"Project Ed is a platform dedicated to educational video made for and by 21st century learners. The core of Project Ed is an open, community-driven approach to content. We start by identifying K-12 concepts where a video has the potential to create a meaningful impact.Then we design contests to take these lessons out of the classroom and put them in the hands of digital storytellers.
Each contest starts with a "creative brief," that includes everything needed to achieve a specific learning goal. Once the brief is launched on Projected.com, creators from all over craft original narratives to teach in unforgettable ways. Each brief generates hundreds of new ideas and a multitude of submissions. This process brings together the rigor of curriculum experts and the passion of creators to build an open library of effective, engaging lessons."
"Facing History's unique video collection includes insights from top scholars, the voices and memories of witnesses to history, and inspiring stories from teachers and students who wrestle with the complex questions of history in today's classrooms. The videos selected below provide historical background and thematic insights that will be useful for teaching To Kill a Mockingbird.
Also be sure to check out activities for Mockingbird that use these resources."
"A recently published game called "Gone Home" is testing the traditional progression of learning by flattening the story. Players have questioned whether it qualifies as a game since it doesn't include traditional points, prizes and leveling up (the game is self-titled as "a story exploration video game"). Critics have praised "Gone Home" as a new way of storytelling, and it's beginning to make its way into the classroom, as a viable substitute for traditional text. The game is non-linear and players have a great deal of agency for filling in the gaps to arrive at their conclusions.*"
"In this five-step project, you'll learn the art of making explainer videos from beginning to end. Listen to industry experts share their tips and tricks on how to select a topic, research information, and choose the right tools to produce content and share your video with the world. "
Op-Docs is The New York Times editorial department's forum for short, opinionated documentaries, produced with wide creative latitude and a range of artistic styles, covering current affairs, contemporary life and historical subjects.
Op-Docs videos are produced by both renowned and emerging filmmakers who express their views in the first person, through their subjects or more subtly through an artistic approach to a topic. Each is accompanied by a director's statement.
In December 2012, we started a new Op-Docs feature: Scenes. This is a platform for very short work - snippets of street life, brief observations and interviews, clips from experimental and artistic nonfiction videos - that follow less traditional documentary narrative conventions.
"In a well-crafted essay, explain three ways drones would be an improvement over traditional methods.
Before you do the task, you might…
Pay close attention to the instructions. Understand that the prompt is asking only for ways that drones would be an improvement.
Watch this video that explains additional ways that drones might be used in the future.
Write down all the possible benefits to drone use explained in the article and observed in the video."
"We've been publishing a Word of the Day every school day since our blog began, and sometime this December we'll reach our 1,000th.
A perfect time, we thought, to celebrate with a contest.
So here's the challenge: Along with our collaborators for Word of the Day - the linguists who run Vocabulary.com and Visual Thesaurus - we invite you to create a short video that defines or teaches any of the words in our collection.
You have until Dec. 3 to do it, and all the rules and regulations, plus some inspiration from other students and teachers, are below."
"Below we share an idea from Allison Marchetti, an English teacher at Trinity Episcopal School in Richmond, Va., who uses an Op-Doc video about the problem of Internet addiction among China's youth to teach argumentative writing to her ninth graders. This lesson is part of a larger unit of study on editorial and commentary writing."
Seven minute video on storytelling:
"For the award-winning writer George Saunders, the process of crafting a good story means not condescending to your reader. It means creating sentences that clue them into something unnoticed about the character, and allowing them to figure it out. "A bad story is one where you know what the story is and you're sure of it," he says in this short film, George Saunders: On Story."
VIDEO: "Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" is often interpreted as an anthem of individualism and nonconformity, seemingly encouraging readers to take the road less traveled. This interpretation has long been propagated through countless song lyrics, newspaper columns, and graduation speeches. But as Frost liked to warn his listeners, "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem-very tricky." In actuality, the two roads diverging in a yellow wood are "really about the same," according to Frost, and are equally traveled and quite interchangeable.
In fact, the critic David Orr deemed Frost's work "the most misread poem in America," writing in The Paris Review: "This is the kind of claim we make when we want to comfort or blame ourselves by assuming that our current position is the product of our own choices… The poem isn't a salute to can-do individualism. It's a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives.""
"o teach students how to understand and apply these rhetorical principles in an academic context, I first familiarize writers with the definition of ethos, pathos and logos, using this short video from Read/Write/Think. Use the chart below to help novice writers apply the proofs to a variety of persuasive texts in their environment, such as magazine or newspaper advertisements and editorials:"
We've done the math, and below you'll find the 100 most-commented-upon questions we've ever asked that call for persuasive writing.
Many of them are, of course, on topics teenagers care about - technology, video games, sports and gender issues. Others are classic debate issues like government regulation and gun violence.
But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the broad topic that seems to engage students the most? School - from questions about homework to cheating, bad report cards, bullying and gym class.
So skim the list and pick issues that interest you. Each question is linked to a related Times article, which you can access free, and includes additional subquestions to help you flesh out your ideas.
"
TED-Ed Video with quiz:
"It can be hard sometimes, when speaking, to remember all of the grammatical rules that guide us when we're writing. When is it right to say "the dog and me" and when should it be "the dog and I"? Does it even matter? Andreea S. Calude dives into the age-old argument between linguistic prescriptivists and descriptivists - who have two very different opinions on the matter."
"At EL Education, we believe that this is best done consciously and intentionally. We are unafraid to say that teachers and schools shape student character. We specify what we believe they should work towards: students who are not just effective learners, but also ethical people, and active contributors to a better world. We believe that this is supported when educators elevate student voice and leadership and model a schoolwide culture of respect, compassion, honesty, integrity, and kindness. In times of crisis, small-scale or large, this also means modeling courage in standing up for those values, and standing against racism, injustice, acts of hate, and the undermining of public education.
One unheralded but powerful possibility is this: giving students real material to engage with and supporting them to do work that matters to them. This is what helps students become ethical adults who contribute to a better world. In EL Education schools, this deeper learning is the daily fare of classrooms. And, it's what empowers them to engage in civil debate. If students are fearful about what may happen to them or their loved ones, we can help them research what has actually been said or proposed, and what is possible according to the U.S. Constitution as it has so far been interpreted. We can help them respond in ways that build their own agency: writing letters, like students at World of Inquiry, or making videos and organizing actions like the Melrose Leadership Academy Peace and Kindness March."
"School 21, a public school in London has made "oracy" a primary focus of everything they do. From the earliest grades on up teachers support students to find their voice, express differing opinions politely, and challenge one another's thinking. These are skills called for in the Common Core, but can be hard to find in many classrooms because students haven't been taught how to make "turn and talks" truly effective.
The Edutopia team visited School 21 and captured some amazing videos of students practicing their communication skills with support from teachers."
Op-Docs is The New York Times editorial department's forum for short, opinionated documentaries, produced with wide creative latitude and a range of artistic styles, covering current affairs, contemporary life and historical subjects.
Op-Docs videos are produced by both renowned and emerging filmmakers who express their views in the first person, through their subjects or more subtly through an artistic approach to a topic. Each is accompanied by a director's statement.
Are there applications for the classroom? Anyone can submit there own Op-Doc.
"Explore the power of language, look at the world with a fresh sense of wonder, and build reading and writing skills. These video segments, drawn from the PBS Poetry Everywhere series, capture some of the voices of poetry, past and present."
Poems can be browsed through categories.