District Administration - September 2012 - (Page 73)

cio Technology from The cIo perspecTIve District tech disruptions What Is TED-Ed’s Role in Today’s Classroom? TED-ED, AN ONLINE CONTENT library associated with TED conferences, went live in April with the goal of enhancing classroom lessons and inspiring lifelong learning. It is similar to Khan Academy, but the videos are made by teachers from around the world rather than just one expert. They have received much praise in their first few months. “The beauty of TED-Ed and the Khan Academy is that they are online libraries available to anyone with an Internet connection anytime and anywhere,” says Delivering Innovative Technology to Educators Professional development in the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Unified School District just got mobile—and we don’t mean tablets. In May, the district rolled out a oneof-its-kind school bus that serves as a professional development site for teachers to become acquainted with new technology before it’s introduced in the classroom. The purpose of the bus, which was dubbed eCoach, is to create an innovative environment for professional development and to deliver this technology seamlessly across all 31 schools in the district. The district partnered with Shore Tel, Discovery Education, Aruba Networks, and CCS Presentations, to name a few, to supply the bus with Internet service, a communications infrastructure, interactive whiteboards, document cameras and other technology. “We want to introduce this to the teachers before doing a large-scale implementation,” says Tom Clark, chief technology officer at SUSD. According to Clark, eCoach’s exterior is hard to miss, and the bus serves as a great marketing tool for the district as it travels across the district’s 105-squaremile territory. Parents and students were invited on the bus during school open houses to see what kind of training teachers are now receiving and to give them an idea of what students can soon expect to see inside their own classrooms.—Marion Herbert Screen shot of a TED-Ed video created by Aaron Reedy, science teacher in Chicago, which explains a lesson on gender determination. Logan Smalley, director of TED-Ed. To ensure high-quality lessons, TEDEd videos go through a monthlong process before they are added to the site. Educators around the world nominate outstanding teachers to create a captivating lesson for TED-Ed, an editorial board reviews the nominations, teachers work with TED-Ed to write a script and translate lessons into a video, and teach- ers collaborate with an animator to bring their lessons to life. Teachers also create supplementary materials, such as multiple-choice quizzes, open-answer questions and critical-thinking questions. Videos are tagged to traditional subjects to make them easy to search. Jon Bergmann, advisory board member for TED-Ed, is also one of the pioneers of the flipped class method, in which teachers assign short video lectures as homework and have students do assignments in class, with their teachers present to answer questions. “TED-Ed is not just about the videos. The site provides a framework so teachers can flip a lesson if they choose, but flipping isn’t right for every scenario. Ultimately, teachers determine how they use the lessons in their classroom,” Bergmann says. Aaron Reedy, science teacher at Kelly High School in the Chicago Public Schools, taught the same lesson on gender determination for seven years and reached about 1,000 students. After just four months on TED-Ed, he has reached more than 800,000 students. “TED-Ed did a couple of things that make the videos a perfect fit for teachers. They are short to support smart use of video, and the supplementary materials that go along with the videos are customizable, which is great because onesize-fits-all resources are seldom ideal for classroom use,” says Reedy. Educators can flip any video on TED-Ed or YouTube to add supplementary materials and make it their own. To do this, click on the YouTube tab of the TED-Ed Web site and search for a video.— Courtney Williams www.DistrictAdministration.com September 2012 73 http://www.DistrictAdministration.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - September 2012

District Administration - September/October 2012
Contents
From the Editor
Letters
News Update
Curriculum Update
Inside the Law
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Product Focus
Resistance to High-Stakes Testing Spreads
Postgraduation for Special Needs Students
Rick & Becky DuFour
CIo News
Getting the Best ROI in Technology
Shaping a Digital Decade
Professional Opinion
Professional Opinion
Online Edge
Going Mobile
New Products
New Directions

District Administration - September 2012