If you haven't watched a TED Talk yet, I highly recommend you do!  TED is a non-profit devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading" and stands for Technology, Entertainment & Design, an annual conference that started in 1984.  Since then, they've created a great video library of short (20 minutes or less) lectures on lots of interesting topics. 

The video embedded in this post is a great example of a shorter TED Talk.  If you like it, don't stop there!  Many of the speakers are also authors and you can follow up a TED Talk with the book!  For example, Sir Kenneth Robinson's TED Talk is one of the most-watched videos online.  And SJPL carries his book, Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative. 

Watch, then read!

Don’t have the time, money, or grades to go to Harvard? Well, there is now a myriad of free learning opportunities available online from top instructors and institutions across the world for just about every subject imaginable.

In the old days, the only free way to learn a new subject without was to check out a book at your local library. But if you’re anything like me, you probably can’t sit down and read a textbook cover-to-cover without experiencing a total brain shutdown. These online video courses offer a new, more engaging medium to help DIY learners master their desired subjects at their own pace and free of charge.

Here are a few free learning websites that are worth checking out:

• iTunes U - Free access to online courses from a large variety of top universities such as Stanford, MIT and Cornell. Requires iTunes (free to download).

• YouTube EDU - Another large collection of video lectures from various learning institutions. Search or browse by subject, university, or popularity.

• webcast.berkeley - A collection of free audio and video lectures from UC Berkeley.

• MIT OpenCourseWare - Nearly all of MIT’s courses are available free on this site, most with audio and/or visual components.

• Open Culture - A collection of links to free sources of cultural and educational media content including lectures, movies, audio books, and language courses.

• freevideolectures.com - A browsable collection of video lectures available on the web. Videos can be downloaded in a variety of formats as well as streamed directly from the site.

• LearnersTV - Another good place to browse a collection of online video courses.

• videolectures.net - A large collection of video lectures mostly taken from conferences and workshops, especially in the computer science field. Provides opportunities for interacting with other users.

• Academic Earth - A collection of free online courses from top universities, browsable by subject, instructor, or university.