| URL | Description |
|---|---|
| Arthur Benjamin - Teach Statistics Before Calculus | |
| Beau Lotto: Optical Illusions show how we see | |
| Debbie Sterling: Inspiring the next generation of female engineers | |
| Interview with Debbie Sterling - Founder and CEO of GoldieBlox | |
| Ken Robinson - How Schools Kill Creativity | Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. |
| Russell Foster: Why do we sleep? | Russell Foster is a circadian neuroscientist: He studies the sleep cycles of the brain. And he asks: What do we know about sleep? Not a lot, it turns out, for something we do with one-third of our lives. In this talk, Foster shares three popular theories about why we sleep, busts some myths about how much sleep we need at different ages -- and hints at some bold new uses of sleep as a predictor of mental health. |
| Salman Khan Talk | Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script — give students video lectures to watch at home, and do "homework" in the classroom with the teacher available to help. |
| Two Giants of Online | I think most of the criticism, though, has been more about the misunderstanding of what we are and what we’re trying to be. We aren’t about replacing physical schools. This is about allowing physical schools to become more valuable, to move up the value chain. It’s about the idea that if lectures can happen in the students’ own time and pace then you can do a higher order activity in the classroom: more conversation, more problem solving, more projects. You can start thinking about allowing students to learn at their own pace, or have them work in a multi-age classroom, focusing more on creative things like projects. When people start to understand that, and when they realize that we’re investing heavily in tools for teachers because we view teachers as a super-important part of this ecosystem, that’s where we get a lot of very positive feedback from teachers everywhere. |
| We Need to Talk About TED | A talk by Benjamin Bratton.
In our culture, talking about the future is sometimes a polite way of saying things about the present that would otherwise be rude or risky. But have you ever wondered why so little of the future promised in TED talks actually happens? So much potential and enthusiasm, and so little actual change. Are the ideas wrong? Or is the idea about what ideas can do all by themselves wrong?
Some Highlights (paraphrased):
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