Do you want to listen to ideas worth spreading?

TED.com is a website devoted to global conferences where experienced and respected people share their thoughts and ideas with the world. The TED annual conference series began in 1990, and since June 2006 the talks have been offered for free online viewing through the TED.com website, which now has over 2,400 talks. Altogether, the talks have been watched over one billion times worldwide.

A great talk to start with is ‘How autism freed me to be myself‘ by 16 year old Rosie King, who challenges stereotypes of people with autism and contextualizes the issue by asking us, “Why be normal?” Rosie’s talk is only 6 minutes long, but has been viewed well over one million times and has both a transcript and multi-lingual subtitles. There are currently seven other TED talks on autism at http://www.ted.com/topics/autism+spectrum+disorder.

Other child & family areas to browse within the TED.com video library include:

Play (14 talks)  http://www.ted.com/topics/play

Family (19 talks) http://www.ted.com/topics/family

Parenting (26 talks) http://www.ted.com/topics/parenting

Children (92 talks) http://www.ted.com/topics/children

TED is owned by a nonprofit, nonpartisan foundation. TED’s speakers are given a maximum of 18 minutes to present their ideas in the most innovative and engaging ways they can. You can download most TED Talks in MP4 or MP3 format either directly from the website or through the TED app, which allows you to watch talks offline from your mobile device, although you will need to first download the TED app via iTunes or Google Play. This is great if you have a slow internet connection or you want to watch Talks when you’re travelling.