New initiatives from TED to share ideas, build community and stay hopeful

(Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Now more than ever is the time for community. The extended team at TED is working hard to keep you connected, deliver thoughtful news and insights from world leaders, and offer opportunities to volunteer from the safety of your homes. Here’s a recap of the various resources we’re making immediately accessible while many of us are staying home to help support medical systems. 

Join us for TED Connects: Community and Hope

TED is committed to being a reliable source of information with regularly updated talks, interviews and TED-Ed lessons related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The talks are vetted by TED’s curators — experienced journalists from fields including science, business, media and current affairs. 

We’re also announcing TED Connects: Community and Hope — a live, daily conversation series with global leaders and experts, hosted by head of TED Chris Anderson and current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers. TED Connects kicks off Monday, March 23 and is free and open to anyone. To participate, bookmark this page and join us daily at 12pm ET and subscribe for reminders.

This week, we’re featuring experts whose ideas can help us reflect and work through this uncertain time with a sense of responsibility, compassion and wisdom. Here’s the lineup:

• Monday, March 23, 12pm ET: How to be your best self in a time of crisis — Susan David, Harvard Medical School psychologist studying emotional agility 
• Tuesday, March 24, 12pm ET: The healthcare systems we must urgently fix — Bill Gates, business leader and philanthropist 
• Wednesday, March 25, 12pm ET: What we can learn from China’s response to the coronavirus — Gary Liu, CEO of the South China Morning Post
• Thursday, March 26, 12pm ET: The quest for the coronavirus vaccine — Seth Berkley, epidemiologist and head of GAVI, the vaccine alliance
• Friday, March 27, 12pm ET: How to create meaningful connection while apart — Priya Parker, author, The Art of Gathering

New from TED-Ed: TED-Ed@Home

We know people are at home with a variety of needs, including homeschooling kids of all ages and grade levels, which is why TED-Ed is ramping up its nearly decade-long education initiative. TED-Ed’s library of interactive lessons has been built by a network of 250,000 educators and features remarkable TED-Ed Animations as well as other educational videos.

TED-Ed@Home is a new, free, daily online learning experience for students, teachers and parents. TED-Ed is working with expert educators and TED speakers around the world to create and share free high-quality, interactive, video-based lessons made available via TED-Ed@Home. To get daily lesson plans delivered to your inbox — organized by age group and spanning all subjects — sign up for the TED-Ed@Home newsletter.

And another fun thing: feed your curiosity and stay engaged with the TED-Ed Daily Challenge. Join @tededucation on Instagram Live each weekday at 2pm ET, when TED speakers, educators and experts from around the world will share creative, interactive, family-oriented lessons and challenges you can do together at home.

TED Circles: A resource for community and connection

Meaningful conversations create personal connections that collectively strengthen communities. In September 2019, TED launched TED Circles: an open platform of small, volunteer-led groups that engage in conversations about ideas. In light of the physical limitations many communities currently face, TED Circles is a powerful way to continue connecting and engaging (virtually) face-to-face on a variety of topics. With TED Circles, hosts pick a TED Talk, invite people to join and facilitate a constructive conversation. Circles then share their takeaways online so that the group can gain one another’s perspectives and create global connections.

Learn more about joining a virtual Circle and join us for April’s program, which will launch on March 28. It’s themed “A changing world” and focuses on understanding pandemics and immediate actions we can take. 

Circles can be hosted by individuals, schools/universities, organizations/businesses, TEDx organizers and TED-Ed clubs. Sign up to become a host.

Virtual volunteerism: Become a TED Translator

Speak another — or many — languages? The TED Translators program is a global volunteer network that subtitles TED Talks and allows ideas to cross languages and borders. For those who are multilingual, being a TED Translator is a unique opportunity to have impact from the safety of your living room — while connecting and collaborating with a global community. Learn more about how to become a TED Translator. 

Gratitude

In this challenging moment, our global community inspires all of us at TED. We want to be here for you and hope these platforms offer connection, information and even inspiration as we work through this time. We must lean on one another for collective insights, learnings, kindness and compassion — as well as our physical health. We are eager to see you soon, and in the interim we hope these opportunities to connect offer meaningful moments of engagement.

from TED Blog https://blog.ted.com/new-initiatives-from-ted-to-share-ideas-build-community-and-stay-hopeful/
via Sol Danmeri