As an ESL teacher I know how important it is for my students to get listening practice. Some might say that they listen all day, every day, and that's true, but it's critical for them to get used to listening to different voices and accents, which is hard to do in a school setting. TEDTalks are all in English but they are given by people from many different backgrounds. TEDTalks also support the students' understanding in several ways. First they are all close captioned and the captioning has been verified by at least one other person. This is important, if you don't believe me just turn on the English captions for some YouTube videos and see what you get when the computer creates them automatically. These captions are available in at least five different languages. Second, and even better for language learners, the transcript is always available and it too has been checked by a second person. The transcript is usually available in at least two dozen different languages, I've seen some with over three dozen! So students are able to follow along with the transcript, in just about any language they could want, as they listen. I've yet to have a video that I wanted to use that didn't have at the transcript in every language my students speak.
This year I've been tasked with developing a new class to improve reading and writing skills using science and social studies topics. Thus far I've found a TEDTalk that relates to almost every unit. Reading about Biosphere 2 is great, but students really get engaged when they get to hear a scientist who actually lived in Biosphere 2 tell about her experiences (it also provides the perfect opportunity to discuss primary and secondary sources). Reading about bionics and looking at pictures is cool but when you see a paraplegic get wheeled on stage and then actually stand up and walk, that's impactful. Researching inventions and the scientific process is interesting but when you hear three college students talk about the motorized skateboard they designed and demonstrate how it can reduce the time and cost of your commute then inventing something yourself becomes a more realistic possibility.
So how do I use TEDTalks? One popular way is via TED-ED, but that has a couple of drawbacks: 1. you lose the closed captions and transcripts and 2. it runs off of YouTube which is completely blocked for students in my district. What I do instead is go directly to TEDTalks' website and search for the topic that I am teaching about. I then scan through the transcripts of different videos (faster than actually watching the videos) until I find one that I think is the best for my unit. I then watch the video and create a comprehension question Google Doc for students to complete. Then I assign it to the students via Google Classroom: I put the link and have Classroom make each student a copy of the comprehension questions, press assign and away we go. Students can listen to the talk and look at the transcript as much as they need/want to answer the questions and their work is digitally submitted for easy grading. Easy as pie and everyone is happy!
The students have really been enjoying TEDTalks as well. Once I even caught one watching a talk that I didn't assign--he just thought it was cool. Students watching educational videos of their own free will? Now that's a teacher dream come true!