Every year the TED Conference brings together some of the most influential figures from business and academic fields to give twenty minute talks about their work. The conference costs $6000 to attend in person or $900 to attend virtually so, needless to say, I won’t be attending this year. Even though I, like 99% of public school teachers, am not able to attend, I am able to watch the videos of presentations from previous conferences. Knowing that eventually I’ll be able to watch the TED 2009 presentations, I am intrigued by this year’s list of presenters which includes Bill Gates, Seth Godin, and Herbie Hancock.

Applications for Education
The videos of previous TED presentations are engaging and informative. Letting students explore previous TED presentations is a good way for students to explore topics they’re interested in on their own.

Nibipedia, which I’ve written about a couple of times here and here, has added all of the available TED videos to their database. Nibipedia matches Wikipedia references to the topics and terms mentioned in each TED talk. Watching TED presentations through Nibipedia makes the videos a great independent learning resource.

You can read more about TED here.