TED Talks have provided the spark for a lot of interesting conversations in my current events classes and in my homeroom meetings over the years. Sometimes I would simply show them in the classroom as discussion fodder and other times I would post them on a classroom blog to have students watch and respond with written comments. I found talks either through searching the TED website or by having them appear in the TED Blog feed. Now there is an easier way to find good talks, that is by looking at TED Playlists.

TED Playlists are sets of talks organized around a topic or theme. You can search for playlists and videos by selecting a topic from the playlist homepage then entering a keyword search within a chosen topic. It’s a quick and easy way to find interesting talks to share with your students.

If you would like to a see a list of more than 1700 TED Talks, take a look at this spreadsheet that contains speakers’ names, talk titles, talk summaries, and links to the talks.