Doing the dishes with TED
Posted by: doug in Wisconsin Idea, Emerging Technologies and Practices, Teaching and Learning, video, generalI do a lot of dishes. And for whatever reason, I’m always looking for something to do while I’m doing dishes.
My latest strategy for bringing together soap suds and self-improvement is watching the stellar series of TED videos. TED, or Technology, Entertainment, and Design, is annual conference where leaders and thinkers share their innovative ideas in short, 18 minute talks.
I’ve been happy to find that many of these talks are about education, new approaches to presenting and communicating complex information, or about emerging technologies of interest to educators and instructional technologists.
I’m just getting started on the TED talks (there are currently over 200 talks on the site and available through iTunes), but I thought I’d share a few of the talks I found most relevant to my work as an instructional technologist:
- Johnny Lee shows us a smart board, and a couple other neat things, that he built from a $40 Wii Remote. That’s cool as it is, but what I found most impressive about his talk was his enthusiastic approach to sharing his research. He says, “To me what is most interesting about either of these two projects is how people found out about them … I’m just a researcher in my lab with a video camera, and within the first week a million people had seen this work … literally within days engineers, teachers, and students from around the world were already posting their own YouTube videos of them using this system or derivatives of this work.” Now that’s the Wisconsin Idea!
- Sir Ken Robins argues, convincingly, that common approaches to early education stifle creativity
- Amy Smith talks about several “basic tools with world-changing results“
- Hans Rosling shares an impressive approach to presenting statistics, and calls for making statistical data more readily available to the public.
Now if I could only finish the dishes in a single 18 minute talk!
Got a favorite TED talk? Or better yet, a favorite way to keep your mind busy while doing the dishes? Let us know in the comments!
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April 23rd, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I too came across the TED archives a while ago and was amazed at the breadth and uniqueness of the topics.
One of my favorites is a demo of PhotoSynth. I don’t even know how to describe it, but it’s a new image retrieval and viewing system. Somewhat like PicLens in how you scroll through a series of images, but much more powerful.
Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129
As for fun while doing dishes, I discovered this old technology called a radio. It can tune in frequencies on the FM radio band. I like the music, but I can’t pick the songs it plays. Much like a podcast, you get what you get. ;-)
April 24th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
I had never thought of doing something while doing the dishes, and I do plenty. TED talks are a great idea.
I’m with Jeff. Photosynth is one of my favorite talks, especially when he remarks “I never thought I would ever receive that kind of reaction when I went to work for Microsoft.”
If I remember right E.O. Wilson, Dan Dennet, and Jill Boldt Taylor were also good talks.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Thanks Jeff and John!
You’re right - the Photosynth demo is impressive. I really like how is he is presenting to a very tech-savvy group, and you can still hear jaws dropping in the audience.
John - I’ll be sure to check out your suggestions. Thanks!
And as for radio - it was once my constant companion. Sometimes, now that I have so much more control over what I want to hear and when I want to hear it, I miss my favorite radio station, which didn’t let me pick the song, but was always full of new and exciting surprises.
May 3rd, 2008 at 10:22 pm
[…] took a great suggestion this morning and did my dishes while watching Yochai Benkler’s TED talk on Open-source […]