From pirate supplies to Bat Cave: homework help a winner

by Miraz on 25 July 2008

If you have broadband it’s absolutely worth keeping an eye on the TED Talks, maybe even subscribing to the feed in iTunes.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design.

The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

The talks available through iTunes are almost always interesting, thought-provoking, engaging. The theme is generally about how to make the world a better place.

Speakers have included not only many people I hadn’t heard of before, but famous people such as Stephen Hawking, Jane Goodall, Billy Graham or Al Gore.

Dave Eggers spent 25 minutes (an 85Mb file) showing and explaining in a very entertaining way how and why he set up an after school homework programme offering one-on-one tutoring to local kids. He explains how they got off to a bad start — no kids attended the programme for weeks — and then how it became not only successful, but such a success the programme spread to other cities, other countries and broader concepts.