TED-Ed

By Katrina Schwartz

There’s been a lot of excitement around TED’s foray into education, bringing its inspirational video model to the classroom. TED-Ed launched the YouTube Channel with produced and animated videos about two months ago and now includes a free service that lets teachers upload any YouTube video to its polished platform. Teachers can also make any of the videos — TED or any other — more relevant to their classes by adding customized questions and quizzes.

But it’s a work in progress at the moment, until educators can figure out the best ways to use the videos. The standard TED talk typically features a speaker, usually an expert in a subject, talking about innovations and inspirations. Most speakers cover topics in big, broad strokes, unlike, for example, Khan Academy videos, which parse and explain specific lessons in different subjects.

Under the math topic, for example, TED-Ed includes videos like How Folding Paper Can Get You to the Moon or Peter Donnelly Shows How Stats Fool Juries. For the curious, there are videos like Questions No One Knows the Answers To and The Power of Simple Words.

And it’s this curiosity that most teachers expect TED-Ed videos will feed. “I see them as a valuable inspirational tool,” said Aaron Sams, a high school chemistry teach in Woodland Park, Colorado who uses video lectures to supplement in-class learning. “It’s by no means a comprehensive understanding. It’s a good introduction.”

For example, Sams showed his class Just How Small is an Atom and incorporated the pre-made questions that accompanied it to give them a sense of awe about chemistry.

TED-Ed videos aren’t meant to be a substitute for what happens in the classroom, said Logan Smalley, TED-Ed’s director. “The videos, and the new TED-Ed platform, are resources that teachers can use to excite, inspire, and bring to life lessons that are already being taught,” he said. “The great thing about TED-Ed is that educators can use these tools however best suits their – and their students’ – needs.”

Stacey Roshan, a math teacher in Potomac, Maryland uses the videos in a similar way as Sams. She’s spent the last month preparing her juniors and seniors for the AP Calculus exam and said TED-Ed is “not good for cramming for the AP. But as far as inspiration to get them thinking and thinking critically it’s hugely useful.” Roshan sees TED-Ed videos as a way to access great lesson plans from teachers across the country.

TED-Ed is actively reaching out to educators for effective material that can be jazzed up by animators. “The animation piece alone engages the learner in such a different way,” Roshan said. “It’s such a powerful visual.”

POWER OF VIDEO

But the real power of the new TED-Ed site is the platform itself. Teachers can upload any YouTube video, including their own, to TED-Ed’s platform. They can add discussion questions, quizzes and monitor the progress of their students through a unique URL that the site generates.

“They made a really flexible tool for teachers,”  Sams said. He values the connection he forms with his students through his own videos, but he  thinks that TED-Ed’s animated videos are slick and potentially better than his own for getting his students excited about a topic. His own instructional videos can subsequently delve into the subject matter more deeply. Sams would like to submit his videos to the animators to be polished up.

Quiz from the "Power of Simple Words" video.

The platform for flipping YouTube videos also appeals to Roshan, who has embraced the flipped classroom model. Now students watch and re-watch the lecture at home, where they can absorb it at a leisurely pace. Class time focuses on solving problems. Like Sams, she’s excited by the opportunity to customize videos.

TED-Ed will be adding more videos to the site in the coming months – videos chosen to catalyze curiosity. Teachers can submit lesson plans for animation and TED-Ed staff will actively be seeking new material. That could include taking a video that a teacher has already made and found useful, adding animation and production finesse to make it catchier and then posting it to the site for anyone to use.

Scientists and engineers defy the impossible and have pushed beyond expectations because they were given the freedom to fail, she says.

How can this ideology be extended to the concept of learning, in and out of schools? Definitely worth watching the entire talk.

YouTube

All schools can now use the YouTube educational video site, youtube.com/education, without having to jump over Internet filtering hurdles.

For schools that choose to opt in to the YouTube for Schools Program, YouTube will redirect Web users who go to the site straight over to youtube.com/education. On this portion of the site, all comments are disabled and the only related videos are those that can be found in the Education portal of the site. The option has been created for parents, teachers, and administrators who fear children will be exposed to inappropriate materials on the site.

Teachers can choose from the hundreds of thousands of videos on YouTube EDU created by more than 600 partners like the Smithsonian, TED, Steve Spangler Science, and Numberphile.

After two months of piloting the YouTube For Schools program with more than 100 schools across the country, the program is now available to any school that wants to use it. Schools can sign up at youtube.com/schools.

And as promised, the site has been beefed up with content specific to K-12 education — thousands of more videos curated by teachers that align with Common Core Standards, according to Angela Lin, head of YouTube Edu. More than 200 playlists have been designated by subject — math, science, social studies, and English language arts — and by grade level. Teachers can find them listed out at youtube.com/teachers, the site launched in September that shows teachers how to use videos in classrooms. Teachers can also suggest their own education playlist on the site.

“Teachers have been through part of a months-long process watching videos to identify what make sense, what aligns with common core standards, and videos that they want to show in their own classrooms, whether it’s a great kick-off video to a subject or to demonstrate concepts,” Lin said. “The site is now gives teachers a way to find relevant content that’s easier and more efficient.”

YouTube is also partnering with education content-creators: The company is investing in 100 channels and content creators that will produce original programming exclusive to YouTube. The TED Education channel, for example, will include videos that are exclusive to the YouTube player, meaning that they won’t be available on Hulu or other online video platforms.

“We’re helping seed new channels in this space,” Lin said.

Videos from education organizations like the Spangler Effect, Numberphile, DeepSky Videos, and Crash Course will be on the Education site. Others include:

SCIENCE

• Newton’s laws of motion – OK Go – Rube Goldberg Machine
• Experiments – Steve Spangler – Oozing pumpkin experiment
• Light – minutephysics – There is no pink light

MATH

• Sums of infinite series – Vihart – Infinity Elephants
• Pythagorean theorem – PatrickJMT – Pythagorean Theorem

ENGLISH

Shakespeare – Open University – The History of English

To sign up for the Education network setting, network administrators can go to youtube.com/schools. They’ll fill out a form and receive an authentication key that allows them to modify the http header. If YouTube is blocked, as it is in most schools, they can unblock the domain because all YouTube.com links will be redirected directly to youtube.com/education.

This article is updated to clarify that YouTube is not creating content, but partnering with those that create content.