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TED Talks

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Abstract

With more than one billion views to its credit, the TED Talks website seems to have overcome the obstacle of academic–lay people communication and represents a highly successful form of science popularization. TED began in 1984 as a conference at which individuals from technology, entertainment and design, hence the name TED, convened to discuss their best ideas. With the advent of the Internet, TED’s influence has expanded significantly. The organization began to incorporate speakers from various disciplines and post lectures online. In a mere 18 min, speakers present their most innovative ideas in a manner that most individuals can understand, identifying the problem they were trying to solve and the solution they created. There are over 1000 free talks on TED.com, and additional talks are added weekly. Later, TED expanded into education front. TED launched its TED-ED site, which provides features customized for educators. This chapter will discuss the science behind TED and try to answer the question “Should TED Talks be teaching us something?”. The chapter will discuss also the demographic and academic credentials of presenters and use of TED Talks in education, TED and student/teacher motivation. The chapter will expand to discuss the art of TED Talks and how to design a successful TED Talk and storytelling techniques.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. King’s College London, Darent Valley Hospital, Dartford, Kent, UK

    Yasser El Miedany

  2. Rheumatology and Rehabilitation, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt

    Yasser El Miedany

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  1. Yasser El Miedany
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El Miedany, Y. (2019). TED Talks. In: Rheumatology Teaching. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98213-7_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98213-7_17

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