TED-Ed video lesson of the month: Cyberwarfare

If you haven't got onto TED-Ed yet, do yourself a favour and take a look at the excellent collection of videos and teaching ideas covering a range of curriculum areas.

This month's video from Daniel Garrie looks at the concept of cyberwarfare and what implications computers could have on causing and taking ownership of conflict in the future.

There is an opportunity for some rich discussion with older students about cyberwarfare that could lead into a range of writing topics and civics and citizenship tasks.

TED-ED Pick of the Week: Why the shape of your TV Matters

Watching a movie at home isn’t quite the same experience as seeing it at a movie theater -- but why? Learn how changes in aspect ratio affect every film, and why your television might not be delivering the whole picture.

There is a great deal of science and maths associated with this lesson that can be applied to the classroom such as ration and percentages.

TED ED - Pick of the week

Each Week we will be rummaging through TED-ED for the best video lessons to share with your students.  This weeks video is One or One:  Or is it? 

One bag of apples, one apple, one slice of apple -- which of these is one unit? Explore the basic unit of math (explained by a trip to the grocery store!) and discover the many meanings of one.

TED-ED - Lessons worth sharing goes BETA

Thanks to Sarah at Forbes.com for this snippet.

The innovative minds at TED have brought a new educational video website to the head of the class. Today, TED-Ed launched http://ed.ted.com, a site that features TED-Ed’s original K-12 animated videos with accompanying lessons and quizzes. On top of that, the site allows educators to create original lessons for any YouTube video, rendering the video on a new link where teachers can monitor student progress.

Each three- to eight-minute TED-Ed video comes with multiple choice quizzes, open ended questions, and a “Dig Deeper” section with further resources. The site is unusually user friendly—students can minimize videos on the webpage so they can keep watching while answering questions, and, if they get a multiple choice question wrong, the “Video Hint” automatically directs them to the exact point in the video where the question is answered.

Teachers, meanwhile, can monitor whether students have watched the video and keep track of their progress. All TED-Ed lessons can be edited to accommodate specific needs. “Our goal was to design a guided but also very flexible tool for teachers,” says Logan Smalley, the head of TED-Ed.

But teachers aren’t limited to the TED-Ed material, which right now includes about 25 videos covering topics from atoms to word choice. Educators can search for any YouTube video on the site, and “flip” the video to build an original lesson plan and create a unique URL, which can be accessed even if YouTube is blocked.

TED-Ed Launches youtube channel

This looks awesome.  TED the crew that have been putting together amazing ideas worth sharing for a number of years now have just launched a new youtube channel called TED-ED and it is already quickly filling up with lessons put together by great teachers and gifted animators in a collaboration that will leave students engaged and teachers inspired by the quality of these instructional videos.

I have included a video directly below that explains the purpose and intent of TED ED to give you an idea of how it all works.

Below is a lesson plan on Why we cannot see evidence of alien life?

This will be a huge resource to teachers if it all geos to plan.

Create your own Video Channels with Vidque

What is it:  Essentially Vidque is a tool that allows you collect all your favourite videos from sites like youtube, vimeo, blip.tv and TED and organise much the same as you do with web bookmarks and delicious.  Also like delicious you can see what other people like yourself have stored on their vidque channels.  Extremely simple in concept but offers plenty of potential.

How can I use this in the classroom?  If you think of this like delicious it will allow you to dig up all your favourite teaching resource videos, tag them such as science, history, numeracy and so on and then simply share them with your students and fellow staff.

Vidque is available here and below is a short video explaining it's purpose.  It will set up my won Vidque channel soon and post it up on Edgalaxy.