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Has a TED Talk ever influenced you? How?
We get beautiful feedback on how much people appreciate watching TED Talks. But as well as learning, has a talk ever actually changed your (or someone else's) behavior? Or led to something intriguing? I'm curious to get some stories about how an idea can have impact... big or small, significant or just funny. I may share a couple of the best at TED2011 next week.
Topics:
ted talks
Closing Statement from Chris Anderson
Many thanks to all who answered. I found a lot of these responses really moving. My take away is that perhaps the biggest single impact of TED Talks is in expanding peoples' sense of possibility and thereby motivating them to get up and realize their potential.
natasha nikulina 50+
Laurens Rademakers 50+
Keywords: mild mechanisation; investing in basic post-harvest infrastructures and processes; the mild use of fertilizers which is a sad must on Africa's heavily depleted soils; and respecting the need to really make staple crops abundantly available to everyone.
This talk was simple and convincing, especially because it came from a person with decades of field experience. Her views gave me a push and once and for all made me decide that organic farming is good for highly developed countries, but not yet for communities of subsistence farmers. She made me make up my mind.
Deanna Lawrence
Fran Magee
Claudia Espinosa
I could go on about how I am inspired, motivated, challenged, and touched by the TED talks, but instead I want to focus on the ripple effect that TED has had on my teaching and my students.
TED talks bring into context a lot of concepts that are part of my classes. The objective of using the TED talks is to inspire but most importantly to let the students see that all of what they are learning is related to the real world, or on what they will do when they become professionals. Sometimes to give them a little guidance, and to expand their sphere of ideas, of influence.
As a result of featuring these talks, the level of motivation, and the quality of the work that the students do has increased significantly. That is a wonderful result, but suddenly at the start of the class I now have students wanting to discuss a talk that they saw, or ask me questions about something outside of class that they were curious about that we saw in a talk and wanted to know more.
One of my students has now declared he wants to be part of the first manned Mission to Mars( after watching the talks about Space and Mars), some have decided to build robots, others have started their own organizations or clubs (Mini Baja vehicle, leadership groups, faith based groups), others have applied to internships or scholarships at NASA, JPL, Raytheon, etc that they would have never thought to do (and have gotten them). Students are sharing the talks at home, with other students, and now with other faculty. Some of those faculty members have now started to use TED talks in their classes, and the cycle repeats. It's not all of them, but enough to make a difference as it trickles down to others.
Inspiration, motivation, challenge, repeat as needed
Chris Ke-Sihai 200+
Alastair Macartney
Deborah Maaijen
Colleen Parsons 100+
Emily Rae Robles
The second time I listened to the video of her talk, I was in an extremely different place in my life. I had just had a nervous breakdown due to the overwhelming pressure of music school, had been hospitalized in a psychiatric institution, and had replaced music with writing as my creative outlet. Listening to the talk a second time, I was hit even harder with the importance of loving what I do, no matter what that is or how "well" I'm doing it. As a friend of my family put it, the very idea of a competition in any sort of field of art is as ridiculous as having a "loving" competition. No one can judge the extent of someone's love for any field or how well they communicate it. I didn't take this to heart, and it drove me into a mental hospital. I only pray that others will heed Liz's inspiring words before they find themselves in a similar place. I am a perfect example of an artist who put too much faith in myself rather than my "genius" as she put it; my God as I would prefer to put it. Ole to Liz for her inspiring words, and Ole to all those artists out there who doubt themselves and their work. Keep at it.
Jim Melfi
Alessio Gianni
Megan Black
I have gone on to share Ted Talks with other teachers including Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves. This inspired the use of Skype, using computers in project based group work, and for myself, I try to take a “Granny cloud” approach to teaching, offering encouragement wherever and whenever I can.
Sharing TED Talks with my middle school students has had a profound impact on them as well. Living in Detroit can be discouraging in the best of times, but TED Talks give us hope; hope that innovative, insightful, compassionate, people are finding workable positive solutions to the world’s problems. I can only hope that the inspiration they seem to derive from the talks has a lasting impact motivating them into action. It is still too early to tell.
Thank you for creating and sharing this forum. I treasure it.
Vasil Rangelov 50+
The world needs more people like you!
Jimmy Strobl 50+
Since I discovered TED I am always scheming on ways to improve things, ways of uniting people for a greater good and for the first time in my life i feel that It's possible!
Dan Konzen
This talk was absolutely amazing and shows the importance of being passionate about what we do and how it carries over to others.
