The popular online lecture series TED: Ideas Worth Spreading has recently launched a new initiative called TED-ED: Lessons Worth Sharing. The new initiative comes with a call to educators everywhere to submit one of their lessons which can be delivered in less than ten minutes, which will sub-sequentially be shared on YouTube with accompanying animation. You cannominate a teacher who you believe has a valuable lesson worth sharing, or you can nominate yourself if you have a lesson in mind. Then it’s as simple as creating an audio recording of the lesson. The audio recording will be brought to live by animators who will create visual media to accompany the educator’s voice. One can also nominate an animator or express an interest to animate videos.
The TED-ED initiative is a great pairing of educators who can deliver powerful lessons with digital animators who can bring those lessons to life outside of the classroom. It’s a bit hard to tell if there is incentive for the animators to do the animation work, or if it is all croudsourced by volunteers. Regardless, I would love to see someone from UCT get a short lesson shared. One can also suggest an idea for a lesson.
So far there a number of video examples on the TED-ED YouTube channel in the following categories ‘Awesome Nature’, ‘How Things Work’, ‘Playing With Language’, ‘Questions No One (Yet) Knows the Answers To’ and ‘Inventions that Shaped History’. Below is a sample video to show what is possible through this initiative!