I'm always inspired when I watch TED Talks. They are so provocative and encourage me to look at ideas through a new lens. Almost always I walk away with a new perspective and some nugget of learning. Why not incorporate that culture of thought exploration into the classroom?
The TED Ed website is a treasure trove of valuable resources that leverage short, high-interest TED Talks and other content-related videos to examine, explore, and analyze. It also allows teachers to create their own TED Lessons and walks them through the process.
Beyond just using these videos, I believe it's time to start teaching our students how they can improve their presentation skills and I can't think of a better framework than following the TED Talk style of presentation. Click here to view a fabulous project developed by Kate Petty to accomplish this task. An adapted version of this can be found here by Marina Boeder.
While I have several favorite TED Talks, there were a couple I wanted to spotlight here as examples of inspirational videos to share in the classroom. The first one, I believe, would be a great introduction video if you were going to initiate a TED Talk presentation project with your students to develop their presentation skills. I can assume most will be like..."I'm not a good presenter; I get too nervous!" This video could inspire them to adopt a new framework of thinking...