Ideas Worthy of Sharing

Have you ever had one of those dreary days when your brain feels fuzzy and you’re just unmotivated?  How about a day that you find there is nothing on TV worth watching? It’s on days like those that I like to watch a few TED Talks.

TED conferences started in 1984 to bring together people from Technology, Entertainment, and Design.  Since then it has grown to include two annual conferences and a number of ‘spin off’ talks, programs, awards, and grants.

Their newest project is TED-Ed, education based videos that teachers can turn into lesson plans for the classroom.

TED-Ed is great for teachers.  I recently watched the videos in the Literature & Language Section, these included, Insults by Shakespeare and The Power of Simple Words.

I’m a subscriber to TEDtalks, the best ideas of the conferences uploaded onto YouTube.
One of my favorite talks was given by Malcolm Gladwell called “What we can learn from spaghetti sauce”

My new favorite is called “How To Use One Paper Towel”

The TED YouTube channel has grouped together videos into playlist in a number of topics. Are you interested in oceans?  There’s a playlist for you called Ocean of Mystery.  Are you addicted to social media?  There’s a playlist called Secrets of Social Media.

Not sure where to start? TED provides help on their homepage. You select the length of time you want to watch videos, anywhere from 5 – 60 minutes, and then you select what kind of videos you would like to see: jaw-dropping, persuasive, courageous, ingenious, fascinating, inspiring, beautiful, funny, or informative.  Then you click on Surprise Me and TED puts together a playlist of videos for you to watch.

Give it a try, I just watched 5 minutes of funny videos and learned that if you believe in yourself you can wear anything you want and that doing small 30 day challenges can change your life.

-Amelia R.