Next week it is a decade since the original six TED talks were posted online, on 27 June 2006.
Since then, more than 2,200 presentations have been made freely available on ted.com, offering accessible lectures of less than 20 minutes from many of the world’s leading academics, scientists, explorers and artists.
There are also around 180,000 TED-Ed lessons: bite-size teacher-led videos tackling many subject areas.
Here’s what three of the top speakers on education have had to say.
by Sir Ken Robinson
Starting off from the premise that creativity is as important as literacy, Robinson’s disarmingly humorous presentation proposes a radical reimagining of Western education. The schools system, he says, has its roots in 19th-century industrialism and therefore privileges academic ability and subjects that would traditionally have made students employable over more diverse talents. He argues that teachers should focus on nurturing children’s readiness to try things out and make mistakes, attributes likely to stand them in much better stead in the far less predictable 21st century.
Views: 39 million
by Carol Dweck
You would find it difficult to find a teacher who doesn’t know what Dweck’s growth mindset theory is all about. Her talk, though, gives an insight into how the theory was developed and offers a chance to hear from her about how teachers can implement it.
Views: 4.2 million
by Dr Sugata Mitra
Mitra describes his 12 years of research that began with his “Hole in the Wall” study in a Delhi slum, where he embedded a computer with high-speed internet into a wall and filmed as children, who did not speak English and had never seen a computer before, quickly and ably taught themselves and their peers to use it. This led on to a series of tests around the globe to try to demonstrate that children have the capacity to teach themselves what they want to learn, even across language barriers.
Views: 2.3 million
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