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Real world examples of how TED has been used in the classroom

Page history last edited by S. McCarron 14 years, 10 months ago

If you're a teacher who's already used TED talks successfully, please share your story!

 

LTS Inspiration Sessions: Run your own

Four months ago I began holding lunchtime sessions based around the world famous TED Talks. These Inspiration Sessions had a simple format with a complex aim: empower anyone in the organisation to change the organisation. Here, I share the format, the resources, the questions and hope that it can be used in your school, your department or your Local Authority, to challenge current ways of thinking and empower everyone to make small, powerful changes. (http://ltsblogs.org.uk/connected/2008/08/09/lts-inspiration-sessions-run-your-own/)

 

 

Dreaming About the Future of Education

Meredith Stewart

From a post on my 6th grade Language Arts class blog...

Many of the teachers I talk with spend a lot of time thinking about the future of education and technology. Today I thought it would be interesting to have the same kind of discussion with students. During class we watched a video from the 2009 Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) conference debuting a wearable “Sixth Sense” device from the MIT Media Lab. Students discussed their reactions in class, and I’ve also invited them to post their reactions here.

 

Learning About Third World Countries and Teaching Voice in Blogging

Tara Seale 

My students are currently blogging about Third World Countries in my Read the Net class.  You can read student blogs from the blog roll on the Read the Net Edublog.  The students used statistics from the CIA World Fact Book  to create a Google Spreadsheet which compared 13 Third World Countries to the United States and the rest of the world.  My students used the data in the spreadsheet to blog about why the country they researched could be considered a Third World Country.  After reading my student blog entries, I realized that they dryly repeated the data without using voice in their writing.  Listing statistics without commentary makes for boring reading.  I used the TED Talks show Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen to demonstrate how third world country statistics can be entertaining and interesting.  We discussed how Hans Rosling's presentation is not only innovative, but his commentary as he presents the statistics is humorus and attention-getting.  TED Talks helped my students revise their blogs with a new goal in mind.

 

Relationships Between the Natural Environment and Society

Sandra McCarron

The following is a copy of my blog post:

 

Freshmen biology students are engaged in learning about how biodiversity affects the health of an ecosystem and how humans interact with the environment. They are working on collaboratively creating a wiki page presenting their ideas about how society developed in our local region based on proximity to the Merrimack River, and how the development of that society impacted the river and surrounding environment. The students have done surveys of local species and considered land form changes over the years around the campus. Today I asked them to think about the current condition of the ecosystem, what people might be doing properly to protect it’s diversity, and what other actions they might consider taking to further protect human-nature interrelationships.

 

As part of this discussion and inquiry, the students were assigned “Easter Island’s End” by Jared Diamond (published in 1995 in Discover) to read as homework. A general discussion of the reading of the article (What did you notice? What did you find interesting? What did you find surprising?) was followed by a TED talks video of Jared Diamond discussing the collapse of society. I was worried that these freshmen students would not sit and listen to a fast-talking lecture but they did. Even though Diamond’s talk alluded to the ENRON scandal, a few years old, the students were able to apply the same ideas to today’s banking problems and the recession. Diamond reinforced some environmental information I had given the students previously, but with a new example, which was very nice. He also repeated a question that the students themselves had had during our discussion of the Easter Island’s End article, namely, what were they thinking as they cut down the last palm tree on the island?

 

It was after reading and discussing the article and then watching the video that the students were taken on another walk of the campus, this time with direction to look for current “relationships” between society and the environment and to consider whether this was the best we could do, or was there something else, something more, that could be done to prevent the collapse of any system within the system. Their next scheduled day for the computer lab to write about this is several days away… I am anxious to see their wiki reflections and comments. 

 

Comments (1)

Scotney D Evans said

at 4:28 am on Nov 18, 2010

Ewan's link to LTS Inspiration sessions: Run your own does not connect. I receive a Error 404 - Not Found message.

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