TED-Ed Educator Talks
The TED-Ed Educator Talks program provides a rigorous professional learning experience to a select group of distinguished educators throughout the world. The goal? To help them develop and share their ideas in TED-style talks.
Why Educators?
Educators are overflowing with brilliant, resourceful, innovative, and — in all likelihood — extremely under-circulated ideas. We seek to celebrate and elevate those ideas for the sake of improving student outcomes, bettering the experience of youth & adult learners, revolutionizing education and learning practices, and transforming the education landscape as a whole.
About the TED-Ed Educator Talks program
If accepted, program participants will join a cohort of selected educators and engage in a 4–6 month* learning journey utilizing synchronous and asynchronous modalities. The goal of the program is for educators to develop their own TED-style talk with help from TED-Ed staff and coaches. The TED-Ed team will then work to amplify finished and approved talks.
*Timeline is subject to change.
Tips for ideas
We ask applicants to think deeply about specific ideas they have connected to their work, research, and experience. To formulate an idea worth spreading an applicant’s idea must be new, unique, or can offer an insight or a new way of thinking to a large audience.
A TED Talk usually has a topic and an idea.
A topic is the high-level — the general direction you want to take the talk. (e.g. Students are dealing with a lot more trauma and mental health concerns.)
An idea is a specific angle that stems from the topic — a unique message, solution, or insight that only you can share. (e.g. When recurrent traumatic events happen, here is how we get students back to a place where learning can happen.)
Annual selection cycle & program timeline*:
*Note that the selection cycle is subject to change throughout the year. Please check our website regularly for timeline updates.
Late Spring
Applications open
Summer
Applications review, candidate consideration & selection
Fall/Winter
Educator Talks program & talk recordings
The application process
Stage 1
Submit an application form to apply or nominate an educator. The form contains questions to learn more about the applicant and their idea, along with space to share links and attachments related to the idea. These can include, but are not limited to, relevant research, articles, professional work, published material, and other talks from the applicant, etc. Think of this stage as the “Thesis”.
Stage 2
The strongest submitted applications will move on to Stage 2. In this Stage, applicants will be asked prompts and follow-up questions to give more context to their ideas and related professional experience. If Stage 1 is the “Thesis”, Stage 2 is the analysis, explanation, and detailed evidence that persuades and inspires the listener of the idea’s merit and potential for impact.
Sign up to be notified when the application opens!
Examples of educator ideas
Frequently Asked Questions
We know that the field of Education is vastly complex, contextualized by location, and constantly evolving. Because of this, we believe and define “educators” as those who impact learners and may or may not be directly situated in a school setting. Therefore, for this program, we select participants who:
- Are brilliant, values-driven, innovative leaders with demonstrated results and commitment in the field of education, human development and learning
- Have a track record for leadership in nonprofits, for-profits, and/or schools designed to aid the learning experience & development of youth or adult learners
- Are adept at public speaking and wish to deepen their strategic communication skills
- Are eager to build relationships with other educators across the country and the world
- Can speak to the demographics they work with, the impact of their work, and how equity plays a role
- Have thought deeply about their idea and have experience and data to speak to the idea
- Are fluent in English
- Are ages 21 or older
Yes! For selected participants, this program offers a free professional development opportunity to develop their talk.
Yes! The TED-Ed team also runs the TED-Ed Student Talks program. It provides free, customizable activities for educators to support their students’ public speaking skills and socio-emotional well-being as they share their ideas with the world. Check it out here.