A new learning style in COVID-19 - flipped learning with TED Ed
Flipped learning is popular nowadays, especially during the outbreak of COVID-19 as it helps to minimise direct contact among different groups. Instead of traditional way of learning - teachers perform the role of transferring knowledge to students, this kind of learning involves students' self-learning since they need to obtain knowledge from the content provided before participating in the class. In my opinion, the main advantage of flipped learning would be personal agency and ease of revision. It allows students to choose their own time and pattern of studying instead of a fixed schedule. Also, students can do revision whenever they like after the class as to consolidate their knowledge.
The learning tool that I introduce this time - If flipped learning is implemented in your school, you can consider using the tool. It is TED Ed.
TED Ed
TED Ed is a platform that allows teachers to create customised lessons for students. With this tool, you can create a lesson with TED or YouTube videos. It allows you to crop the chosen video into certain length as well. This can save much of your time in material preparation as you need not to create a video yourself.
Video Search
TED Ed Lesson Creator
After choosing your video, you can add follow-up questions and additional information based on your topic. With the aid of Lesson Creator, it will guide you which content should be put in each part of your lesson. For instance, you can put a short introduction in "Let's Begin", set Multiple Choice or Open-ended questions in "Think" etc.
Apart from topic-based content, you can also set up discussion topics in "Discuss" part for students to further elaborate their opinions on the topic. This is important as this can improve their critical thinking and allow them to think in a different angle, which helps to consolidate their knowledge on the topic.
Overall, this tool is suitable for flipped learning. The interface is clear to use with a lot of instructions, teachers will find it's easy to use even they have limited computer literacy. Also, it can help to achieve the goal of blended or flipped learning:
Pedagogical richness - Extra resources are allowed to provide students in "Dig Deeper" part and this can allow students to have a thorough understanding on the topic.
Personal Agency and ease of revision - the materials are provided in advance so students have more flexibility on choosing their learning style and time, and they can come back to do revision after their follow-up class as well.
Social interaction - The "Discuss" part in the tool allows students to exchange their idea. Although this advantage can be achieved mainly in classroom interaction, but still it can be achieved here.
Cost effectiveness - this tool is free of charge so you need not to pay extra.
The only drawback of TED Ed is, it doesn't allow you to use videos outside from TED or YouTube, which means if you have a tailor-made video for the class, or you found a good video from other platform, you cannot upload it directly in this tool. In this case, you may need to find alternative method to deal with this problem - maybe you can upload your video to your YouTube account first before embed it into your lesson.
Finally, I want to share a class which I found is good in TED Ed. It is called "How to use a semicolon". Let's see if you have the same feeling with me after having this lesson.😊
Comments
Thank you for this informative post about TED Ed. I like the idea that it allows discussion among learners. This can help them learn from each other online. I would like to try it in the future. Are there any other things it offers that platforms such as Moodle don't offer?
Since both of you have one question similar to each other, the answers will be available in one comment.
1) Regarding the features that Moodle doesn't offer, I would say TED Ed allows students to share lessons in social media or e-mail if they found the lesson is interesting and beneficial to their friends, while Moodle doesn't have this function.
2) To check students' understanding after the video, you can set up some questions in the "Think" session. You can choose multiple choice or open answered questions. If the student has answered them, they will be visible by teachers in their account, thus can check students' progress.