Use TED-Ed to Flip Your IL Sessions

Last week I attended the Texas Library Association’s 2013 annual library conference. My head was spinning with all the innovative fresh ideas that were shared! One awesome session I attended was Flipped Classroom: Supporting New Educational Models. The session consisted of a panel of 6 educators who shared their experience flipping their classroom. While it was primarily aimed at teachers and school librarians many ideas were shared that could crossover into the IL session. Ok, so I’ll start by explaining what a flipped classroom is:

Definition

A flipped classroom involves providing materiel before class (usually in the form of a video or a podcast) that the students need to read/watch/listen to and then taking class time for hands on activities. With flipped teaching teachers can spend less time lecturing and more time on interacting with students. Flipped learning allows you to spend your valuable class time on discussion and critical thinking.

TEDEd

One great thing about flipped teaching is that the instructor doesn’t have to make the videos themselves (although they definitely can!), they can choose from a myriad of educational videos that are already out there in cyberspace. One resource that was shared was TedEd. If your familiar with TED already you know what a valuable resource it is. TED-Ed teams up educators and animators to create TED-Ed Videos- exceptional educational videos for your classroom. Here’s a video explaining what it is and how it works:

TED-Ed carefully curates their video library so you don’t have to sift through a bunch of junk to get what you want.

• On the homepage if you click on Find&Flip 
• Search for “information literacy” or whatever you want your lesson plan to be and choose the video you would like to use
• Click Flip This Video and add your own questions, notes, and resources to customize it for your students
• You can also search Best Flips to find user nominated lessons as well as search by subject or series

And there you have it! Fantastic lessons and great animation that can be customized for your IL sessions. Couldn’t be any easier than that!

Tips/Resources

Here are just a few tips that I learned during the session

• Videos should be 12 minutes or less
• Make sure your videos can work on all devices (PC, Mac, Mobile)
• Give plenty of time for the flipped assignment
• Video Software (for creating your own videos)
  • Screenchomp
  • Promethean
  • Educreations
  • Knowmia
  • Showme
• Websites for hosting your videos
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube
  • Google Drive
  • Sophia
  • TED-Ed