Creating a TedEd lesson

This week, I dove into the world of TedEd.  I have seen many Ted Talks in the past and have heard of TedEd through YouTube videos but until this week, I didn’t realize that it was a user created platform.  I was excited to learn about this platform because, in my experience, Ted Talks are usually very high quality.  

At first glance, the site seems very user friendly.  The home page has a sampling of lessons and includes information for educators, students and parents.  When you click on one of the sample lessons, you are taken to that lesson page where you will find a video, multiple choice or short answer questions, additional links to learn more about the topic and an open discussion board.  I liked the style of lessons and the sequence of activities for students.

I decided to search for a lesson that I could try with my Grade 4 Science class.  Currently, we are studying Sound. I used the search bar at the top of the page to look for lessons about Sound.  There were 283 results.  Unfortunately, at this point in the search, there are no options to narrow the search.  I would have to browse through all of the results and hope to find a lesson that would work for my class.

At this point, I decided it would be best to create a lesson about the  Transmission of Sound by modifying a lesson I currently teach to the Grade 4 that includes a video component.  Creating a lesson on TedEd was very simple and straightforward.  I linked the video URL and then rewrote the questions in multiple choice format.  For the “Dig Deeper” section, I included a link to an article where students can learn more about sound vibrations as well as a link to a simple game that shows sound vibrations.  I decided not to include a “Discuss” component because the comments would show up publicly and, due to the students’ age (8 and 9 year olds) and the fact that I have not talked about digital citizenship beforehand with this class, I decided that for the purpose of this activity, I would leave it out.  The students didn’t even notice – once they finished the questions and found the game, they did not go back to the TedEd page!

Publishing the lesson was also very simple.  There was an option to link directly to Google Classroom which is a platform that my students are familiar with.

On Friday, I explained to the class that I am also a student and that I needed their help with my assignment.  They loved it!  They were very eager to help me and be my guinea pigs 🙂

First, I showed them the link in Google Classroom and then I showed them the different activities to complete.  Most students chose to work on their own and a few chose to work with a partner.

The lesson took students about 15 minutes to complete and then we debriefed so they could give me some feedback.

Overall, the students really enjoyed the freedom of the activity and the fact that it was easy to follow and wasn’t too challenging.

The biggest downfall of this activity for me was the tracking of student data.  I was excited about this part because I have used data tracking many times in Google Forms in the past and it is a great way to see how students are doing and to check their responses.  I thought the tracking would be similar to Google Forms.  The data that was collected was not very streamlined and was somewhat confusing in its presentation.  When I chose to view individual results, I would have to click through each question to check their answers.  Then, in order to get back to the class results, I would have to press the back button multiple times.  This is not very efficient for a class of 28 students.

I then downloaded the results into a .csv file that I could open in Excel but that wasn’t helpful either.  The results are messy and not very user friendly.

Overall, I think the TedEd lessons are good for student practice and providing individual assignments but I would not use it for summative evaluations.  There are hundreds of great videos on the site and I liked being able to create a lesson in one place and then have a single link for Google Classroom but I wouldn’t use this site regularly in my classroom.