Theatre of Dionysus, Athens, Greece;
photo credit Taylor McCrea

A "TED" Talk

 

So, maybe you've heard of "Ted" talks. TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). There are also a lot of Ted-like talks (TEDx), and there is much information available online about giving a TED-type talk.

Here are some good examples:

Yuval Noah Harari, What Explains the Rise of Humans?

David Christian, The History of Our World in 18 Minutes

Rolf Landua, What Happened to Antimatter?

Anne Broadbridge, The Rise and Fall of the Mongol Empire

Have a look at the TED website and some of examples of TED talks, and then consider a historical topic that you are really interested in.

As soon as we have some student examples done by brave students, then we will list them here.


In consultation with your instructor, decide on a historical topic that fits your course.

Please review the TED Content Guidelines.

Research, research, research and practice, practice, practice.

In most cases, you will have to upload your talk to YouTube and then submit the URL to me. (There might be some other places that you can use of your upload.)

You will have to make a video of yourself giving a talk, and that should be fairly well done. Your audio and video should be of great quality. There are many ways for you to do that.

You can use some of the editing features on YouTube to work on audio editing, etc.

So, in conclusion, your talk should: