Friday, October 9, 2009

Ted Talks course at UMW

I just read about a Freshman Seminar-type course that revolves around Ted Talks as the field for exploration. The course, taught at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA, includes student-led discussions on Ted Talks that they find interesting, further written comments from students on the course blog, as well as presenting their own Ted-format talk.

What a great idea for fostering student-interest driven discussions as an introduction to the world of ideas as they enter college, and "the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world". There could be all kinds of possibilities for information literacy instruction too, but with some juicy content to explore.

Here's the syllabus if you'd like to read more. [EK]

2 comments:

Amanda said...

Thanks, Emily! This is great information.

Unknown said...

Thanks for posting. I taught a Freshman seminar at U of Washington in Winter 2009, Inspiration from Contemporary Thinkers: Finding Your Place in the Universe, in which I used ted.com for one of their assignments. I would be glad to share my experiences with this if anyone is interested. Deborah