TED Advice for Navigating Educational Technology

We love TED, both the talk series and the blog, and were so impressed by one of their recent education blog posts we had to share it. Called “There’s No App for Good Teaching,” it provides ideas for helping parents and teachers navigate the ever-expanding array of learning technology. Although many apps, online learning opportunities, and tech-y tools can be helpful, educational technology is a very lucrative industry, meaning that lots of programmers are producing content in the hopes of cashing in. The upshot is that there’s a lot of chaff to be separated from the wheat. TED shares this list, based on research, of eight factors to keep in mind when assessing learning technology:

1. Keep learning goals ahead of the technology.

2. Opt for the open-ended.

3. Don’t let tech making learning easy.

4. Take feedback seriously. (This refers to feedback the technology gives to students.)

5. Stay skeptical of individualized learning – for now.

6. Bring in student interests, authentically.

7. Start conversations (i.e. look for tools that get kids talking).

8. Make it open, make it better. (This one, which applies to teachers, suggests that teachers can all benefit from sharing their lessons plans with each other to enhance student learning.)

We enthusiastically recommend reading their post in full for more details on the list.

Our thoughts? Number three caught our attention in particular. We agree that real learning takes time and effort. Young people, and all people, often need to wrestle with new concepts, laboriously considering all angles and trying and failing a few times to truly understand complex material.

But remember to make a distinction between learning and accessing/expressing. Students with disabilities need the opportunity to wrestle with new material just as much as anyone else, but some may need to rely on technology to access that material. A dyslexic child who uses audiobooks is not taking the easy way out; he is using a tool to help him do what other kids can do easily. He still needs to comprehend and interrogate the ideas in the text, which audiobooks certainly won’t help with. Similarly, a child with dysgraphia may need to dictate what she has learned to speech-to-text software to show her teacher the complexity of her thoughts. When other students can transcribe their ideas easily, such software allows her the same opportunities as peers to show what she knows. Our colleagues at CAST do a great job explaining this concept of universal design for learning, or UDL. A visit to their website provides excellent resources, including explanatory videos.

TED-Ed Brings the Periodic Table to Life

Working with Dmitri Mendeleev's brilliant periodic table of elements, first published in 1864, has become a groan-inducing task for many students today. The organization of elements into a succinct and useful table was ground-breaking, and even more impressive was Mendeleev 's foresight: He left blank spaces on the table where he imagined elements would go when they were eventually discovered (and he was right!). However, the fascinating history of the table is often lost on frustrated students who find studying it boring and memorizing the properties of all those elements next to impossible.

Rather than memorizing, we suggest that students endeavor to understand the properties of the elements instead. And thanks to a partnership between TED-Ed and Periodic Videos, it's easy to do just that.

Periodic Videos is a series made by a team from the University of Nottingham. It is led by the star of the videos, an eccentric, bespectacled professor with a huge mane of white hair named Dr. Martyn Poliakoff. Actually, as of December 2014, he is Sir Martyn Poliakoff, having been knighted for his contributions to the field of inorganic chemistry. In collaboration with TED-Ed, Periodic Videos has made a short video lesson for each element in the periodic table). Some, like the video for krypton, are just over a minute long.

                                       

Others, like the video for scandium, take more than seven minutes. The lessons intersperse informational tidbits shared by Sir Poliakoff with experiments by his team that illustrate the elements' properties, bringing the periodic table to life. High school and college students and even chemistry-minded, precocious middle school students will enjoy this fascinating and helpful resource.

We would be remiss not to spread the word about the Periodic Videos YouTube channel  as well. If hydrogen bubbles that burst into fireballs or videos with titles like "Chicken in Acid Conclusion" (in which Sir Poliakoff discusses the results of an experiment in which chicken legs were dipped in hydrochloric and sulfuric acid) don't pique your interest, we're not sure what will.

    

Finding Logic in the English Language

Many people will tell you that English is a crazy language. Because it is derived from so many disparate languages—English is based mostly on a West Germanic language but peppered with influences from Greek, Latin, and other European languages—there are plenty of exceptions to English spelling patterns, grammar, and punctuation usage. Sympathetically agreeing with a child that English spelling doesn't make sense or that rules governing comma use are simply crazy may seem like a kind gesture. After all, the rules can seem endless and complicated, and we don't want to make kids feel bad about their errors.

But simply falling back on the excuse that English is just wacky and devoid of logic is not only damaging to kids' motivation to improve, it's untrue. English does contain exceptions, but there are actually plenty of rules that govern correct usage. These rules are not only fascinating to learn about, they're tremendously helpful.

For example, the /ər/ sound at the end of words that define a person's job can be spelled in two ways: "-er" (painter) and "-or" (senator). Though the two suffixes are pronounced the same way, they're spelled differently and many people will tell you that the only way to know which one to use is to memorize the word in question. Not so, according to Solving Language Difficulties, a fascinating and useful book of exercises by Amey Steere, Caroline Peck, and Linda Kahn. Although there are a few exceptions, spelling of the /ər/ sound corresponds with the level of education needed for the job. An "-or" spelling is generally used for someone whose job requires a great deal of education (doctor, editor, governor) while the "-er" is used for someone who doesn't need as much training (barber, farmer, waiter).

Want more? TED-Ed is an outstanding source of interesting educational videos. A great one to get you started is a fun, story-like video that anthropomorphizes the comma, lending logic to rules about when commas are called for and when they're unnecessary. 

                                       

Another video we love provides a brief, fascinating explanation of how English spelling that seems completely illogical, like the "tw" in the word "two" is actually reasonable and meaningful.

                                        

Learning these rules is empowering for kids. After all, nothing is more frustrating than being told that the guidelines don't make sense but you have to learn them anyway. And young people generally enjoy discovering explanations for concepts that were previously shrouded in mystery. Solving Language Difficulties and TED-Ed are just the beginning. But be warned: start digging and you may become hooked.