The 10 Best TED Talks of 2011

Watching videos online is usually considered fun, but generally a waste of time. Not so with TED videos, which are uniformly interesting, educational, inspiring, and enjoyable. If you haven't spent much time (or any) checking out TED videos, you should – and to help with that, I've compiled what seem to be the very best 10 TED videos of 2011. It was a grueling task, combing through the cream of the crop on the TED site, but somebody had to do it. Some of the talks may have been filmed prior to 2011 but all of the talks here were posted in 2011. How I Became 100 Artists You don't need to be an artist to appreciate Shea Hembrey's "How I became 100 artists," but if you are it's even more amazing. A Modern Take on Piano, Violin, Cello If music is more your thing, then the "Modern Take on Piano, Violin, Cello" entry from the Ahn Trio is a must-watch (and listen). 3 Things I Learned While My Plane Crashed Learning experiences like this, I could do without. How to Spot a Liar Your Favorites?

improve student presentation skills October 10, 2011 By: Lora Helvie-Mason, Ed.D in Effective Teaching Strategies Do you find that students often struggle to put together effective oral presentations? To help students, try this activity as a way to provide feedback before the big speaking day. The four-corners activity can foster confidence in students while informing them about effective non-verbal/verbal delivery, audience needs, and how to craft effective speaking notes. Using the four corners of the classroom, each student delivers his or her presentation to a small group, receives individual feedback, and then rotates within that group from speaker to audience member. Here’s how to structure the four corners: Preparation: You will want to schedule this activity at least a week before the presentation is due. Activity: Next, divide the students into four groups (a group for each corner). The instructor: The instructor moves around the room; stopping to listen in on each of the four groups and offer feedback.

London Review of Books · 5 February 2015 50+ Tools To Make You a More Efficient & Organized Designer | De As more and more web based tools solely created to help designers and developers in their mission to overpower sturfy web design come to life, we are plastered with one decision to make. Which of these tools benefit me the most? Many of these tools will indeed allow you to become a much better designer with the aid of tools that will help you code faster and become a bit more organized. This will allow you to actually save a great deal of time while also practicing good organizational skills all in one. Below you will find 50+ tools that will make you a better, faster, and more collective designer, if you use them correctly. Panic Coda, a shareware web development app for Macs. Firebug is a free, open source in-browser web development application for Firefox.

Ichi ju san sai: A lesson in less-is-more A couple of years ago, two of my students created a presentation extolling the virtues of eating a traditional Japanese diet and encouraged their fellow students—with evidence and anecdotes—to eat much less fast food. The secret to a healthy life, they said, was eating a traditional Japanese diet inspite of the ubiquitous fast food options in today's Japan. In this presentation they introduced a simple phrase — ichi ju san sai—which many students had not thought about, although they had heard the term before. ABOVE Here is one of their slides sketched first on the whiteboard. A lesson in variety & balanceWe can apply the spirt of ichi ju san sai to other aspects of our creative lives, including presentations. The principle behind ichi ju san sai is a good lesson in achieving variety & balance through simplicity.

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