I had something come across my desk here that I thought I would share with all of you.

TED-Ed: Lessons Worth Sharing & the People Who Teach Them

I’m sure by now, if you’re a regular reader of this blog, that you’ve heard of TED. I’ve certainly posted enough videos from there or discussed topics from there. The whole idea behind TED is “Ideas worth sharing”

TED has also spawned a number of TED like events, around different themes or in different regions (i.e. TED MED or TEDxHouston).

And now, there’s something for us education folks. TED-Ed. Focused on Lessons worth Sharing.

This is a brilliant idea. It’s not limited to traditional classroom lessons, but can span important lessons on any topic, academic to life lessons.

You can take these videos and supplement lessons you’re trying to teach. You can center your lessons around these videos. You can build a flipped classroom. There are so many possibilities!

And what these videos have done is taken the great lessons that are out there, that are working, that people are engaging with, and bringing them to the public!

I highly encourage you to check out TED-Ed. Some of the lessons have already been flipped, and you can see what is possible with the flipped classroom.

As a side note, if you know of an awesome lesson that you or one of your colleagues, or your teachers, or someone is teaching in a brilliant way, there’s a bit of a contest going on where you can nominate great lessons to be animated for TED-Ed.

Please note, I am in no way an employee or in any other way funded from or supported by Kohls.

I was watching the following TED talk as I nibbled away at my lunch. I thought the following video was of particular interest (especially with my particular interest in mathematics education).

What I particularly like about this is that it recognizes that students all have different needs when it comes to instruction, and that it’s nearly impossible for teachers to address this perfectly in the classroom in an efficient and effective way.

Many of today’s issues are covered in the system he’s developed, and the class partnerships that he’s described appeal to so many issues that are being discussed in education. Using technology effectively, gaming in education, diverse student needs.

Interested in reading further on Gaming/Technology in education?

Here’s a quick sample search from ERIC that looks at the use of gaming technology in elementary education

Want to find more? Feel free to contact me and we’ll work at finding you more resources on your topic!

Are you heading into a new school? or have you recently been trained or picked up a new technology skill that you think your colleagues would benefit from?

There are many reasons that could result in new technology coming into schools which educators are not familiar with. Grants for use of particular technology, new trends in education tech, downloading of tech from the board/state/etc level.

There’s no doubt that educational technology can be a very powerful tool if used effectively in the classroom. Should you find yourself introducing a new piece of tech into a school, you may find this post about Teaching Tech to Teachers helpful!

Even while we’re so excited about the possibility of digital and open sourced textbooks, and in many cases ebook versions of textbooks that we have available are great, we have to realize that all the technology isn’t where it needs to be yet.

Case in point, the iPhone and other mobile devices are not adequate for textbook needs, except, as described in the article, as a possible last minute review tool while waiting outside the exam room.
Considering that the electronic versions of these textbooks in this particular reader are generally half the price of the physical textbooks, I still can’t see students opting to buy a textbook for their mobile device. Students barely even want to buy their required texts in the first place, and most would rather the library have enough copies of their texts on hand for them to all check out for the semester. And half of a $100-200 textbook (depending on your discipline and such) is still $50-100 that students, particularly those who can barely afford to be in schools, will not be wanting to spend.

However, mobile/smart phones do have the advantage over currently available ebook readers. For the most part, these are black and white, and smartphones have colour. I’m sure we’ve all seen how those graphs and charts look when they’ve been photocopied. Which grey line is which?!?

eTextbook technology appears to be an ‘at best laptop’ technology right now.

Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions—or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos, and projects on the web. “Kids are wired differently these days,” said Sheryl R. Abshire, chief technology officer for the Calcasieu Parish school system in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Read more

If you’re interested in educational initiatives that involve electronic textbooks, you may want to look more at Open Sourced Education. The basic idea being that groups of people would gather to write textbooks on a topics, and the resulting electronic textbook would become an open sourced document. One that people could take and use as they see fit to educate. Copyright restrictions vary for such projects. One such site is Connexions

Do be sure to check it out!