Just got this email from Chris Anderson, TED Curator. Should be worthwhile for anyone interested in how to improve teaching and learning.
Dear TED community,
I am proud to announce that TED Talks Education, our first original televised event, premieres this Tuesday, May 7, on PBS stations across the US. It will be available globally on the PBS website starting May 8.
Hosted by John Legend, TED Talks Education asks how can we better inspire our students — and support our educators. TED, WNET, PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting teamed up for this brand-new one-hour special, launched in response to the high dropout rate in American schools.
TED Talks Education is an exhilarating night of new talks by Sir Ken Robinson, Geoffrey Canada, Bill Gates and some truly inspiring teachers. In fact, we’ve just posted the first of them today on TED.com. Rita Pierson, a teacher for 40 years, delivers a rousing call to educators to believe in their students and actually connect with them on a real, human, personal level.
Please set your DVR, and let your friends and colleagues know to watch on Tuesday, May 7, at 10/9c on PBS stations across the US (you can check local station listings at top right of this page) — and visit pbs.org/TEDTalksEd after Wednesday, May 8, to watch the whole show online. And we will be releasing most of the speakers as TED Talks from May 8-10 on our homepage.
Our intention was to create an authentic TED event, filmed in a way that makes it compelling television. We really think it worked. We hope you love it as much as we do.
My best,
Chris Anderson
TED Curator
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Chris Anderson, education, TED |
Best Practices for Legal Education 
As a teacher, I enjoy TED talks not only for the content, but also as an opportunity to study what makes certain talks so effective. There is even a book on the subject, “How to Give a TED Talk,” that breaks down the elements of a successful talk.
Having Bill Gates talk about education is like having Ted Bundy talk
about women’s rights, the prognosticators only revealing the core of
their evil. Education for Bill Gates is like his company, not meant to
empower creative individuals but to build monoliths of bureaucratic
automatons.
Curiously, the evidence to both of these malicious individuals arises from the same educational institution, the University of Washington, most notably its School of Law – where the politico Bundy was given free reign and the local lobbyist/bond underwriter firm of Gates Sr made, tellingly, one of its first pre-Foundation forays into ‘public relations’. That’s a subject I’ve written on, a story also picked up by the more mainstream Rick Anderson, in the Seattle Weekly.
http://www.motleytools.com/blog/1997/02/leveraging_the_law_through_the.html
In general the Microsoft Corporation has engaged in employment practices
that make second class citizens of many, many individuals – illegal
corporate immigrants, if you will. This can be seen from the beginning
in the 1990’s class action ‘perma-temp’ lawsuits against both Microsoft
and the local County Government.
http://www.bs-s.com/cases/c-microsoft-vizcaino.html
http://www.bs-s.com/cases/c-kingcounty-clark.html
Most recently, Chief Counsel Brad Smith – emerging as the visible civic
leader for the Corporation on a number of topics – has generated press
in his support for the single employer H1-B visa program – while,
curiously doing so very little to actually support the training of IT
engineers at local educational institutions.
The fact is the company was not built by smart people, it was build by Lawyers stealing smart people away from other companies – just like they now want to
steal away America from its owners for the benefit of their Enterprise
level corporate ‘clients’.The details, and FAILINGS of this
‘legal’ management style can be seen in a number of ways – here’s one
I’ve written up based on the comments of one Jack Abramoff – himself
known for a bit of untoward influence on higher education:
http://www.motleytools.com/blog/2012/09/microsoft_and_the_law_firm_pre.html