Podcasting as a tool

Podcast:

Links to websites mentioned in my podcast:

TED

Academic Earth

LSE Public Lectures

Creativity in (digital) Education

Following on from my blog on TED, I'm today going to look at how TED can be used as a tool for digital historians or indeed any academic. I'm going to look at the example of the most watched TED talk, given by Sir Ken Robinson on the subject of education, which has been watched over fifteen million times.

Robinson

Robinson is an "educational expert" according to his TED biography (whatever that might be) and has been involved in the creative arts most of his adult life. His talk keeps to the 18 minute limit that I mentioned when blogging about TED, and he is one of the best speakers I have ever listened to. He has a simple message, reform eduction to recognise creativity and innovation, his delivery is excellent and at times very funny. After watching his speech I read his wikipedia entry and eventually bought his book "The Element" which I read on a few days of commuting last summer.

His book is now in the top 1,000 on the Amazon best seller list (it has been out for over a year), so I am not alone in making the transition from watching his video to buying his book. TED seemingly has had a major role in promoting him, his views and his work; so how is TED able to do this, and how can historians use TED and the like to promote an idea or some research?

Why use the likes of TED?

Firstly it must be stated that not anyone can take part in TED! The point of this blog is not to look at TED as the only option, but to look at TED as a type of website, a formula that an inidivual, university or organisation could easily recreate for themselves.

TED is a great platform for academics because of the reputation the website has for quality talks and speakers (therefore is UCC or an organisation were to develop a copycat version of TED it would have to use strict quality controls.

The TED format makes it popular with viewers though is a challenge for academics to meet; yet a successful talk has so many benefits. It firstly will be watched by many on the website, then perhaps shared online through social networking websites such as Facebook and blogged about, providing a huge increase in its influence. Secondly, presuming the topic is interesting the 18 minute talk will serve to whet the apetite of the viewer and they will want to read more on the topic, thus giving an academic a receptive audience.

Authors promote their books on radio and television freqeuntly, TED is in one sense just another method. Some academics have created accompaning television series when they are launching their work. A six-part television series requires viewers to sit down for six hours, a TED talk allows them to be introduced to the idea in less than twenty minutes! In a world where people are and will continue in large numbers to access digital media "on the go" the TED format is far more versatile.

The success of YouTube has perhaps shown us that people have short attention spans and want to be introduced to something quickly.

Practical uses of the TED format

Imagine if lecturers created short TED style talks to introduce their modules? I remember just over a year ago sitting down with with classmates making our choices about classes, the first few module choices were easy to make, they were almost instinctive reactions when we read the title of the class. However I remember almost all of us were stuck with five credits left to allocate, a bad choice would bring misery and suffering on us for several months! Having a TED talk on subject choices or module choices not only helps people see what the class will be like, but also gives some insight into what the lecturer will be like. But in addition to all that it will force to lecturer to give a reason as to why this topic is important and will provide some overview as to what the whole course is about.

Ted Talks

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design - though not limited to those fields anymore it seems!) is a non-profit organisation which is famous for holding regular conferences where they promote "ideas worth spreading" (as their motto frequently states).

Speakers

At the elaborate conferences (mostly held in the US, but also in Europe) there are a series of lectures (or TED talks as they colloquially call them) given by speakers who are both:

1. Experts in their field.
2. Great speakers.

Examples of past speakers include the authors of Freakanomics, the founders of Google, Billy Graham and Al Gore, as well as countless academics, authors and businesspeople.

Format

A key point to note is that TED limit the talks to eighteen minutes. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that TED have produced some physiological research which states that that is the best length for a lecture to last, and a graph mapping the diminishing returns from longer talks!

The format of the conferences most definitely impacts the types of speakers, and thus their disciplines. The focus seems to be solely on the speaker, overuse of a slide-show is looked down upon, and even if used the slide-show ought to be unique in its style (and definitely the software they use!).

The "big ideas" that are put forward in such a small amount of time (compare it to a conventional lecture which would last a full hour or more) forces the speaker to do something nearly impossible, be both interesting (and often humorous) and get an idea across which has perhaps been the basis of several years of research, a great corpus of writing.

How to access

The conferences are recorded and are uploaded regularly to their easy-to-use website (www.ted.com) The website itself is excellent for a few reasons:

• It's simple.
• Their latest videos are on the homepage.
• If you hover over the video it gives all the basic information.
• Videos which are more popular appear as larger thumbnails.
• They have useful filters.
• The quality of the talks is excellent.
• They are downloadable, both as videos or audio files.

Academic resource

Students like to use Wikipedia as a tool for research for a number of reasons, chiefly it is comprehensive in scope, free and easy to use. I think the same can be said of TED, and other similar websites. Obviously TED is not an encyclopedia and comparisons to Wikipedia may seem naive, but the style is similar and that I believe is what makes it such a popular website.

Unlike Wikipedia we know who the person giving the talk is, they are accomplished in their field and are usually putting forward an idea that they have researched and written on. In addition the format (being a short and interesting talk) captures out attention, allows us to give our full attention to the speaker and perhaps be inspired to learn more on the topic.

Next

In the next blog I'm going to look at TED in more detail, using the example of it's most watched talk of all time. Hopefully in this blog was successful in showing the benefit of TED to students, proving that TED is a digital academic source. In the next blog I hope to be able to show the use of TED from the other perspective, not from the user but the provider. Why should academics (and perhaps historians in particular) use TED (and others like it).