TED Community » Michelle Laughran

More About Me

I'm passionate about

True Education!

An idea worth spreading

Making live stream access to the TED conferences completely gratis for any and all public schools.

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A socio-cultural history of medicine

My TED Story

While it's true that anyone can access the posted videos of past TED conferences, nothing can substitute the experience of letting first-generation college students in rural Maine see it LIVE. I purchased an Associate membership so that my Honors students could partake in the intellectual adrenalin of watching brilliant ideas being shared live and in that very moment for the very first time with the wider world. Much to their own surprise, the students' exhilaration was palpable as they watched the conference unfold, with each talk adding to the electric inspiration generated by the last. I felt like I was sharing w/ them an exciting, secret world which exists beyond their usual reality, one they would have otherwise never known had existed. I believe *every* student deserves this opportunity to see TED live! By now, students are so inured by the ubiquity of YouTube that unfortunately such an experience just cannot be achieved by simply rendering the videos public after the fact.

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  A comment on Talk: Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food

  Feb 23 2010: From today's news - Teaching Kids to Eat Healthily: School Food in France (http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100223/wl_time/08599196706000)