TED-Ed Puts TED Materials Under the Control of Teachers

Videos of previous TED talks can be customized with supplementary materials that include questions, quizzes and classroom activities.

TED, or as Gawker.com calls them, “Nerd Coachella,” is introducing a new platform that will allow teachers to take advantage of TED-created video content to put together unique learning opportunities for their students. TED-Ed, launched with the help of $1.25 million donated by Kohl’s Department Stores, currently hosts a few dozen videos put together from previously delivered conference talks which will give teachers a chance to experiment with the new tools.

Each video featured on the site is mapped, via tagging, to traditional subjects taught in schools and comes accompanied with supplementary materials that aid a teacher or student in using or understanding the video lesson. Supplementary materials include multiple-choice questions, open-answer questions, and links to more information on the topic.

The videos themselves are only part of the experience. What makes this platform special is the unprecedented opportunities to customize the content via a process called “flipping,” which allows teachers to edit or completely alter the supplementary content and pipe the information onto a private webpage whose access permissions could be individually set. That way, the administrator can track student progress through the material on a person-by-person basis.

In addition, teachers can use these tools not only on videos provided by TED, but any YouTube videos that allow embedding, which is a vast majority of them. The best combinations of video and supplementary material can end up featured on TED-Ed site for others to use. Thus, the site’s library of useful lessons will continue to grow as more users take advantage of it.

At the moment, the site is in a beta-test stage, but a full launch is planned for later this year.

Logan Smalley, who calls himself the TED-Ed Catalyst, describes the initiative as a way to make material already available on the TED-Ed YouTube channel more useful and robust. By introducing more customization options, the platform puts power into the hands of educators, converting a passive academic experience into a more active and engaging one.

Gawker.com writer Adrien Chen, who browsed through the videos currently available, particularly recommended “Schools Kill Creativity” as a good place to start, although judging by his tone, he was underwhelmed by the initiative’s potential:

With this initiative, America’s schoolchildren will learn important career skills, like how to dazzle a crowd of their peers using nothing more than a head-mounted microphone and dramatic pauses, and how to create a brand new buzzword out of two already existing buzzwords. We are gonna paradigm shift right past China, people.

Comments

TED-Ed Puts TED Materials Under Control of Teachers at newlearningonline

April 26, 2012 at 1:41 pm

[...] Julia Lawrence / Education News / 26 April [...]

Reply
Kevin

April 27, 2012 at 1:07 am

I’ve watched TED-Ed videos before and they are really quite interesting. Also, “Nerd Coachella” is very apt.

Reply
Joe

April 27, 2012 at 8:19 am

And how is this supposed to help education again?

Reply
- Mike
  
  April 30, 2012 at 8:30 pm
  
  I showed a TED video about Rube Goldberg machines (we were studying simple machines). the kids loved it. We then went about building our own Rube Goldberg machine. The way I understand this is that I could use this new technology to put the video plus my own supplemental materials including assignments on a webpage my students could log into allowing me to track each students progress. This doesn’t help how?
  
  Reply
Online Video Increasingly Used as a Teaching Aid - Get Online Business Degree - Online Business Degree

April 30, 2012 at 10:05 am

[...] TED-Ed is a popular new channel launched last month which generated over one million views in the first week. It pairs teachers with animators to create an engaging educational experience. TED-Ed’s mission is to create and aggregate high quality K-12 content. [...]

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Nick

May 3, 2012 at 7:03 am

Ted is an interesting site but if you want teachers to adopt the use of video in the classroom – which increasing numbers want to – you have to make it easily accessible, the appropriate video needs to be curriculum based (much of which is on TED isn’t), it needs to be easily identifiable so the teacher does not need to spend 2 hours search for something appropriate, and it needs to be supported, not only with Tech support, lesson plans, online testing …and more than anything, it should be effectively subtitled so as to enasure that the content is accessible to all students.

You want to compare the top online educational video providers then see the results of a recent survey that allows teachers and educators to identify who the leading online educational video providers are )and note TED is not even mentioned):

http://www.zaneeducation.com/online-education-comparison.php

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Online Video Increasingly Used as a Teaching Aid | My Blog

May 15, 2012 at 6:40 am

[...] TED-Ed is a popular new channel launched last month which generated over one million views in the first week. It pairs teachers with animators to create an engaging educational experience. TED-Ed’s mission is to create and aggregate high quality K-12 content. [...]

Reply