Teachers are an amazing resource to all of us, helping us to understand everything from mathematics to the mysteries of the universe. But while some are lucky enough to have wonderful, educated teachers in their life, the actual reach of those individual teachers is quite small… much of the time only as big as a classroom. How can this small influence be broadened? How can we make these incredible lessons more accessible to all? Enter the newest chapter in the TED saga: TED-Ed.
Launched just today, TED-Ed aims to bring interesting lessons taught by talented instructors world-wide into everyones home via Youtube. They’ve just released a dozen short under 10-minute videos featuring teachers (some famous, so less so) on subjects ranging from “Awesome Nature” to “How Things Work” and “Inventions that Changed History.” The high quality videos are aimed at an audience of high school students to life-long learners and according to TED Curator Chris Anderson, they plan to grow this archive to hundreds of videos within one year. That’s a pretty solid goal.
How do they plan on creating so much high quality content so quickly? The TED team came up with an approach that is both creative and unique: they are inviting teachers world-wide to submit their lessons, which are then set up with a “lean, mean” team of animators to bring the lesson to life visually. The results thus far are professional and highly interesting viewing. Keep up to date with TED-Ed through their official Youtube channel.
Below, an excellent example of how even stage based lessons can be translated into an animated form:
A brief introduction to the TED-Ed category “Questions no one (yet) knows the answers to”:
