Sunday, 20 March 2016

TED - What's Your Favourite? - Joan Lennon

One of the things the internet does really well is/are TED talks.  It's such an inspiring, challenging, delightful and, let's be honest, addictive resource.  Wandering from one talk to another is browsing at its serendipitous best.  In TED's mission statement they put it like this:

"we're building a clearinghouse of free knowledge from the world's most inspired thinkers - and a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other"

How can you help but cheer?

So I thought I'd write about TED, partly as a tribute, and partly to find out your favourites, the wonderful things you've stumbled across in your own browsing.

Last month I posted Ursus Wehrli's talk about Tidying Art and this month, I thought I'd restrict myself to "words" and "education."  First up is Erin McKean's short talk on Making Up New Words:




(She gives a wonderful longer talk on lexicography here - just as delightful.)

And for "education" - it's got to be Ken Robinson, and it's difficult to choose just one.  I've gone for the 2013 talk How to Escape Education's Death Valley for no better reason than I like his hair that colour ...  




(But really, I'd listen to him read the phone book.)

I know I don't know the half of TED treasure - point me towards the ones you like, and we'll be curious souls together!




Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.
Silver Skin.


4 comments:

Sue Purkiss said...

Years ago, I was a school governer, and Ken Robinson came to talk to Somerset governers about the arts in education. He was absolutely brilliant. The only other speaker I remember who was as riveting, totally without the use of technology, but just because he had so much to say that was interesting and well-said, was David Crystal, the specialist on the English language. But Ken was funnier.

Penny Dolan said...

Ken Robinson occasionally visited a Drama in Education course I was on. He was - and is still - a compelling and deeply thoughtful speaker with a wide view of education and the value of the arts. That's one of my favourite TED talks too.

Clarissa said...

There are many great Ted Talks. A few of my favorites are:

Paleontologist Jack Horner's two talks:

Where are all the baby dinosaurs:

https://www.ted.com/talks/jack_horner_shape_shifting_dinosaurs?language=en

Building a dinosaur out of chicken bones:

https://www.ted.com/talks/jack_horner_building_a_dinosaur_from_a_chicken?language=en

Also Oliver Sacks talk about halucinations:

https://www.ted.com/talks/oliver_sacks_what_hallucination_reveals_about_our_minds?language=en

Anonymous said...

Sorry about the formatting!