Create Customised Lessons with TEDEd

Who has not heard of TED Ed? But did you know you could design lessons for your students on the platform?

With us being in remote learning mode, I'm constantly on the lookout for meaningful tools that I can use to engage my students and design a good learning experience for them. And this is what I discovered.

Ted Ed not only has ready lessons for you, you can customise those to suit the needs of your students, you can even create one from scratch.

You can use these lessons as:  

1. An introduction to a topic.
2. Reviewing a topic already taught.
3. Differentiate learning according to student needs and multiple intelligences.
4. Low-cost field trip, especially useful in Covid times.
5. Help cover learning gaps due to student absence.
6. Encourage students to look beyond the curriculum.
7. As formative assessment

Let's get started!

Click HERE to reach the site:

This is what you will see: 

You can get started as and educator and register with your email, Apple, Google or Facebook ID.

Add your info and you are set to go.

Just look at the variety of ways you can engage your students!

You can start creating lessons immediately:

Type in your keywords in the search bar and get a large number of student appropriate videos pulled up from YouTube. You can even insert a video that you may have recorded and uploaded on YouTube.

Select the one you want and click on Continue:

Start adding your content: 

Click on more to preview your lesson or change settings and when you are ready, hit PUBLISH:

Select how you would like your students to access the lesson. Do you need them to use their TedEd account or not. Then click on Share your Lesson.

Select how you would like to share the lesson with your students and hit SEND.

In case you need something on the go, there are plenty of ready made lessons that you can pick up, modify them and share with your students. Just go to the DISCOVER tab. 

You can filter your search by subject and level of students.

Customise the lesson to suit your students needs and you are good to go!

Try this lesson to get a feel how your students will experience it.

Happy Teaching and learning!

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5 Challenges of Online/Remote Teaching

What challenges have you faced in online/remote learning? I can think of 5 major challenges.

                                                               

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As schools India begin to close down their virtual classes for summer break (many have been closed longer due to limited or no access to Internet or devices), let us take stock of what challenges we have faced so far...

                                               
1. Some have resisted change. Teachers may have logged into virtual classes because the school said so, but used the same chalk (alas not this time) and talk. Mostly talk. Not because they are stubborn, but because they weren't adequately prepared. Most have found themselves in a sink or swim situation. Though most have managed to stay afloat. .

                                               

2. Tech has not been the most dependable companion. From inadequate data to patchy internet to crashing devices. We've seen all and more. Most teachers due to poor wages often use old computer and laptops, often hand me downs fromother family members, if at all they have these devices. Content creation is a challenge on smartphones. But the teachers have braved this storm too. .

                                          

3. Often students have not been motivated enough either because we had not time to prepare them for something like this, or our content hasn't engaged them effectively. Add to that the sense of imprisonment and isolation. Kids are meant to be playing, running around outdoors... But they are cooped up at home, forced to stare into a screen for hours. If I was in this situation, I wouldn't be motivated either. But they are coping as best they can.

                                            

4. Isolation from friends and teachers isn't the best thing. Many children out there may be living in violent, abusive homes. If not direct physical abuse, children often ate victims of emotional abuse and neglect.  Often their only safe place of escape was school. .

                                             

5. To be a n the same room as the students gave us live cues to what was going on the students heads. If they looked keen, I knew the lesson was going well, if lost, I quickly course corrected  We can only guess now. Without being able to pick up non verbal cues, it is very difficult to gauge how much the students have absorbed or who needs extra attention. Of there are ways to collect this kind of feedback, but that leads to more content creation, or students not willing to engage in the feedback process. 

What do you think? Do share your views in the comments...

Teach Smart!