Standing confidently in front of his peers senior and founder of TEDEd Club Hansen Punnoose has all eyes on him. Since starting TEDEd Club, a club focused on watching, discussing and creating TED Talks, Punnoose has stepped into his leadership position. Punnoose said the goal of TEDEd Club is to inspire members and give them a space to write their own TED Talk for people from around the world to watch.

An acronym for technology, entertainment and design, TED is a nonprofit organization created in 1984 by Richard Saul Wurman to communicate ideas from different fields and speakers. Punnoose said the process of writing a TED Talk can help people explore their interests and discover what they are passionate about.

“You will get better at exploring yourself and finding who you are, which I think is really important,” Punnoose said. “People are focusing on the work they have to do and never thinking about themselves and what they value.”

In agreement with Punnoose, Mark Bauman, TEDEd Club sponsor and Spanish Teacher at South, also believes that TEDEd Club can help students find their identity. By exploring what makes students unique, creating a Ted Talk can help foster the creation of students’ college essays.

“I think that everybody has an interesting story, so I see [Ted Talks] sort of paralleling with the creation of your college essay where you try to explain what makes you unique and what you are passionate about,” Bauman said. “I think [creating a Ted Talk is] a natural extension of that process.”

Another member of TEDEd club, Max Kassner, expressed that he enjoys the club, finding it to be a great opportunity to learn new ideas.

“[TED Talks] are super informative and they give me another perspective of the world,” Kassner said. “A lot of [TED Talks] are very unique and [are about] very abstract things I never thought of. [TEDEd Club] is kind of a break from the systematic education we receive from school.”

Now that the club is established at South, Punnoose said he hopes that the club can stay alive for future generations, even after he graduates.

“I hope that TEDEd continues to live on at GBS after I leave,” Punnoose said. “If you give it some time to grow, it can develop and flourish into a really good environment for people to share their ideas and think about life.”