Tag Archives: TedTalks/Ted-Ed

Hola from Mexico!

23 Jun

Greetings from Mexico City! It has been a while since I last posted on my blog. The end of the school year kept me quite busy. School ended a little over a week ago. Our family spent five days in New York State with my family and we arrived in Mexico City last night to spend two weeks with my wife’s family. I have missed some “Ted-Ed Tuesday” posts so I am going to make up for them here. Since I am in Mexico, I will share two Mexico-related videos, one from Ted-Ed on Frida Kahlo, an artist I really admire, and the another video from The British Museum on the Day of the Dead celebration and festivals in Mexico. Both are excellent!

Video by Ted-Ed

From Ted-Ed: Learn about the life and art of Mexican surrealist painter Frida Kahlo, who explored disability, relationships and Mexican culture in her work. In 1925, Frida Kahlo was on her way home from school in Mexico City when the bus she was riding collided with a streetcar. She suffered near-fatal injuries and her disability became a major theme in her paintings. Over the course of her life, she would establish herself as the creator and muse behind extraordinary pieces of art.

Video from The British Museum (2015)

From the British Museum: In 2015 the British Museum celebrated the Days of the Dead in a four-day festival full of color, music, storytelling and art. This beautiful documentary introduces the history and evolution of the Mexican Day of the Dead, from its pagan beginnings to the multi-faceted ceremony it is today.

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Ted-Ed Tuesday: Let’s make history…by recording it

4 Jun

What if Anne Frank hadn’t kept a diary? What if no one could listen to Martin Luther King’s Mountaintop speech? What if the camera hadn’t been rolling during the first moon landing? Actively listening to the voices of the past and the people who matter to us is important, and StoryCorps wants you to lend your voice to history, too. Here’s how. Click the link to learn more about this really interesting Ted-Ed video that makes me connections to the work of National Geographic and Out of Eden Walk journalist, Paul Salopek. His walk is about practicing slow journalism and talking to people he meets every day on the trail and hearing their story.

If you could ask any person from the present or past to tell you their story, who would it be? What three questions would you ask them to get the conversation started?

If you could ask any person from the present or past to tell you their story, who would it be? What three questions would you ask them to get the conversation started?

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Ted-Ed Tuesday: How Many Verb Tenses Are There In English? / The History Of Chocolate

28 May

How many different verb tenses are there in a language like English? At first, the answer seems obvious — there’s past, present, and future. But it isn’t quite that simple. Anna Ananichuk explains how something called grammatical aspect, each of those time periods actually divides further. LINK to Ted-Ed

Think about/Discuss:

Do you think the way we speak about time in our mother-tongue influences the way we experience time? Why or why not?

If you can’t imagine life without chocolate, you’re lucky you weren’t born before the 16th century. Until then, chocolate only existed as a bitter, foamy drink in Mesoamerica. So how did we get from a bitter beverage to the chocolate bars of today? Deanna Pucciarelli traces the fascinating and often cruel history of chocolate. LINK to Ted-Ed.

Think about/Discuss:

Chocolate is made into cakes, cookies, candy and ice creams. What are the chemical properties of chocolate that enable the product to be transformed into so many other items?

 

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The History of Dogs / Why Do We Itch #Ted-EdTuesday

21 May

I have rediscovered how awesome Ted-Ed videos are and I have decided to share one or two each week on Tuesday (hence my hashtag). Check out the Ted-Ed website (LINK) to see more cool videos. Most videos average about 4 – 5 minutes in length, and you could watch them in the car on the way to school. Learn something new, hear some fun facts, and enjoy. 

Since their emergence over 200,000 years ago, modern humans have established communities all over the planet. But they didn’t do it alone. Whatever corner of the globe you find humans in today, you’re likely to find another species as well: dogs. So how did one of our oldest rivals, the wolf, evolve into man’s best friend? Learn about humanity’s first domesticated animal.

The average person experiences dozens of individual itches each day. We’ve all experienced the annoyance of an inconvenient itch — but have you ever pondered why we itch in the first place? Is there actually an evolutionary purpose to the itch, or is it simply there to annoy us? Emma Bryce digs deep into the skin to find out.

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