A prolific short story writer and blogger since age seven, Adora Svitak (now 12) speaks around the United States to adults and children as an advocate for literacy.

With his philanthropic work, John Legend is leveraging his stardom to raise social consciousness and make a positive impact on a global scale.

An entrepreneur since childhood, Cameron Herold wants parents and teachers to recognize -- and foster -- entrepreneurial talent in kids.

Astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison‘s inclusive, audacious journey to improving life here on earth and beyond is paving the way for human interstellar travel.

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenged the way we educate our children, championing a radical rethink of how our school systems cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

All over the world, there's growing consensus that our education systems are broken. These educators share big ideas on how we might re-imagine school.

Do schools kill creativity? Back in 2006, Sir Ken Robinson posed this question to the TED audience -- and boy, did it touch a nerve. More than fifty million views and a decade later, head of TED Chris Anderson sits down with Sir Ken to dig into the changes and progress that have been made, and to see if the answer now is any different. How are e...

Liz Coleman radically remade Bennington College in the mid-1990s, in pursuit of a new vision: higher education as a performing art.

JK Rowling penned the bestselling Harry Potter page-turners -- a spellbinding, seven-installment fantasy of wizards, warlocks and decidedly British texture that brought her from rags to riches.

Education legend Sir Ken Robinson picked the talks he loves — all full of insight, bright ideas and, of course, creativity.

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

Emilie Wapnick celebrates the "multipotentialite" -- those of us with many interests, many jobs over a lifetime, and many interlocking potentials.

Linda Liukas wants to create a more diverse and colorful world of technology, starting with the poetry of code.

As automation eliminates structured jobs and careers, schools should focus on training students to be bold, creative and entrepreneurial. Instead, argues education advocate Ted Dintersmith, the core purpose of education has been lost in a wave of testing, data and increasingly irrelevant metrics. In this talk, he underscores the need to educate...

Child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs "childish" thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids' big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups' willingness to learn from children as much as to teach.

A delightfully useful collection of explanations, how-tos and amusing trivia.

Science is about discovering the wonders of how our world works. From physics to biology to neuroscience, channel your inner Mr. Wizard as you watch these talks.

Taylor Cassidy advocates for better representation, education and creativity on and off the internet.

During the Cold War, Soviet educators were tasked with raising citizens who could out-innovate and out-build their American counterparts. One of their primary tools for doing so? Math. Educator Masha Gershman describes how the adaptive, highly social Soviet approach to teaching math can be deployed to prep new generations for an ever-shifting fu...

These crafty talks will ignite passions, pique interests and introduce kids to the excitement of hands-on learning.

2013 TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra is an educator who helps kids learn to teach themselves. Here are 5 talks that align with his vision of education's future.

The wildly diverse, thoughtful and hilarious world of fanfiction -- where writers reimagine favorite stories like "Harry Potter," "Pokémon," "My Little Pony" and more -- is ever-growing and becoming a vital social and learning tool. Author, professor and fanfiction writer Cecilia Aragon has observed how this incredible outlet for creativity enco...

Imagine a set of electronics as easy to play with as Legos. TED Fellow Ayah Bdeir introduces littleBits, a set of simple, interchangeable blocks that make programming as simple and important a part of creativity as snapping blocks together.

At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play -- with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn't).

Some kids learn by listening; others learn by doing. Geoff Mulgan gives a short introduction to the Studio School, a new kind of school in the UK where small teams of kids learn by working on projects that are, as Mulgan puts it, "for real."

If you want to build a team of innovative problem-solvers, you should value the humanities just as much as the sciences, says entrepreneur Eric Berridge. He shares why tech companies should look beyond STEM graduates for new hires -- and how people with backgrounds in the arts and humanities can bring creativity and insight to technical workplaces.

Educator and activist Geoffrey Canada chose a powerful list of favorites — talks that address the cycles of poverty and gender violence, and offer bold suggestions for change.

Bennington president Liz Coleman delivers a call-to-arms for radical reform in higher education. Bucking the trend to push students toward increasingly narrow areas of study, she proposes a truly cross-disciplinary education -- one that dynamically combines all areas of study to address the great problems of our day.

Forget home economics and standardized tests, education visionary Trish Millines Dziko has a much more engaging and fulfilling way for students to develop real-world skills. Get schooled by Dziko as she shares how project-based learning can transform public education and unlock genius for the next generation of critical thinkers, problem solvers...