Khanacademy
is essentially a one man in the form of Sal Khan producing lecture videos and encouraging
‘flipping the classroom’. There has been controversy about Khanacademy
essentially being an ‘online chalk and talk’ system although I’ve also defended
the benefits of ‘flipping the classroom’. Now however, TED has come up with a brilliant open
alternative to create free lecture videos with an ability to flip. I believe
TED-ED’s ability to allow professors create customized MOOC like flip lectures
using the freely available Youtube videos will unleash much needed creativity
and critical thinking components into the education system. Given below are
some of the powerful features on TED-ED-
Turning Youtube into an Educational Video Resource
YouTube
holds a rich trove of videos that could be used in the classroom. However so
far, it’s been challenging to transform these videos into a truly interactive
part of a lesson. TED- Ed’s new platform
hopes to solve this problem—by organizing educational videos and letting
professors “flip” them to enhance their lectures.
Instructors
don’t have to rely only on TED’s educational videos to make their lessons. A
special tool can flip any video on YouTube, adding sections to a lesson page
where professors can write free-form questions and create links to other
resources.
Powerful New Features on TED- ED
The
TED-Ed site is both a portal for finding education videos and a tool for
flipping them.
Theme View- On one page, videos are organized by themes, such as the pursuit of
happiness and inventions that shaped history.
Category View- Instructors who want to use videos that are directly
related to the subjects they teach can visit another page, where videos are organized
in more traditional categories such as the arts and health.
Pre-Made Flip Questions- TED’s videos are displayed on lesson pages that include
multiple-choice quizzes, open-ended questions, and links to more information
about the material.
Customise Flip Questions - Professors who don’t want to rely on the pre-made content
can press a button to flip the videos and customize some of the questions.
Unique Video Link- With each flipped video, professors receive a unique Web
link that they can use to distribute the lesson to students and track their
answers.
Logan
Smalley, TED-Ed’s director, says that instructors could flip viral videos of
cats if they wanted to, he said. He said his group wanted to leave the
possibilities of flipped videos up to the people building the lessons.
“We
didn’t want to limit what people might want to use to teach,” he said.
Designers have also provided a way for users to flag any published lesson that
they feel is inappropriate.
The New
Teaching manifesto project I’ve created aims to bring the benefits of the
much wanted Multiple Intelligences and Bloom’s Taxonomy led creativity and
critical thinking skils into the classroom.
I strongly believe that the TED-ED approach to learning has
the potential to become an even bigger game changer than Khanacademy and could even
challenge the dominance of the ‘Celebrity Professor’ led popularity
of MOOC’s.
Related Posts