TEDEducation

Some of you may be familiar with TED Talks “Ideas Worth Spreading”. A great site that provides short talks on a huge range of topics. The quality of speakers and talks that can be found on TED Talk is excellent. So now TED have created TED Education. A site that brings together outstanding lessons by educators all over the world and employs professional animators to then animate those lessons to produce a quality videos (no longer than 10 minutes) for you to use free in your classroom. This in itself is good but there are a number of other functions the site offers. You can customise (flip) the videos provided on the site to suit your class and track your students success/use of the video(s). The videos are accompanied by lessons which are not designed to replace good teaching but are there to supplement a teachers lesson. These lessons contain quiz questions, open ended questions and resources to dig deeper into the topic. This site has only just got up and running, at the time I posted this the video below had only been on You Tube for 15 hours. This means there are currently not a huge number of videos available just yet (62 at the time of this post).  I wouldn’t be put off by this however as I would be guessing this will increase rapidly over the next 12 months.

From the brief look I have had of the site it certainly seems to be more suited to secondary students.

Below I have embeded a couple of videos from Ted Ed including the TED Ed Website Tour plus one from Adam Savage (Mythbusters) who walks through two spectacular examples of profound scientific discoveries that came from simple, creative methods.

 

Click here to visit TED Ed Lessons Worth Sharing – put this site in your favourites!

Click here to visit TED Talks Ideas Worth Sharing – put this site in your favourites!

The Khan Academy/Flipped Classroom

The Khan Academy: The future of education? American 60 Minutes did a piece a couple of days ago about Sal Khan and The Khan Academy. The Khan Academy has inspired a whole new way of thinking called the ‘Flipped Classroom’ where students get the information at home through video and do their homework at school. The reasoning being that if students are accessing well thought out explanations about concepts and topics at home they are then prepared to do more activities and tasks in class with teacher help as opposed to ‘passively listening’ to the teacher explain concepts. I know Ed is using the Khan Academy videos with some of his students in Year 9 maths.

Here is the 60 Minutes segment. An amazing story of what one person has achieved (some of the software being trialled looks amazing).

 

New Education Portal

Senator Stephen Conroy and the Hon. Peter GarrettMP have announced a 19.94 million Education Portal linked to the Australian Curriculum. A funding arrangement between Education Services Australia and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation will allow access to the ABC’s vast content all of which will be digitised for the portal.

“Resources could include a free online tutorial service and the ability to take part in self-directed interactive learning activities using games, video, reading material, and quizzes.”

“Mr Garrett said the new portal would provide access to interactive learning resources, which will support the implementation of the Australian Curriculum. It is being developed by the ABC in collaboration with Education Services Australia (ESA).”

The portal will be launched in the second half of 2012. It is often easy to be sceptical of Government initiatives but I’m going to choose to be optimistic and if this online resource turns out ot be as good as it sounds it will be a valuable resource for teachers and students and their implementation of the Australian Curriculum.

Read the full press release here. Posted on the primary edutech website. Even if you’re not interested in the press release click on the link anyway to check out the site for great primary school tech based resources.