For our third week on 505, we were encouraged to take a closer look at an OER and analyze it as a resource for educators. I decided to try using Ted Ed and see how easy it was to use and navigate. The site offers a large, very visual slideshow in the middle area, with links to the lessons created by other educators around Ted Ed videos. It also displays arrows on both sides so you can move from lesson to lesson. If you scroll down, you can subscribe to the page, which can be good as you can get updates on new lessons and ideas. The very first thing I noticed on the site, however, was their "call to action" button, inviting the teacher visiting the site to create a lesson. I decided to give it a go, and create my own lesson. When you follow the link, you are taken to a different page, which asks you to type a keyword or a Youtube link. Right below, you can see this box: Wait a minute. Track their progress? I am most intrigued. I decided to pick a subject that is interesting to me and that I will be using next year: Biomimicry. I was surprised to see all the videos that were available to choose from. Once I selected my video, however, the site asked me to log in or register; usually this process takes time, but with more and more sites allowing for Facebook login, I was back looking at the video in no time. I previewed part of the video and decided to continue with it; clicking on the "continue" button took me to a lesson creator tool. So far, the experience at Ted Ed OER had been pretty smooth, but this page takes the cake. As it turns out, you can plan a whole lesson for your students to work on individually, and respond to, all on their own. This lesson creator offers five sections, which can be customized or omitted. "Watch" allows for the student to watch the video; "Think" allows for the teacher to create multiple choice questions as well as open answer questions, bringing a level of response and interactivity. "Dig deeper" is an area where you can bring points that would not otherwise be thought of, and that force the student to think beyond the subject viewed; this would be a good place to add "what if" questions, or otherwise engage the students in a deeper thought process. Under the "Discuss" link, the teacher can create discussion boards about the lesson, and so the students can interact with one another and debate what they have learned. The last link, "And Finally", offers the opportunity for the teacher to conclude the learning session, leaving with the students a few last thoughts to consider. I easily created two questions for my students; one, an open-ended question. The second question was multiple choice. I was happy to see that they offer students a hint button, in which they can see the exact second where the question was answered in the video; this makes students less likely to become frustrated, as they would not need to watch the video again if they didn't remember the right answer. I absolutely love this lesson planner idea. This is an excellent way to get students individually engaged on the subject at their own pace, as well as building community around this subject with other students through the discussion link. I also love how this can be used as easily in an online course setting as in the classroom; when building a course online, every one of these tools come in really handy, but as a classroom teacher, I also see the benefit this brings to day-to-day course delivery. Ted Ed lesson creator transforms the usual watch videos-produce response to a more personalized experience. Finally, the ability to easily look through other teachers' lessons, as well as share my own, is really inspiring. I love sharing information with other teachers, and theoretically understand how beneficial it is for us to unite and make it easy for others to find the nuggets we come up with along our teaching path. But even though I make an effort to organize and catalogue projects and ideas, I find I don't tweet about it, or share those ideas with others on a broader sense. I say that I like my ideas enough, but I don't post them on places where people will actually find them. I post them on Facebook, where I have a handful of friends who are teachers, but I still find hard to blog about it, tweet about it or otherwise make these projects public. So, on one hand, I love these ideas enough to organize and catalogue, but maybe not enough to share. The thing, I think, I keep forgetting -- and many of us do as well -- is that not all of our ideas have to be clear winners, and not every project has to be super amazing. If someone looks at one lesson plan and feels inspired to use a small portion of our idea on their next lesson, then that's already a great help. What may not be excellent for us, may be exactly what someone needs to spice things up in their classroom, virtual or otherwise. And for teachers like me, this Ted Ed platform offers a great way to get started offering ideas to a broader audience.
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