learning tool 7: TED-Ed

• Description of TED-Ed

TED-Ed is TED's youth and education initiative. TED-Ed's mission is to spark and celebrate the ideas of teachers and students around the world. Everything we do supports learning - from producing a growing library of original animated videos, to provide an international platform for teachers to create their own interactive lessons, to help curious students around the globe bring TED to their schools and gain presentation literacy skills, to celebrate innovative leadership within TED-Ed's global network of over 250,000 teachers. TED-Ed has grown from an idea worth spreading into an award-winning education platform that serves millions of teachers and students around the world every week. 

• Features of TED-Ed.

1. Each video featured on the site is mapped via. Tagging to the traditional subjects taught in school. Users can browse for videos by subjects. Popular subject categories include Arts, Literature and Language, Business and Economics, Health, Mathematics, Philosophy and Religion, Social Studies, Psychology, Science and Technical subjects and Thinking and Learning. Search can also be done by Series, which offers a collection of related videos and Best Flips, which are the exceptional and featured user created lessons or flips.

2. One of the most powerful features that TED-Ed offers is the ability to track and measure various forms of engagement within each TED-Ed lesson over time. All tracked progress is reflected in the ‘You’ section of the site. As a learner, you can track all of the multiple choice answers, written responses, or discussion topic responses that you save to any lesson that you have viewed, started, or completed. For educators, ‘You’ section keeps track of any lesson you have started creating or that you have completed and distributed to your learners. Your work is constantly saved, so if you started creating a Lesson but didn’t have time to publish it, you will find it waiting for you in the ‘Flips in Progress’ section the next time you log in.

3. The newly launched TED-Ed Community, a new section of the website that allows teachers and students to share their ideas and ask questions that relate to TED-Ed and to education at large. Here you can find the educators and animators behind the original TED-Ed lessons, brainstorms, collaborative lesson pitches from teachers around the world, curated lists of suggested videos to flip and much more.

• Benefits of TED-Ed in teaching.

There is an open discussion pages for users as well.

1. TED-Ed empowers teachers with free tools to create lessons for use in the classroom. The platform allows them to take any useful educational video, not just TED’s, and easily create a customized lesson plan around it. Teachers can tailor video content to enhance the way students learn and interact with curriculum. They can take a video done by another teacher and give it their own voice. They are not restricted to flipping the featured TED-Ed videos and can also create a lesson from scratch using any video from YouTube that permits third party embedding, which a majority of them do. Teachers can then offer these lessons for wider distribution, and the best of them will be subsequently featured on the TED-Ed site for others to make use of.

2. Teachers can customize their video lesson to make it more engaging using the new features that TED-Ed offers. One such feature is Think, using which teachers can add questions around the video, which can be multiple-choice questions with time coded video hints or open answer questions that invite thought provoking written responses.

3. Using the Dig Deeper section, teachers can expand upon the video with articles, references or links to an application or even their own blog. In this way, teachers can extend the lesson and get the students thinking beyond simple questions. It encourages students to research and study in depth about a particular concept or topics that interest them. Teachers can use the Dig Deeper question to tie the online work back into the classroom.

4. The Discuss feature lets teachers create discussions around crucial topics and those which are of particular interest to their students. Here, teachers can open a new discussion, view old discussions and create new ones. Discussions can be guided or open. They not only help teachers and students grasp hard concepts but also help connect the wider community to each other.

•  Benefits of TED-Ed in learning. 

1. Privacy

In order for students to save their work (i.e., their answers to the questions) they need to have an account as well. The TED-Ed privacy policy indicates that in addition to account information and cookie use, comments made on discussions are public. However, it is possible to modify account preferences so that discussion comments you make are attributed to “anonymous.”

2. Ease of use

Easy to use with a very clean interface. New users receive welcome emails with tips for getting started and there is a pop-up interface for feedback and comment. There are also a series of FAQ pages available. There does not seem to be a comprehensive start-up guide available. 

3. Impact on Student Learning

This is a tool which contributes to both motivation and assessment, but only if the videos available are consistent with the curricula.

4. Cost

The tool is completely free. 

5. Accessibility

Accessibility: This is a tool for presenting information visually, thus sight of the user is assumed.  However, multiple contrasting colours and zoom abilities may help for those with impaired sight.  Sound quality, transcript availability and closed captioning depends on video source.

• Guidelines on getting started with TED-Ed.

1. Go to http://ed.ted.com.
2. Click “Register” to sign-up for an account.
3. View the featured lessons, click through to all existing lessons, or click “Create a Lesson.”
4. On the “Create a Lesson” page, enter a keyword to search for possible videos or a url if you know what video you want to use.  
5. After selecting a video you will be moved to the “Create a Lesson” page. Note there are currently two versions of the page with different interfaces, but they have the same functionality and you can switch back and forth by using the link in the upper right hand corner.
6. Change the lesson title, if needed.  Add the following content:  introduction, questions, discussion, supplemental info, and conclusion.
7. Use the “More” button to preview the lesson or get help.
8. Use the “Publish” button when you are ready to share the lesson by generating a link or sending the lesson to entered email addresses.
9. Watch your email or login to your account to see your dashboard, which will include all the lessons you’ve created or begun to create, as well as lessons and discussions you’ve participated in. You can also control settings and notifications in this area.
10. The tab beneath each video on your dashboard tells you what actions you might take, e.g., review students work, starting a lesson, or finishing a lesson.

TED-Ed interface.