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May 16 2013
Classroom

Education Revolution: 7 TED-Ed Videos About Technology

“Lessons Worth Sharing” blaze new trail for professors and students.

The mission of TED, short for Technology, Entertainment, Design, is to share “Ideas Worth Spreading.” The inspirational talks cover a broad range of topics, from leadership and productivity to nuclear fission and domestic violence. The organization has existed since 1984 and found huge success in the era of YouTube and social media. More recently, TED launched TED-Ed, a platform inspired by online-learning services, such as the Khan Academy. The videos, according to the Chronicle for Higher Education, are accompanied by lesson plans to help teachers integrate them into their courses:

The TED-Ed site is both a portal for finding education videos and a tool for flipping them. On one page, videos are organized by themes, such as the pursuit of happiness and inventions that shaped history. Instructors who want to use videos that are directly related to the subjects they teach can visit another page, where videos are organized in more traditional categories such as the arts and health.

TED’s videos are displayed on lesson pages that include multiple-choice quizzes, open-ended questions, and links to more information about the material. Professors who don’t want to rely on the premade content can press a button to flip the videos and customize some of the questions. With each flipped video, professors receive a unique Web link that they can use to distribute the lesson to students and track their answers.

MOOCs (massive open online courses) and other free online-learning platforms are becoming hugely popular. These seven videos will help you understand why.

Exploration on the Big Data Frontier

Lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/exploration-on-the-big-data-frontier-tim-smith

Network Theory

Lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-facebook-and-the-flu-have-in-common-marc-samet

How Farming Planted Seeds for the Internet

Lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-farming-planted-seeds-for-the-internet-patricia-russac

Haptography: Digitizing Our Sense of Touch

Lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/haptography-digitizing-our-sense-of-touch-katherine-kuchenbecker

Your Brain on Video Games

Illuminating Photography: From Camera Obscura to Camera Phone

Lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/illuminating-photography-eva-timothy

Make Robots Smarter

Lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/make-robots-smarter-ayanna-howard

<p>Image courtesy of digitalart / <a href="http://www.freedigitalphotos.net" target="_blank">FreeDigitalPhotos.net</a></p>