Handy Dandy TED Talks

TED talks are a way to share important information between strong minds of the community.  A person with a bright idea can give a TED talk and pass along his ideas to the next person.  In the article, Transforming Leadership Using TED Talks  by Lisa Rubenstein, PhD, Rubenstein brings up a strong point of using TED talks to train our teachers.  She goes on to say that these TED talks could be a good place for teachers to learn new techniques to enable them to better influence the knowledge learned by their students, especially when teaching the gifted and talented. 

Rubenstein makes a wise point.  Every time I have watched a TED talk I have learned something new and have been able to use that knew knowledge in everyday life.  So what if our teachers had the same opportunity?  How much stronger would the staff of the school systems be?  I think that TED talks could be an opportune way for other successful teachers to give pointers, tips and helpful guidance to younger teachers in training.  These teachers can learn from the sharing of information and improve our school system and overall positively influence our country with better education.

In one example, Rubenstein denotes a TED talk by Dan Meyer who stimulates his gifted children’s thinking skills by giving the students a picture and allowing them to solve the math problem by developing and enhancing their problem solving skills.  This video would be a great attribute for a teacher of gifted and talented students to learn how to stimulate her students and challenge their ability to think abstractly and rely on their own to solve a problem.  Many of the talks that Rubenstein mentions would be very helpful in training the future teachers and would be a great attribute to teach our teachers.  With this use of the technology of today, communication can be widespread and education can benefit from this new technology.