Recently I had the opportunity to explore The Webby Awards website (see link below). This website contains the "best" websites, apps, interactive advertising, online videos, and more from each year as far back at 1997. The awards are broken down into several categories, one of which is education. The 2011 winner for best education website was TED.com (it also won the People's Voice Winner for education). It does not surprise me that TED.com was the winner. I have had the opportunity to watch "TED Talks" during several of my education classes as well as in my own free time. The site is very informative, and I would suggest it to fellow educators as well as parents and/or students.
TED started out in 1984 and was meant to bring together three different areas: Technology (T), Entertainment (E), and Design (D). Since then the project has came to include many different areas, one of which is education. The main objective of TED is to display "ideas worth spreading". TED allows users to search their vast array of talks using tags. Currently under the education tag, there are 103 talks available to view. Talks can last upwards of 20 minutes or as little as 3 minutes, and they are about a variety of different ideas in the world of education. With myself currently being in teacher education courses, I have mainly viewed TED talks dealing with different ways to go about educating children as well as differentiation. One of my favorite speakers is Sir Ken Robinson. He offers great insight into a variety of topics in a funny, yet educational way. Overall, the website would benefit any teacher, whether they are a veteran or beginner, because the world of education is constantly changing. Teachers must always continue learning to be effective in their profession.
The possibilities with TED does not stop there however. Teachers could looks up TED talks on a variety of different topics to use in their class to start up an engaging debate. Students and parents could also use the TED website to explore any possible interests that they have dealings with the primary topics invested in the TED website. While people may not agree with all the opinions displayed on the website, they are still indeed ideas worth sharing.
More information can be found about TED at http://www.ted.com/ . More information on the Webby's can be found at http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php .
Mr. Craft,
ReplyDeleteTED seems like a very interesting website. I love the idea of being able to watch different videos about education as well as many other topics. I have not had the opportunity to watch videos from TED in classes like you have, but I agree that they are a great resource. One thing I noticed while perusing the website was that the search interface is not extremely helpful. When I searched education, 500 videos came up but were not sorted very effectively. Also, when you click on the categories under “Show talks related to,” only 19 videos come up for each category. Are those the newest videos related to that topic? Are the selections the top rated videos about each topic? Would you recommend using these videos to show in middle or high school classrooms, or would you recommend them for a teacher resource? If you feel some videos can be shown in classroom, what grade level do you think would be appropriate to show them in?
Sincerely,
Marissa McGrath
I am so happy that you have discovered TED! It is a wonderful site with endless resources for classroom engagement as well as student learning. I would even suggest branching out from the "education" tag and searching for appropriate TED talks for whatever you may be teaching. For example, on a unit of poetry, I would show Sarah Kay's TED talk. She is a spoken-word poet and discusses poetry and its possibilities in an enthralling manner even I as an English teacher could not imagine. Of course, before showing the students any TED clips, one must watch the entirety of the videos for inappropriate content. However, I believe many of the videos on TED could work easily into a lesson plan. In answer to the comment above, I believe the use of the TED website would work best in a high school classroom. The talks are often quite lengthy and, while delivered in an engaging way, are formatted as lectures. The teacher is typically the best judge of what works best in his or her classroom, but I think TED talks would be a welcome addition to any classroom. TED definitely deserved the Webby!
ReplyDeleteTo respond to both posts, I do believe that TED can be useful in a variety of ways. While I do agree that some of the searches may lead to odd results, it would just take some time looking around the site to find the areas that would work best for you. I think that TED could work in a middle school or high school setting as there are a variety of talks. Some talks are more complicated or complex than others, but that does not mean that all of them are that way. A teacher must only take the time to find the videos that work best for his/her class. I do think that TED could also be used as a teacher resource tool as well. Thanks for your posts!
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