TED has been a vital source of inspiration for many years now, for a variety of different topics. Now with TED-Ed, their aim is to inspire curiosity by harnessing the talent of the world’s best teachers and pundits.
The nonprofit organization devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading”, today launches the second phase of its TED-Ed initiative “Lessons Worth Sharing” : a groundbreaking website housed on TED.com that enables teachers to create unique lesson plans around TED-Ed video content.
TED-Ed launched in March with a channel on YouTube, as well as an open call for educators and animators to submit lesson ideas and animation reels. Just five weeks later, the channel (with 22 videos) has attracted more than 2.6 million views, 44,000 subscribers and more than 3,000 comments.
The TED-Ed site was built with an exceptional $1.25 million commitment from Kohl’s Department Stores, a program selling special merchandise with the aim of donating 100% of the net profit to benefit children’s health and education initiatives nationwide. It is launching today in Beta, and the content it currently contains – a few dozen videos – is for illustrative purposes.
One of TED-Ed catalysts , Logan Smalley, explains:
“ The new website is all about what teachers and students can do with those videos. The goal of TED-Ed is for each great lesson to reach and motivate as many learners as possible.”
To simplify things, each video featured on the site is mapped through tagging, to a traditional subject taught in schools, and the magic doesn’t stop here, it also comes accompanied with supplementary materials (such as multiple-choice questions, open-answer questions, and links to more information on the topic) that aid a teacher or student in using or understanding the video lesson.
Yet what differentiates the site is its incredible “flipping” feature; when a video is flipped, the supplementary materials can be edited and the resulting lesson is rendered on a new and private web page. The creator of the lesson can then distribute it and track an individual student’s progress as they complete the assignment.
If you yourself are an educator , you are not restricted to on flipping a featured lesson; you can contribute by creating your own lesson from scratch using video from YouTube that permits third party embedding, i.e. the vast majority. TED-ED will select the best and feature them for wider distribution.
As Ken Robinson once said:
“Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”
TED has certainly not lost sight of creativity, amplifying education with such a powerful new assist. We hope it will reap the brilliant results it most definitely deserves.
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