Ted Talks have always been something that I have been really interested in watching and using as a form of professional development. It seems ridiculous not to tap into such an amazing resource which brings professionals, experts and free professional development to your living room.
And then it happened... they made Ted Talks even better by establishing Ted Ed http://ed.ted.com/
Ted Ed is a free educational website for teachers and learners which is used to engage and motivate students in a broad range of curriculum areas. This global initiative incorporates quality video lessons with series of comprehension and learning discussions to fully engage students via ICT.
The videos are created by top educators and animators to deliver content to students in an interesting manner which also targets their thinking at a child friendly level. My class personally love Ted Ed talks and are becoming more in tune with the notion of flipped learning. This is something I am introducing more this term in large using Ted Ed talks as a basis for discussion and collaboration.
Flipping Lessons - this was a new term to me and I believe it has the power to change education and empower students by strengthening home and school links.
Dr Stuart Middleton explains flipped classrooms really well here on the Cognition website http://cognitioneducation.com/blog/another-flipping-change-flipped-classroom
On Ted Ed you can take a lesson that another educator has created and flip it to suit your class. This simply means copying the format of the lesson but tailoring it to suit your learners needs; altering questions, adding further reference sites, including follow up tasks or discussion topics for different groups within your classroom. This is such a powerful means of differentiation and targeted learning and teachers would be crazy not to utilise the amazing resources and lessons that are already being made by talented and cutting edge educators from around the world!
Flipping lessons can also be taken to the new level which is something I am hoping to do on a more regular basis within my classroom. Why do we so often use the class time for watching, observing and doing the ground work of knowledge learning and front loading? Because this is what we have always done it is natural that this is how lessons are generally formatted in a classroom situation. However, contact time with the teacher and fellow peers is so limited that if we could take the front loading and initial learning stages and get children doing this at home as part of their homework or non-contact learning time, then we could facilitate higher order learning and discussions during class sessions.
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/let-s-use-video-to-reinvent-education-salman-khan is worth a watch. This is able using ICT websites and tools (in this particular case, Khan Academy) to flip tradition learning on its side and change how children think and learn at home and in class.
Collaboration it the key and I really think that the notion of a FLIPPED classroom is the key to collaboration!
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