Informative and educational, TED talks enhance learning

TED Talks are known to be shown in classroom settings to educate students on over 2600 topics by listening to guest speakers.

What the people behind TED passionately believe is the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and the world for the better through informative talks that people will use to self-educate. Topics include a range from evolution in artificial intelligence to changes in the oceans chemistry due to pollution, and an abundance of other topics. TED talks are available through ted.com.

TED, a nonprofit organization, started as a conference of technology, entertainment and design in 1984 to help educate the general public. Now, with millions of viewers and listeners worldwide tuning in to the videos that usually run around 18 minutes, TED has positively impacted education and the global community in various ways with TED talks, along with their other programs: TED Prize, TED-Ed and the Global TEDx Community.

Falon Wanless, a student here at MNSU, mentions how in-depth the TED talks go compared to the learning of a single topic in a classroom setting.

“TED talks go kind of more in depth with things and you get a bunch of different views of whatever topic you’re talking about,” Wanless said.

TED talks also give people a wider view of what is going on in the world with the topic one may choose to listen to.

“You get a broader perspective when you listen to TED talks compared to when you’re in a classroom setting because when you are in a classroom setting you are kind of only getting one view of the world,” he said.

By logging onto ted.com, one might notice how TED is making what is similar to a database of knowledge from some of the world’s most inspired thinkers with a community of curious souls to match them. Anyone can engage with these ideas and with others through the website as well as at the TEDx events that are taking place around the world, all year long.

TED is known as a global community, which means they welcome every culture and discipline who are in search for a deeper understanding of the world. This makes it easy for them to spread the knowledge to everyone.

There is sometimes a language barrier between one person to another when presenting information; if one’s first language is not English, it might be harder for you to fully grasp the concepts being presented. TED planned for this and covers almost all topics in over one hundred languages.

This isn’t the only great idea the people behind TED have come up with; some regions of the world do not have access to the Internet, thus, troubling the ones that wish to get involved with the TED discussions. Luckily, there has been independently run TEDx events created, which helps share ideas into various communities around the world, so even those without a stable Internet connection will be able to quench the thirst of knowledge they might have.

We are fortunate here at MNSU to have access to the Internet, so finding an abundance of TED talks at ted.com will be incredibly easy, incredibly useful and incredibly fun.