To help you find your inspiration, we have shortlisted the best TED Talks for teachers that will inspire and empower your teaching career.
Get ready to be moved! Get your daily dose of optimism, bravery, and great ideas.
#1 The Call to learn by Clifford Stoll
- This talk will motivate you to think more outside of the box and see different dimensions of learning.
Clifford Stoll is an astronomer, educator, and skeptic. He helped to capture a notorious KGB hacker back in the infancy of the Internet. His agile mind continues to lead him down new paths – from education and techno-skepticism to making of zero-volume bottles.
In a vivid mix of energetic anecdotes and observations, Stoll brings us into his life of many professions, desires, and life choices.
“All truth is one. In this light, may science and religion endeavor here for the steady evolution of mankind, from darkness to light, from narrowness to broad-mindedness, from prejudice to tolerance. It is the voice of life, which calls us to come and learn.”
#2 Three Rules to Spark Learning by Ramsey Musallam
- Find out how you can change your teaching perspective and spark curiosity by using multimedia and new technology.
Ramsey Musallam is a high school chemistry teacher. It took a life-threatening condition to jolt Musallam out of ten years of “pseudo-teaching” to understand the true role of the educator: to cultivate curiosity.
In a fun and personal talk, Musallam present us his 3 rules that can spark imagination and learning, and get students excited about how the world works.
#3 Turning Trash into Toys for Learning by Arvind Gupta
- An inspiring talk that will show you how it is easy to learn the basic principles of science and design
Arvind Gupta has been making toys for 30 years. In his inspiring talks about early life, career, and toy making in the 70s, he shares simple yet stunning plans for turning trash into seriously entertaining, well-designed toys that kids can build themselves while learning basic principles of science and design.
#4 Play is More Than Just Fun by Stuart Brown
- This talk will motivate you to play more whatever you do.
Stuart Brown is a play researcher and psychologist. According to him, the play is more than fun. Through his research, he shows that play is not just joyful and energizing but it’s deeply involved with human development and intelligence.
Through the National Institute for Play, he’s working to better understand its significance.
In this interesting talk, Brown describes why play is important and how it contributes to making adults happy and healthy –not just children.
#5 What We Think We Know by Jonathan Drori,
- Explore how ideas are born and learn how you can shape your ideas and thoughts.
Jonathan Drori is an expert on culture and educational media. He commissioned the BBC’s very first websites and dedicated a part of his career to the subject of online culture and educational media and learning methodology to understand how we learn.
In this talk, he offers four questions as a starting point to explore how we get ideas in our heads and how difficult it is to shake ideas once they are there.
Drori also reviews some “bad practices” that serve to reinforce wrong ideas and some better ways for helping students learn correctly.
#6 Tales of Creativity and Play by Tim Brown
- This talk will help you explore ways to nurture creativity anywhere, anytime.
Tim Brown is the CEO of the “innovation and design” firm IDEO and his talk is about
exploring the relationships between creative thinking and play, and how that relationship can be nurtured.
He uses many examples and activities you can try out at home to illustrate how nurturing creativity works.
#7 Teach Arts and Sciences Together by Mae Jemison
- This talk is for bold thinkers
Mae Jemison is an astronaut, a doctor, an art collector, and a dancer. In this talk, she reflects on stories about her own education and from her time in space.
She calls on educators to teach both the arts and sciences, both intuition and logic, as one — to create bold thinkers.
#8 The Puzzle of Motivation by Dan Pink
- Hear how you can stay motivated and explore options to go forward.
Dan Pink is a career analyst once known as Al Gore’s speechwriter.
Now, as a career analyst Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think.
#9 The power of believing that you can improve by Carol Dweck
- Learn how to make your brain solve problems faster
Carol Dweck is a pioneering researcher in the field of motivation. She explores the reasons people succeed (or don’t), and ways to foster success. Carol gives an introduction to this influential field and talks about the idea of how we can grow our brain’s capacity to learn and to solve problems.
Do you spend more energy and time thinking about a problem that’s slightly too hard for you to solve? Are you not smart enough to solve it … or have you just not solved it yet?
In her talk, she describes two ways how we can approach problem solving.
#10 Want to be more creative, go for a walk by Marily Oppezzo
- Find out how simple things in life can make huge impacts
Marily Oppezzo is a·behavioral and learning scientist and she researches how the movement of the body can affect the movement of the mind.
In this video, Opprezzo talks about getting stuck when trying to come up with a new idea. According to her research getting up and going for a walk might be all it takes to get your creative juices flowing.
Enjoy this fun talk, and hear how walking could help you get the most out of your next brainstorm.
#11 How to build your creative confidence by David Kelley
- This talk is your daily inspiration booster
David Kelley is a designer and an educator. He helped in creation of many icons of the digital generation, but what matters even more to him is unlocking the creative potential of people and organizations to innovate routinely.
Here he reflects on creative people in schools and emphasizing how creativity is not the domain of only a chosen few. Telling stories from his legendary design career and his own life, he offers you ways to build the confidence to create.
#12 Inside of mind of a master procrastinator by Tim Urban
- Get a completely new perspective on procrastination.
Tim Urban is a blogger that tries to demonstrate how complex and long-form writing can stand out in an online wilderness choked with listicles and clickbait.
Although procrastination doesn’t make sense for him, he’s never been able to shake his habit of waiting until the last minute to get things done.
Urban’s hilarious and insightful talk will take you on a brain-picking journey encouraging you to think harder about reasons and excuses for procrastination. Learn why we’re really procrastinating and the reason we postpone work.
#13 Smash fear learn anything by Tim Ferriss
- A funny way to achieve productivity.
Tim Ferriss is an early-stage tech investor, best-selling author and podcaster. In this funny talk he tries to give us an answer to one question – “What’s the worst that could happen?
This is all you need to know about fear.
#14 The playful wonderland behind great innovations by Steven Johnson
- Turns out, we are shaping the future wherever we are having the most fun.
Steven Johnson is a writer that examines the intersection of science, technology and personal experience.
He talks about inventions and shows us how some of the most transformative ideas and technologies, like the computer, didn’t emerge out of necessity at all but instead from the strange delight of play.
To sum up,
You can feel stuck and unmotivated sometimes, the good news is that everyone else does. All you can do is to reach out and find something that will help you move forward. These TED Talks for teachers do precisely that.
Hope you liked our choice of videos. Do you have a favorite speaker at the TEDTalk conference? Do share it with us.
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