(adapted from Scott McLeod)
These are the TED presentations most likely to interest, educate, and entertain administrators as well as make them think!
1) Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web - At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what's coming in the next 5,000 days?
2) Barry Schwartz on our loss of wisdom – Barry Schwartz makes a passionate call for "practical wisdom" as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. He argues powerfully that rules often fail us, incentives often backfire, and practical, everyday wisdom will help rebuild our world.
3) Brewster Kahle builds a free digital library - Brewster Kahle is building a truly huge digital library — every book ever published, every movie ever released, all the strata of web history … It's all free to the public — unless someone else gets to it first.
4) Jonathan Drori on what we think we know - Starting with four basic questions (that you may be surprised to find you can't answer), Jonathan Drori looks at the gaps in our knowledge — and specifically, what we don't about science that we might think we do.
5) Mae Jemison on teaching arts and sciences together - Mae Jemison is an astronaut, a doctor, an art collector, a dancer … Telling stories from her own education and from her time in space, she calls on educators to teach both the arts and sciences, both intuition and logic, as one — to create bold thinker.
6) Patti Maes demos the Sixth Sense - This demo — from Pattie Maes' lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry — was the buzz of TED. It's a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine "Minority Report" and then some.
7) Clay Shirky on institutions vs. collaboration - In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning.
Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity - Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.
9) David Perry on videogames - Game designer David Perry says tomorrow's videogames will be more than mere fun to the next generation of gamers. They'll be lush, complex, emotional experiences — more involving and meaningful to some than real life.
10) Stuart Brown says play is more than fun -