Chris Cole
Your talk on “Crowd Accelerated Innovation” inspired us to think big about how sharing videos can be used to slingshot good ideas into mainstream culture.
So we created innovideo.tv, a curated gallery of videos about innovative ideas.
Assuming that only half of the people who have gone to the “Charlie bit my finger – again!” video on YouTube (http://goo.gl/8jviM) watched all 59 seconds, then humanity has spent 253 years watching that one video.
Imagine the change we can create if we harness that power to share innovation in video format.
Thank you for inspiring us with your talk, Chris. We hope that innovideo.tv can continue working with the crowd to shine light on ideas and create desire to do good.
Cheers,
-the Innovideo team
John Warren 30+
Thanks for providing a platform from which we can weave our tapestries.
Stephane Polteau
Pete Simpson
John Carragher
Has TED changed my behaviour?
My initial reaction would be to say " No, not really...".
But wait, TED constantly changes my mood, and like most TED devotees, that change of mood is invariably positive in nature - taking a cue from the Home Page - TED talks increase my fascination, my wonder, my enthusiasm, my inspiration and my understanding. Who knows where such mood-enhancement will lead, long-term?
I just love the range of TED talks. From astrophysics to spaghetti sauce, from rats sniffing out landmines to the confessions of an advertising man, from mirror neurones to some of the best talks on marketing you could ever hear.
Sir Ken Robinson has rightly come in for a lot of praise for his TED speech, which at this rate will soon overtake Shakespeare's Henry V's battle-cry at Agincort. But I believe that Sir Ken's speech is just the tip of a TED iceberg crammed full with insights and ideas. Go explore the whole pantheon of TED talks - it'll be worth the effort.
So I'll finish as I started:
TED. Why the Internet was invented.
jag . 50+
Sandra Gojic 500+
Sigal Tifferet 500+
Ali Carr-Chell caused me to design my classes more actively and increased my tolerance to noise and movement.
Dan Meyer and Conrad Wolfram reinforced me to change the way statistics are taught in my department.
Sugta Mitra inspired me to have one lesson totally based on student-driven learning, and has also helped me change the way research methods are taught in my department.
And Barton Seaver caused me to decrease the animal protein portions in our family meals.
Denise Eide
As an educator my reading methods classes did not prepare me to teach real students who thought differently from me. My sons, who were born engineers, could not read after finishing their kindergarten and first grade phonics program. Rather than labeling them with a disability, I saw their gifts and began to search for answers. I discovered reading centers around our country successfully teach children with "reading disabilities" simply by systematically teaching them the keys to unlock the English code. In this material I found the solutions to my own spelling difficulties and recognized its importance to logical-literal thinkers. With this systematic teaching they soared.
Their younger sister is kinesthetic, She thinks while moving. I have learned to incorporate kinesthetic activities into teaching reading, while developing the auditory connections and teaching the logical system to our language. Because of Ken Robinson she is now happily enrolled in an intense gymnastics school and I value her learning there as much as her book work.
In addition to writing, and beginning Pedia Learning, I have taught Logic of English classes for parents and teachers. Countless people come up to tell me "I wish someone had taught me this way in school. I thought there was something wrong with me."
Ken Robinson's talks are so influential because they touch a deep chord within all of us. He encouraged me to step out to try to change education and make a difference in people's lives.
Jordan Miller 20+
Claire McManus 30+
-I get mad at the stop signs after watching a speech about how roundabouts are so much better!
-I practice breathing daily after I saw a speech that called it 'brain-brushing,' like teeth-brushing, which totally changed how much of a burden I considered it.
-I have something to add or ask about in almost any conversation
-I went semi-vegetarian
-I recognize what an extraordinary time period it is to be alive for
-I feel like part of a global community
-I spend 10-20 minutes a day watching a TED speech- I've seen about 700 at this point. I also attended TEDxPSU, a TEDxGlen Echo watch party, and got into the Washington Post complaining about its TEDWomen coverage. TED makes real all the ideals we have about what humanity should be like.
jag . 50+
Ruud Janssen 500+
What has most influenced me from TED at large is how the TED brand has touched and influenced the way people percieve ideas and how they can be shared and ultimately brought to life.
The mechanics and succes strategy in activating video in TEDtalks, licensing the TEDx formats and open translation of content in itself has been a major source of inspiration.
It has changed my behaviour and business practices and how I spend my time contributing.
TED has touched many because it is cool, innovative and understandable for many yet tackles huge challenges much bigger than most can have.
Rick DeVan 10+