TED head: Online video, education platform are the future

[FarCenter]

The head of TED, the organizer of conferences around brainy presentations on a wide variety of subjects, says online video will continue to play a central role for the group and he has high hopes for its new education platform.

TED Curator Chris Anderson said that the group's popularity surged after its decision to post its content freely online about six years ago, and that a million people watch a TED presentation each day around the world. But he said the current model of watching embedded videos on Web pages may eventually fade.

...

Anderson added he has high hopes for the group's new education platform TED-Ed, which is currently in beta testing. The tool allows teachers to organize online lessons around videos, with articles and quizzes alongside, so that students can study on their own and then spend more time in classrooms interacting with teachers and their peers.

"Maybe, it allows us to make education a better fit for the 20th century -- where ideas aren't just pumped down a tube," he said.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227566/TED_head_Online_video_education_platform_are_the_future

[MadHound]

1. Might be a useful tool to have around,

But it certainly shouldn't be the be all and end all of education. Not all kids learn well with videos, no matter how well they're done.

[FarCenter]

4. It is speech plus photos, diagrams, formulae, text, visualizations, etc. that do the work

If you watch the TED presentations, the video of the presenter is not very informative.

[seleff]

2. If kids spent any time studying at home

The idea of flipping the class and having all of the presented material on video for home viewing and leaving class time for practice and discussion time sounds inviting. So far when I've tried it I have the same problem I have with assigning background reading...many if not most kids don't read and they don't log in. The proportion is a little better with honors' classes. In my school it seems most high school kids have one to three part-time jobs, leaving little time for study outside of class. Heck, can't even get them to come in after school for help until they are failing with a couple of weeks left in the semester. I've given links to khanacademy...only a couple have visited. They have a hard time with chemistry in general, but put forth little effort to help themselves.

[FarCenter]

3. I think that it depends a lot on the parents

There are probably about a billion households with computers now, since annual production of PCs is about 400 million.

Tens of millions of households will have parents that make sure their children use the computers and the net to learn as much as possible.

Not all will suceed, and not all children will learn well that way, but the ones that do will have a definite advantage in the future job market.

[Iris]

5. Ah, yes! Let's leave it to TED! But no discussions about income equality, please!

http://taylormarsh.com/blog/2012/05/ted-censors-nick-hanauer-talk-on-income-inequality/

TED Censors Nick Hanauer Talk on Income Inequality
By Taylor Marsh on 17 May 2012



THE MIDDLE CLASS AS JOB creators is too controversial an idea to broadcast widely, at least that’s the verdict of TED.

From the National Journal:

There’s one idea, though, that TED’s organizers recently decided was too controversial to spread: the notion that widening income inequality is a bad thing for America, and that as a result, the rich should pay more in taxes.

TED organizers invited a multimillionaire Seattle venture capitalist named Nick Hanauer – the first nonfamily investor in Amazon.com – to give a speech on March 1 at their TED University conference. Inequality was the topic – specifically, Hanauer’s contention that the middle class, and not wealthy innovators like himself, are America’s true “job creators.”