A guide to TED ED

Registering / Logging in

1 The first time you visit the site, go to ed.ted.com and click ‘Educators Start Here’.

Then click ‘Register’. In future, you just need to click ‘Sign In’

2 Enter your email address in the box and click ‘Continue’. Alternatively, use your Facebook or Google account.

3 Choose a password and press ‘Continue’

4 Add your Details and click continue

5 Check your emails and click the link to activate your account. It may have gone to your spam folder (or Updates in Gmail).

6 Click to confirm your email

Make sure you have ‘Educator’ ticked, and you have to add information about what subjects and age groups you teach before it will let you click ‘Continue to TED-Ed’ at the bottom.

Creating a lesson from scratch

1 Log on and click ‘Create’.

Choose ‘A Lesson’ from the dropdown menu.

2 Use the search box to search for a subject. Alternatively, if you have copied the url of a particular video from YouTube, paste it into here.

3 Click on the thumbnail of the video you want to base your lesson on. The video will appear as a larger image. Click ‘Continue’:

Modifying/Reusing existing lessons

1 On the home page, click the magnifying glass to bring up the search box in the top right to search for a topic.

…or click ‘Discover’ (1) to find lessons organised by subject (2) or grouped into a series of videos (3).

2 If you click ‘Discover’ and ‘Lessons’, thumbnails of various lessons will appear. You can use the filters in (1) to narrow content by subject. The filters in (2) allow you to narrow content down by content type (Animations, Ted Talk Lessons or ‘Best of Web’), Student Level (school age, not language level), duration and subtitles. Those in (3) allow you to filter by relative length, number of views, and number of questions answered.

3 Click on the thumbnail of the lesson you want to use. Then click ‘Customize This Lesson’. This will create a personalized copy for you to adapt as you see fit, without affecting the original in any way.

Setting the lesson details

Here you can edit all aspects of the lesson (title and content/questions). Before you ‘publish’, make sure you click the ‘off’ next to ‘customizable’:

The settings box will pop up. You must click on the checkbox next to ‘Make my lesson customizable’ so that the whole team can use your lesson, then click ‘save’:

The different levels of activities

The possible activities in TedEd are as follows:

Watch is the introductory stage and cannot be omitted. You can change or crop the video.

Think is a stage where you can set multiple choice or open answer questions for students

Dig Deeper is a stage where you can share material with students, e.g. weblinks, to encourage them to consider something in more depth

Discuss is a stage where you can set up discussion forums

… And Finally allows you to leave the students with a closing thought.

You’ll see all the editable questions per section. Edit the Lesson Title and ‘Let’s begin’ sections if needed (‘Let’s Begin’ is the text that appears above the video as an introduction).

Think

Multiple Choice Questions

Click on a question to edit it. To edit a multiple choice question, click (1) to type in the question, enter the multiple choice answers in the boxes (2) and click the correct letter (3) to assign the correct answer.

Hover over an answer to bring up the option to move the answer up or down in the order (1) or to delete it (2)

There is also the option to add another answer (a seemingly unlimited number)

To give students a hint and send them to the relevant moment in the video if they get the question wrong, choose the relevant time in the video using the -/+ buttons or the slider.

If you’re happy with your question, click ‘Save’. If you want to hide that question from the quiz but not delete it, click ‘Exclude’. You can also ‘Delete’ and ‘Cancel’ to not save any changes.

Back on the main quiz page you can reorder the questions by hovering over them and dragging the three lines up and down (1), and you can add more questions (2)

Open Answer Questions

Click ‘Add another’ as above, then ‘Open Answer Question’

Type your question and click ‘Save’

Dig Deeper

Click the ‘Dig Deeper’ text (or on the menu if making it from scratch)

Use the text box to add any extra material you’d like students to explore. This can be particularly useful for sharing weblinks, images, etc. You can also preview how it will look.

Discuss

1 Click ‘Discuss’ on the question editor or on the menu.

2 Click ‘Add another’.

3 Write your discussion question in the top box and add a description if needed.

Click ‘Save’.

And Finally…

1 Click ‘And Finally…’

2 Use the box to share a final thought with your students. This might be instructions to think about something in preparation for the lesson. You can type up to 1000 characters and include weblinks, images, etc.

Publishing your lesson

Before you can share your lesson with students, you need to publish it. This can be done using the ‘Publish’ button at the top of the page (1). However, before you do this, we recommend clicking ‘More’ (2) then ‘Preview’ (3) to see how the lesson will look from a student’s perspective. When you’re satisfied with how the lesson works, click ‘Publish’ (1).

If you’re happy with the way it looks, click ‘Publish’ You’ll either get a separate message to say it’s being reviewed or it will say: ‘Your lesson has been successfully published. The links on your lesson might not work immediately: “We monitor lessons for quality and appreciate your patience while we review’, which could take up to 1 business day – (something to bear in mind for planning).

Sharing your lesson

If your lesson is published immediately, when you click Publish, a box will appear asking how you want students to have access. The default option requires them to create a TED-Ed account and log in to answer. The second option (as used in the demo in this module) forces students to enter a nickname, but not to register. Once you’ve set the access level, click Share your lesson.

You’ll see this box showing the different ways to share.

Once your lesson has been published, you can access this box at any time by going to “Manage” (1), then “Lessons” (2)and clicking “Share” (3) below the thumbnail of your lesson:

In the sharing box, you have the choice to share via social media (1) – the buttons launch the various applications, copy the link to the lesson so you can email it yourself or paste it somewhere (2), or you can send it directly via email from TEDed. Enter the email addresses, separated by commas (3) and add a message (4), then click ‘Send’ (5).

Accessing student results

1 Go to the Manage dashboard and click ‘Your Lessons’ (1). The panel on the left (2) shows you a summary of all your lessons, both draft and published. To see results from a specific lesson, click ‘Review Student Work’ (3) at the bottom of a thumbnail.

2 On the page that loads, you will see student numbers under the title of your lesson (1). You can use the controls (2) to sort student responses either by time of response or alphabetical order of surnames. To see an individual student’s response, click ‘Review’ (3).

3 Use the question numbers at the top to move through student responses. Multiple choice questions show the student’s response. Green shows the student responded correctly.

Open-answer questions show the student’s response (highlighted here). To give feedback, click ‘Give feedback’. Write your response in the box that appears (1), and click ‘Give feedback’ (2). Your feedback is limited to 280 characters.

4 To move between student responses, use the drop-down menu at the top of the page. Clicking ‘Stats’ takes you back to the full list of students.