Sometimes Youtube can be a trap with nothing but trending videos; such as the 100 layers of makeup challenge and cute cat videos. Other times it can be a wealth of knowledge with it’s educational videos like discovery news, The Young Turks, and TED Talks–my personal favorite.

The videos are educational, succinct, clear, entertaining, and all you have to do is listen and/or view the TED Talks themselves. You don’t have to take notes or sit for an hour listening to someone drone on because that’s not how TED Talks were designed. They were designed so you could take in information about topics such as poetry, fashion, music etc. in a fun, innovative, medium length format.  TED itself  is a nonprofit organization dedicated to spreading ideas in lectures that are 18 minutes or less. It began in 1984 as a conference and covered Technology, Entertainment, and Design (hence TED) from science to business to global issues in more than 100 languages.

The first six TED Talks were posted online on June 27, 2006. By September, they had reached more than one million views. TED Talks proved to be so popular that in 2007, TED’s website was relaunched around them. This gave their global audience free access to some of the world’s greatest thinkers, leaders, and teachers.

I could watch and listen to TED talks all day long. I appreciate their message. Every time I watch one, I leave feeling refreshed and more intelligent. It always leaves me with a sense of purpose and happiness when I have little golden nuggets of truth to offer up in conversation with my friends and family. I walk away feeling transformed into a more educated being, yet at the same time feeling connected to something bigger than myself. This is a wonderful feeling to have.

Imagine you’re on a quest for enlightenment and you have very little time to sit down. However, at this point in time you have a great need to be educated. Thanks to living in a today’s day and age you have technology at your fingertips. So, you pull out your cellular device or tablet/laptop and connect to any video streaming app. You type in the video topic you wish to inquire about, such as poetry, and immediately search results pop-up. There are many poetry themed TED Talks on the web. You choose the one titled  Lee Mokobe: A powerful poem about what it feels to be transgender.  The video is four minutes long, yet it provides you with the very conceptual idea you wished to gain knowledge about.

This whole process took you five minutes or less. So, now all you have to do is sit back and take in the wisdom of the video. Congratulations you have just been privy to the wonderful adventure that comes along with experiencing a TED Talk. The beautiful thing about TED Talks is that this doesn’t just happen with videos about poetry, this happens with videos about any topics you wish to be informed about. TED Talks have created a free and accessible online vehicle for you and whoever else to gain information in a short, creative format to engage in with little to no stress on your part.  TED Talks are so cool and ingenious because they have adapted to the ever changing world of learning. They not only provide these videos online free of charge, but also are an excellent way to connect all members of society.  TED Talks will change your life; it’d be a shame to not give them a chance.