TED talks for learning

TED talks are inspiring, educating and extremely interesting. By themselves, the talks are great for learning how entrepreneurs have and pitch their ideas, watching inspired talks on hurdles overcome, and discovering less publicised avenues of research in many fields. (TED on YouTube)

There are a large number of less-obvious ways you can use TED talks for learning, other than watching videos to learn about the topics covered by the talk content itself.

• Language learning: TED Translations has a growing collection of subtitled talks in over 80 different languages. You can use this to increase your English (or non-English) vocabulary, learning how these words are used in natural speech, and avoiding the boredom often caused by flashcard reptitions. Or, perhaps you can even volunteer to translate a TED talk.
  
• Networking/event organisation: attend or organise a TEDx event in your local area. Inspiration and enthusiasm for learning is often higher when such events are attended in person. Perhaps involve your students, if you are a teacher. The TEDYouth day will happen on November 19, 2011, with many events planned worldwide.
  
• Body language and presentation techniques: watch the presenter's body language, facial movements, and how they moved around the stage. Integrate those techniques you found effective in your presentations.
  
• Note taking techniques: write a summary of the talk without using the pause button. Fast, accurate and thorough note-taking is an important skill for students. You can re-watch the talk to make sure your notes were accurate.
  
• Learn to think critically: this may be a better exercise when discussed with others. Think about the presenter's background, motivations, challenges, and bias when you listen to a TED talk. Learning how to reason, argue and think critically is not common in many school systems these days. But I believe it is a very important skill.
  
• Learn to teach: the TED-ED Brain Trust is a private community publishing short videos or presentations (under 10 minutes) within an education community. They have several categories in which any member of the community can submit a video, and cover topics such as mathematics, creativity, languages and even questions that have no answers (yet).