Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: What Is the World Wide Web?

For Students 9th - 10th
The World Wide Web is used every day by millions of people for everything from checking the weather to sharing cat videos. But what is it exactly? Twila Camp describes this interconnected information system as a virtual city that...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Making a Car for Blind Drivers

For Students 9th - 10th
Using robotics, laser rangefinders, GPS and smart feedback tools, Dennis Hong is building a car for drivers who are blind. It's not a "self-driving" car, he's careful to note, but a car in which a non-sighted driver can determine speed,...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Silk, the Ancient Material of the Future

For Students 9th - 10th
Fiorenzo Omenetto shares 20+ astonishing new uses for silk, one of nature's most elegant materials- in transmitting light, improving sustainability, adding strength and making medical leaps and bounds. On stage, he shows a few intriguing...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Why Is Glass Transparent?

For Students 9th - 10th
If you look through your glasses, binoculars or a window, you see the world on the other side. How is it that something so solid can be so invisible? Mark Miodownik melts the scientific secret behind amorphous solids. [4:08]
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Animation Basics: The Art of Timing and Spacing

For Students 9th - 10th
Expert timing and spacing is what separates a slide show from a truly amazing animation. TED-Ed demonstrates, by manipulating various bouncing balls, how the smallest adjustments from frame to frame can make all the difference. [6:42]
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Fellows in the Field: Skylar Tibbits

For Students 9th - 10th
Skylar Tibbits and his team at MIT's Self Assembly Lab are working on materials to create 4-D printing. What exactly is 4-D printing? The Self Assembly Lab works to create physical objects that can self-construct from stored memory...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: High Altitude Wind Energy From Kites!

For Students 9th - 10th
In this brief talk, Saul Griffith unveils the invention his new company Makani Power has been working on: giant kite turbines that create surprising amounts of clean, renewable energy. [5:22]
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Supercharged Motorcycle Design

For Students 9th - 10th
Yves Behar and Forrest North unveil Mission One, a sleek, powerful electric motorcycle. They share slides from distant (yet similar) childhoods that show how collaboration kick-started their friendship- and shared dreams. [2:21]
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: How Benjamin Button Got His Face

For Students 9th - 10th
Ed Ulbrich, the digital-effects guru from Digital Domain, explains the Oscar-winning technology that allowed his team to digitally create the older versions of Brad Pitt's face for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." [18:04]
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: The Game Layer on Top of the World

For Students 9th - 10th
By now, we're used to letting Facebook and Twitter capture our social lives on the web- building a "social layer" on top of the real world. In his talk, Seth Priebatsch looks at the next layer in progress: the "game layer," a pervasive...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Defining Cyberwarfare in Hopes of Preventing It

For Students 9th - 10th
Can you imagine a future where wars are fought not with bombs and bullets but computer viruses and pacemaker shutdowns? Cyberware is unique in that it is not covered by existing legal framework and it often inspires more questions than...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Mysteries of Vernacular: X Ray

For Students 9th - 10th
The story of the word X-Ray is one of great thinkers. French philosopher Rene Descartes isolated the letters X, Y and Z to stand for unknowns, and centuries later, Wilhelm Rontgen discovered the X-ray, using the X for the unknown nature...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: The Shape Shifting Future of the Mobile Phone

For Students 9th - 10th
Fabian Hemmert demos one future of the mobile phone- a shape-shifting and weight-shifting handset that "displays" information nonvisually, offering a delightfully intuitive way to communicate. [4:15]
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: 4 Lessons From Robots About Being Human

For Students 9th - 10th
The more that robots ingrain themselves into our everyday lives, the more we're forced to examine ourselves as people. Ken Goldberg shares four very human lessons that he's learned from working with robots. [17:10]
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Inside Your Computer

For Students 9th - 10th
How does a computer work? The critical components of a computer are the peripherals (including the mouse), the input/output subsystem (which controls what and how much information comes in and out), and the central processing unit (the...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Image Recognition That Triggers Augmented Reality

For Students 9th - 10th
Matt Mills and Tamara Roukaerts demonstrate Aurasma, a new augmented reality tool that can seamlessly animate the world as seen through a smartphone. Going beyond previous augmented reality, their "auras" can do everything from making a...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Behind the Great Firewall of China

For Students 9th - 10th
Michael Anti (aka Jing Zhao) has been blogging from China for 12 years. Despite the control the central government has over the Internet "All the servers are in Beijing" he says that hundreds of millions of microbloggers are in fact...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: The Rise of Human Computer Cooperation

For Students 9th - 10th
Brute computing force alone can't solve the world's problems. Data mining innovator Shyam Sankar explains why solving big problems is not a question of finding the right algorithm, but rather the right symbiotic relationship between...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: A Universal Translator for Surgeons

For Students 9th - 10th
Laparoscopic surgery uses minimally invasive incisions- which means less pain and shorter recovery times for patients. But Steven Schwaitzberg has run into two problems teaching these techniques to surgeons around the world- language and...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Pool Medical Patents, Save Lives

For Students 9th - 10th
Patenting a new drug helps finance its immense cost to develop- but that same patent can put advanced treatments out of reach for sick people in developing nations, at deadly cost. Ellen 't Hoen talks about an elegant, working solution...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: How Much Does a Video Weigh?

For Students 9th - 10th
What color is a mirror? How much does a video weigh? Michael Stevens, creator of the popular educational YouTube channel Vsauce, spends his day asking quirky questions like these. In this talk he shows how asking the right questions can...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: From Mach 20 Glider to Humming Bird Drone

For Students 9th - 10th
"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" asks Regina Dugan, then director of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In this breathtaking talk she describes some of the extraordinary projects that her...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: How Does an Atom Smashing Particle Accelerator Work?

For Students 9th - 10th
An atom smasher, or particle accelerator, collides atomic nuclei together at extremely high energies, using engineering that exploits incredibly cold temperatures, very low air pressure, and hyperbolically fast speeds. Don Lincoln...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: The Beginning of the Universe, for Beginners

For Students 9th - 10th
How did the universe begin and how is it expanding? CERN physicist Tom Whyntie shows how cosmologists and particle physicists explore these questions by replicating the heat, energy, and activity of the first few seconds of our universe,...