Classroom Technology

TED-Ed Creates Educational YouTube Video Library

By Ian Quillen — March 13, 2012 1 min read
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Just over a year ago, in its continuing mission to share “ideas worth spreading,” a TED Conference held in Long Beach, Calif., welcomed Salman Khan as one of several speakers during a session on education curated by Bill Gates.

Perhaps he made an impression.

Seizing upon Khan’s idea of using short instructional videos for anytime, anyplace educational tools, and upon YouTube’s recently announced foray into education, the New York City-based nonprofit conference organizer Monday launched a new educational venture called TED-Ed, in which the organization will create its own educational YouTube video library.

While only 12 videos were posted onto the new channel Monday, it’s expected to be the first of many rounds of content additions, with the collection expected to grow to several hundred videos, according to a press release.

The videos are shorter than the typical 18-minute long TED lecture, ranging from 3-10 minutes. Included in the first volume of selections are short films about the life cycle of pandemics, the effect of containers on the modern world, and how evolutionary principles fit the big city.

It’s also worth noting that, while perhaps inspired by Khan, TED’s collection appears to be geared toward the same broad, theoretical thinking that typifies its conference lectures, in contrast to Khan’s very granular videos on individual concepts in various fields of math, science, history, and even test preparation.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Digital Education blog.