TED

Have you met TED?

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, which was the organization’s main focuses when they started holding conferences in 1984. Today, TED is well known for its international conferences and digital TED Talks by experts on a wide variety of topics. Their tagline is “ideas worth spreading”. TED Talks range anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes in length.

You can access TED Talks in several ways.

First, you can go to their website. Here, you can either watch TED Talks without an account for free, or create a free account. You can sign up for a daily TED Talk email, a weekly digest email, or opt out of emails altogether. With a personal account, you can save talks to watch later and mark “favorites”.

Second, if you have a smartphone, you can download the free TED app. Be sure you download the one called simply TED, from TED Conferences LLC, rather than an imposter app called TED Talks. The only real difference between accessing TED on the web versus through the app is how the video displays. If you want to watch videos on your mobile device, download the app. If you want to watch videos on your computer, go to the website.

Finally, TED is also available as a free “channel” via various streaming television devices like Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast, and Amazon Fire. Consult your device’s menu options for help adding the TED channel.

So, how can TED help you do your work better? Here are some ideas:

·         Find new ideas to stretch your understanding, like driverless cars, and consider how they might apply to the work you do

·         Learn about a new breakthrough or understand a topic better, e.g. pain relief or antibiotics

·         Get a basic understanding of that topic everyone is talking about, e.g. introverts or intrinsic motivation

·         Find out more. Most TED Talks are based on research from published books or articles you can access through the USA Library. For example, Carol Dweck’s talk “The Power of Believing that You Can Improve” is based on her book Mindset and her more scholarly Self-Theories. You can also type a speaker/author’s name into Search USA to find more of his/her work, interviews, articles, and more.

 

Don’t know where to start? Watch the 20 most popular TED Talks first, and explore from there.