TED, TED X and Ted-Ed

Colleagues,

I wonder if you -- like me -- have used the various TED talk videos for your own continuing education, professionally and for other purposes. If so, please share what you have found to be especially interesting for yourself, and possibly for your students. To get the ball rolling, here are four TED talks I have found useful and inspiring:

1. At a TED X Boston talk in June, 2012, Noah Wilson-Rich, the President of the Best Bees Company, did a presentation on the successful beehives that are found on the tops of Boston buildings, including the convention center in South Boston. Through this talk I learned that honeybees are thriving in cities in the U.S. and throughout the world while, as you may be aware, honeybees are vanishing in rural areas because of a widespread phenomenon called Beehive Colony Collapse disorder,  “a phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or European honey bee colony abruptly disappear.”  They are not just dying, but disappearing. What do you think the explanation might be? I wondered if  there are pesticides that are used on farms that are not used on building tops in cities? http://video.ted.com/talk/podcast/2012X/None/NoahWilsonRich_2012X-480p.mp4
2. Recently I watched a two-year old TED talk by a Stanford University professor and inventor named Manu Prakash. He talked about his invention called the Foldscope, a rugged, so-called “origami microscope” designed especially for poor countries.  It has 2000 times magnification; it can be assembled in under ten minutes and, once commercially manufactured, it may cost under a dollar.  When I saw this, I searched the web for other information about it and it led me to the Foldscope web site and Prakash’s contact information. I emailed him to find out if adult education science teachers in the U.S. could participate in the beta test because most do not have access to microscopes. As a result we now have a few U.S. adult education teachers who have applied and at least one that I know who is part of this beta test..  http://www.ted.com/talks/manu_prakash_a_50_cent_microscope_that_folds_like_origami   and http://foldscope.com
3. Our colleague, Daphne Greenberg, Director of the Center for the Study of Adult Literacy at Georgia State University, did a TedX talk on adult literacy in Atlanta earlier this year that I -- and other colleagues -- have found useful in advocating to adult literacy. You will find it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGad2PKUhbE
4. Bill Strickland is a community educator and activist in Pittsburgh. In his February 2002 TED Talk he describes how the arts saved him when he was in high school, and how the arts are integral to the success of the community job training center he helped to create in Philadelphia and that has influenced job training centers in other cities such as L.A. https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_strickland_makes_change_with_a_slide_show

What are your favorite TED talks? What do you recommend to your colleagues here?

David J. Rosen

djrosen123@gmail.com