Showing posts with label TED resources. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TED resources. Show all posts

A Must See TED Talk on Autism

November, 2014
Below is an excellent TED talk on autism. Since its publication last March, the video has collected over a million pageviews. In this TED talk, paediatrician, geneticist and researcher Wendy Chung addresses autism from scientific perspective providing the results reached by different studies. Here is a quote from Wendy's transcript:

"...But autism is not a single condition. It's actually a spectrum of disorders, a spectrum that ranges, for instance, from Justin, a 13-year-old boy who's not verbal, who can't speak, who communicates by using an iPad to touch pictures to communicate his thoughts and his concerns, a little boy who, when he gets upset, will start rocking, and eventually, when he's disturbed enough, will bang his head to the point that he can actually cut it open and require stitches. That same diagnosis of autism, though, also applies to Gabriel, another 13-year-old boy who has quite a different set of challenges. He's actually quite remarkably gifted in mathematics. He can multiple three numbers by three numbers in his head with ease, yet when it comes to trying to have a conversation, he has great difficulty. He doesn't make eye contact. He has difficulty starting a conversation, feels awkward, and when he gets nervous, he actually shuts down. Yet both of these boys have the same diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder."



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A Good TED Ed Video Lesson on How Languages Evolve

November 4, 2014
In this excellent Ted-Ed video lesson, Alex Gendler provides a historical account of the development of languages.The overarching question Alex addressed here revolves around the reasons why we ended up with thousands of languages when in the past there were only few numbers. To investigate this issue further, Alex started with the problematic of language origin and stated that linguists are not sure whether the thousands of languages we speak now can be attributed to a single root. Next, he talked about some of the factors that lead to language diversification stating human migration as the main reason.


As for the difference between a language and a dialect, Alex maintained that political and national consideration are of a determining factor here than linguistic features. The examples of Chinese language which contains so many dialects to the point of mutual incomprehensibility between some of them and the case of Portuguese and Spanish languages which are somewhat mutually understandable are provided. Another important point covered in this video relates to linguists' work in the classification of languages. Linguists, as Alex stated, create family trees of languages based on the study of linguistic features such as syntax, grammar and vocabulary. Phonology here is not a determining variable because of the presence of false cognates and borrowed words.

Overall, this is a good video lesson to share with students to teach them about the origin of languages and how they developed to where they are now. As is the case with every TED-Ed lesson, there is a section for questions and discussion that you can use to check students comprehension. Enjoy



TED-Ed New Interactive Periodic Table With Video Lessons for Every Element

October, 2014
Today, TED-Ed launched a clickable periodic table with videos on every element. This work is a fruit of a partnership between TED-Ed and Brady Haran, the creator of the popular YouTube channel Numberphile. The purpose behind this period table is to provide students with both a refresher and a study aid to help them better understand the different chemical elements and their properties.



This periodic videos contains facts on almost all elements, from Hydrogen to Ununennium and beyond. And for each element, a video lesson is accorded. So students will be able to watch the video and use the TED Ed platform to engage with its content. All the lessons are customizable, a feature which teachers can draw on to create and share new lessons based on the same video.

Here is a sample of a video lesson on Ted-Ed periodic table.


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5 Great TED Talks on The Importance of Listening

September 12, 2014
Listening is an important skill that, unfortunately, is not given its due worth in school curricula. Listening is the key to understanding, a better understanding. It is a way of communicating and appreciating the world around us. The kind of listening am talking about here is what sound expert Julian Treasure called conscious listening. This is a mental process that consciously receives and decode auditory input. Stephen Covey talks about empathic listening (from empathy) and listed it as the fifth habit of highly effective  people. Empathic listening according to Stephen is an entirely different kind of listening; 'it is listening with the intent to understand, to really understand'. He added "empathic listening gets inside another person's frame of reference. You look out through it, you see the world the way they see the world, you understand their paradigm, you understand how they feel." (p. 251 in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People).

Teaching our kids and students to listen both empathically and consciously is integral to the healthy growth of their intellectual, social, and psychological personality.To help you learn more about the importance of listening and how to do it much better, I am sharing with you  this wonderful selection of 5 TED talks all revolving around listening. Enjoy

1- Ways to Listen better



2- Want to help someone? Shut up and listen



3- Listening to global voices



4- Listen, learn then lead


5- How to truly listen



8 Good TED Talks on The Origin of Ideas

July 29, 2014
Looking for some great TED talks to watch this weekend ? Here is a collection of 8 talks compiled by the folks in TED covering one single theme: the origin of ideas. Yes, this is the very same theme that Steve Johnson intensively investigated in his momentous book" Where Do Good Ideas Come From?". Besides Steve's talk you will also find talks from some prominent thinkers in the field of personal development and cognitive science. Enjoy

1- Where Good Ideas Come From



2- Your Elusive Creative Genius



3- How to Start A Movement



4- How to Get Ideas to Spread



5- Where Does Creativity Hide



6- When Ideas Have Sex



7- Embrace The Remix



8- 4 Lessons on Creativity