Week 9: Blended learning - TED-ed

 

Welcome back! This week we are going to talk about blended learning! Also introducing a very useful teaching website: TED-ed.


l  What is 'blended learning'?

According to Mizza & Rubio (2020), blended learning is an educational approach that combines traditional classroom and online learning resource. By doing so, it can bring together the strengths of the traditional classroom and the rich online teaching resources to form a more efficient way of learning. Especially for language teaching, which requires the constant updates of target language resources. As technology develops, this type of teaching is becoming more and more popular.

 

l  TED-ed

I think most of you have heard of TED talk, maybe some of you use it as self-learning tool. But today, let me demonstrate a branch of TED talk. The TED ed, a website especially builds for worldwide educators.


Unlike TED talk, which has a higher language requirement for listeners TED-ed is designed specifically for teaching English. It is a collection of short and simple video resources that convey complex social issues or theories in simple, understandable English, such as climate change, global warming, etc. But where does it come in handy? That it not only has videos, but also lesson plans and teaching resources already prepared for teachers, like quizzes, discussion topics. Of course, teacher can always come up with their own plans, but it can give useful references when designing teaching plans.

 

For example, in this page about social media change nature, there is the main learning material: the 5 minutes video. Then on the right side, there are 'think' and 'dig dipper'.

Screenshot from TED-ed.

The 'think' provides several questions for students to answer after watching video. For classroom which don't have internet access, teacher can choose to print the questions out.

Screenshot from TED-ed.


For intermediate or advanced learners, the 'dig dipper' can guide more resources that require higher language level. Also, for teachers, this can give you a very good idea about planning further lesson about this topic.

 

Overall, TED-ed is a very useful platform that make teacher's job much easier, it covers many areas, from environmental issues, technology news, humanities knowledge… it's fun and engaging. And, most importantly, it is FREE!

 

l  Limitations

Last but not least, while TED-ed has many benefits, it still has some limitations:


1. It can't replace traditional classroom.

It is a valuable teaching resource, and it works best with traditional teaching. It can be a self-learning tool but not replacement.

2. No interaction

We should bear in mind that TED-ed can only give us ideas, but the interaction between our students still depends on us.

 

 

That's it for this week hope you like my content! See you next post! 😉

 

 

 

 

Reference

Mizza, D., & Rubio, F. (2020). Creating effective blended language learning courses: A research-based guide from planning to evaluation. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108355285

Comments

  1. xuteng 221783015 April 2023 at 04:46

    Through your blog, I learned what blended learning is, and before that, I had no such concept! Meanwhile, I used to only know TED and not TED-ed. Your blog provides a detailed introduction to the role and benefits of TED-ed, helping me solve the problem of finding teaching materials. I agree with your statement at the end that although TED-ed is powerful, it cannot replace traditional education. But we can use it to assist teaching!

    ReplyDelete
  2. KunyanICT16 April 2023 at 13:39

    I used to use videos in Ted to help my students practice their listening, and let them play them in their free time, such as waiting in line for coffee, or taking the bus, so as to get them used to listening to English and create an English environment for them. But after reading your introduction, I know that it also has the functions of "think" and "dig dipper", which provides me with new ideas to use it to assist listening teaching. Thanks for sharing.

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