A good friend of mine suggested that I take a look at the learning platform that TED-Ed (http://ed.ted.com/) has developed for teachers. It is a powerful platform that helps teachers (or administrators, or students – anyone, really) to take ANY video from TED or YouTube and easily turn it into a flipped lesson that learners can view and do anywhere, anytime they have access to a browser.
Take a look at the TED-Ed Overview video.
First, TED-Ed offers pre-made lessons on just about any subject for you to use with your classrooms. You can also browse by Series to see other thought-provoking lessons. You can use each lesson as-is, or you can flip them to customize the instructions, questions and resources to fit your lesson.
If you can’t find something there that you need, you can ‘Find & Flip‘ any video on TED or from YouTube. Search for the video you need, preview it, and then Flip it!
You will now start to build a lesson based on this video:
- Give it a title of your choice
- Let’s Begin… – State the learning objective or intended outcomes, introduce the topic and video
- Watch – Students watch the video
- Think – Create up to 15 different multiple choice &/or open answer questions about the content. You can even set video time code hints to help your students out.
- Dig Deeper – Point your students to other web content, provide notes, or link them back to your class Web site or any other online resource.
- Discuss – allows for interactive discussion on the video
Once you are done, Finish the Flip and you’ll get a custom URL to your lesson. This will allow you and your students to track their progress and how they have done on each lesson.
This learning platform is incredibly easy to use and has some amazing potential. It would even be a great tool for students to build their own projects to peer-tutor other students on any topic.
And… If the video does not exist on TED or YouTube, you can always record your own to upload and use for a lesson!