I am going to use with my creative writing students next year. I’m going to start off poetry with her talk. I also plan on using poets like T.S. Eliot, Howard Nemerov, E.A. Poe, Billy Collins, Wallace Stevens, Pablo Neruda, Gwendolyn Brooks, Charles Bukowski, e.e. cummings, and David (the one from the Bible). I want them to see that there were poets in the far past, the near past, the present day, and that they can be the poets of the future.I want them to see that poetry is the everyday, not just the extraordinary and that it is a way to express themselves. I’m going to offer them extra credit if they want to perform it.
The second one is “Sarah Kay-Poetess/Storyteller”. I plan on using this one as well. This one starts off combining music and poetry. I want students to see the tie between music and poetry. They will be choosing songs and reading them as poems and setting their favorite poems to music. I think it’ll be fun to see what they do.
The third is “Temple Grandin: The World Needs All Kinds of Minds”. I love this talk. When I’m trying to explain Autism, this is what I turn to. I teach kids with Autism and National Autism Awareness Month is coming up. My drama kids are doing a skit. This is something I showed them to make them understand what they’re talking about. It inspired them. It was beautiful to see. Plus, I just love Temple Grandin. I think she’s one of the coolest ladies on the planet.
TED is about technology, medicine, stories, people, dreams, space, animals, food. You name it, TED has a talk on it. There are over 900 talks on TED. So far, I haven’t found a single one that isn’t electric. I haven’t found a single one that didn’t give me a moment of wonder or a second of “Ah-ha!” I’ve seen close to 100 talks. So far, so good. Check out the site.