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Rahul G.

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How Can We Make TED Attractive To Children?

TED has changed my perspective on many aspects of life. I am inspired to do many things, but I sometimes feel it is too late. Making lifelong decisions is part of growing up, and I truly feel a resource like TED can help one make those decisions.

These decisions must be made in one's early stages in life: as a child/teen. TED talks are relatively sophisticated and require a high degree of maturity and intellect to fully grasp; competencies which are made available over time.

How can we gear the Talks towards children, and help them understand how vast our world is, and their opportunities are? I sure wish I knew about TED when I was younger; but the sad thing is, I think that even if I did, I would get bored very quickly simply because I would not understand.

I am interested in your opinions and thoughts so I can try to implement some tactics in my local community.

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    Katja Tongucer 200+

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    Apr 14 2011: Firstly, TEDTalks that might be interesting for children, should be tagged or rated or labelled "for children" or recommended for a certain age, so that parents who want to show TEDTalks to their kids could easily find them.

    Secondly there could be a special channel (maybe in youtube to start with) for TEDxYouth Talks, etc.. (Maybe there is already one?)

    And maybe there is a collection of links somewhere for parents to present and recommend platforms like disqo.org or the KhanAcademy?

    I am also asking myself if it always needs to be connected with gaming? If a talk, video, experiment, etc. is presented in an inspiring, interesting, astonishing way, it should fascinate children without having to use gaming strategies.

    • Bryan Qu

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      Apr 15 2011: Sounds like a solid start. Gaming seems to be one of the many ways to reach out to youth (like myself). I think in general, though, we just want to be inspired and interested. TED is absolutely fantastic, but I can imagine how it could really appeal to the youth by inviting youth speakers to talk about pertinent issues to the youth of today. It would be useful to people of all ages...many youth issues are really just global issues in different clothing.
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      Jim Moonan 30+

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      Apr 17 2011: Katja - thanks again for some great thoughts and interesting recommendations (disqo.org looks fascinating)

      I'm thinking even younger children, too... the younger the better. Sparking/nurturing/inspiring a thirst for knowledge and for learning.
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      Estelle Rinaudo

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      Apr 20 2011: Katja, your ideas are really good. I think that s the way to go.
      1) create a label "for children" on existing TED talks to make it easier for parents, teachers, kids or anyone which want to use these videos with children.
      2) Create a channel like TEDxYouth, with talks from teens and kids and on subjects that matter to them
      3) Disclose these talks on websites platforms for parents, teachers, kids...
      4) Gaming is also an excellent idea. More an more kids spend their time playing games and it can be a strong mean of education

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