Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script — give students video lectures to watch at home and do “homework” in the classroom with the teacher available to help. [Source: Let's use video to reinvent education]

2. Angela Lee Duckworth

Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn’t the only thing separating the successful students from those who struggled. Here, she explains her theory of “grit” as a predictor of success. [Source: Grit: the power of passion and perseverance]

3. Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. [Source: Do schools kill creativity?]

4. Rita Pierson

Rita Pierson, a teacher for 40 years, once heard a colleague say, “They don’t pay me to like the kids.” Her response: “Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.” Her Talk is a rousing call to educators to believe in their students and actually connect with them on a real, human, personal level. [Source: Every kid needs a champion]

5. Ramsey Musallam

It took a life-threatening condition to jolt chemistry teacher Ramsey Musallam out of ten years of “pseudo-teaching” to understand the true role of the educator: to cultivate curiosity. In a fun and personal talk, Musallam gives 3 rules to spark imagination and learning, and get students excited about how the world works. [Source: 3 rules to spark learning]

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