TED: Ideas Worth Spreading

Thanks to my subscription to Free Technology for Teachers on my Google reader, I've discovered TED: Ideas Worth Spreading. TED is a database of sorts of Technology, Entertainment, and Design ideas (TED). There are all sorts of videos of speakers, music, lectures, and so much more--all for free that you can watch. There are also a variety of subjects, such as science, beauty, technology, business, etc. The fact that it's videos reminds me of YouTube, but TED's focus is to provide learning experiences for viewers, experiences of a richer nature I guess you could say. I am really excited about finding this website, because I can see it being a great tool for teaching. For example, I could have the class watch a video under the subject "Media with Meaning," which could lead to multiple discussions on interpreting media's audience, purpose, and more. Through TED, students can be exposed to more texts than the traditional texts such as novels. The world is full of texts through music, art, movies and TED provides some thought-provoking texts worth analyzing.