10 March 2012

TED.com

Regina and I will try to update the blog weekly with tools and websites that you might find helpful in your classroom.  Of course, for the month of March, you can check out the Middletown Elementary Web Challenge to see a variety of other tools that might work for you.  Right now you can learn about YouTubeEDU, which is YouTube's special site just for education.

The tool I wanted to highlight this week is TED.com
http://goo.gl/Zo05R
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design and hosts a series of TED Talks in which people from a variety of industries give short talks related to their passion.  You can find talks by well known celebrities like Al Gore and Bill Gates to people who are relatively unknown to you like Neil Parischa and Charlie Todd.  You can find talks on science, engineering, living a better life.  Almost anything you want.  They are great filler videos to show on short days or when the students all finish the test early and you can't start the next unit or the day before long breaks.  None of the videos are longer than about 20 minutes and some are even less than 5.  Below are a few of my favorites from different areas.  My only word of caution is TED is intended for adults.  While most of the videos are fine, there are a couple that contain words that are inappropriate for school.  Like everything else, make sure you watch them in advance before showing to your class.

Seth Godin:  This is Broken

Seth Godin at Gel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

Google Science Fair 2011 Winners



Why you should always check your presentation before giving a TED Talk


Are Mushrooms the New Plastic?