How to Use TedEd Lessons In Your Music Classroom

How to Use TedEd Lessons In Your Music Classroom
How to Use TedEd Lessons In Your Music Classroom

Overview

The massively popular education seminar series, TEDTalks, seeks to answer some of life’s most interesting questions. These seminars, which you can either attend in person or view online via the TED website, begin with either a speaker or a video. Each seminar is passionate, thought-provoking, and generally easy-to-understand (even for students).

Because TEDTalks are so popular amongst teachers, TEDEd was launched several years ago to make it even easier to bring thought-provoking content into the classroom. In this blog, we’ll discover some great ways to get started using TedEd lessons and content in your music classroom. The best part about it? It’s free!

Pre-Made TedEd Lessons

TedEd offers a range of pre-made lessons for all different subjects. Inside their library, music teachers can find lessons listed under, “The Arts”, and then “Performing Arts.” There are several great pre-made lessons for music teachers. Here are just a few of my favorites:

There are dozens of TedEd lessons that any music teacher can use in their classroom. Each lesson is subdivided into four primary sections: Watch, Think, Dig Deeper, & Discuss. 

Watch: Where students will view the video and read a quick synopsis

Think: A pre-made, multiple-choice quiz to assess students’ understanding of the video

Dig Deeper: Lists different online resources for students to view to further understand    the topic. 

Discuss: An online forum where students can participate in answering a question & responding to other ideas. 

How to Customize a Premade Ted-Ed Lesson

If you like the basis of a lesson, but want to change some of the content, you can do so by clicking, “Customize this Lesson.” Note: to customize a lesson, you’ll need to sign up for a free educator account (or sign-in if you already have one). 

Customize TedEd Lesson

Once inside the lesson customization panel, you can edit anything within the lesson (even cropping the video playback to highlight a certain portion of the TedEd video. 

TedEd lesson panel

You can also customize your settings to either require students to sign up for a TedEd account with their email (follow your local privacy guidelines) or with a nickname.

*Note: if you want to be able to use discussion forums, students must sign-in to a TedEd account and be 13 years or older. If you would like to host a forum for students without signing into TedEd, consider hosting a discussion through your course’s Schoology/Google Classroom page.

TedEd module settings

Finally, once your edited lesson is ready for students, you can publish your lesson. Publishing your lesson does not allow the lesson to be viewable by anyone except those with the link. Here is a note from TedEd about publishing a lesson with edits for your students.

TedEd lesson status

Once students click on the link, they will sign in (or create a nickname) and complete the video and questions. On your teacher dashboard, you will be able to review student work individually for grading purposes. 

TedEd lesson

Create a Lesson Using Your Own Video

You can also use the TedEd platform to design encapsulated lessons from ANY Youtube video. You can even record your own video, put it on Youtube, and design a lesson around it. To create your own lesson from a new Youtube video:

  • Log into TedEd
  • Click on “Create” and then “A Lesson”
TedEd create a lesson using your own video
  • Search for the Youtube video you would like to use. 
    • Remember to always preview a video before assigning it to your students. 
  • Once linked, you can then design every bit of the lesson you’d like your students to follow including:
    • Title
    • Introduction
    • Multiple Choice or Short Answer Questions (Multiple Choice Questions are Self-Grading)
    • Dig Deeper for more information or other links you’d like your students to check out. 
    • Discussion (for students over 13 with TedEd accounts). 
    • Closing Thoughts
TedEd lesson

Final Thoughts

The ways to use the TedEd platform are endless. Consider using TedEd premade lessons to deliver content to your students during an unexpected absence, to teach material in stations, as a quick homework assignment, or even as a reward activity! 

If you have additional questions on how to use the TedEd platform, you can view the FAQ’s here or contact TedEd to ask a specific question.

I hope you enjoy getting to know this completely free resource & you find it helpful when designing your virtual or in-person lessons!

Download your copy

Would you like to take a copy of this with you? Click the button below and a copy of this will be sent directly into your inbox.

Looking for More Resources for Music Teachers?

Hello! I’m Katie Argyle – an Australian music technology trainer and consultant with a passion for helping music teachers through my business Midnight Music.

I’m a qualified teacher but no, I don’t currently teach in a school. I help teachers through my online professional development space – the Midnight Music Community – where there are tutorial videos, courses, links and downloadable resources.

MMC Mockup new

I like to focus on easy ways to incorporate technology into what you are already doing in your music curriculum through a range of creative projects. I also run live workshops and have presented at countless conferences and other music education events.

If you want simple, effective ideas for using technology in music education, I would LOVE to help you inside the Midnight Music Community.

Learn more and take a sneak peek inside

Leave A Comment

You might also like...

Introducing

The Midnight Music Community

An online community where music tech professional development, lesson ideas, and accountability come together.
Ultimate Free Music Tech Resource Guide Guide 2023/24

Download Now for FREE...

The Ultimate Music Tech Resources Guide for 2023-2024

Claim your copy of our annual guide to free music technology resources, designed especially for music teachers. Discover interactive music websites, software, productivity tools, and assessment resources you can use in your music classroom for free.

Follow Me on Social Media

PRIVACY POLICY

This is the Privacy Policy for the Midnight Music website located at www.midnightmusic.com (“Site”).

The Site is operated by Midnight Music Pty Ltd ABN 87 619 652 603 (“Midnight Music” or “Company” or “we” or “us”).

Midnight Music understands the importance of protecting your personal information and undertakes to adhere to this privacy policy at all times to ensure your personal information is effectively safeguarded.

Information you provide to us

The Site provides various places for users to provide information. We collect information that users provide by filling out forms on the Site, communicating with us via contact forms, responding to surveys, search queries on our search feature, providing comments or other feedback, providing information when ordering a product or service via the Site, and other circumstances where collecting personal information is reasonable and permitted by the Laws of the State of Victoria, Australia.

We use information you provide to us to deliver the requested product and/or service, to improve our overall performance, and to provide you with offers, promotions, and information.

Information we collect through automatic data collection technology

As you navigate through the Site, we may use automatic data collection technologies including Google Analytics to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns. This will generally include information about your location, your traffic pattern through our Site, and any communications between your computer and our Site. Among other things, we will collect data about the type of computer you use, your Internet connection, your IP address, your operating system, and your browser type.

The information we collect automatically is used for statistical data and will not include personal information. We use this data to improve our Site and our service offerings. To the extent that you voluntarily provide personal information to us, our systems will associate the automatically collected information with your personal information.

Use of cookies and pixels

Similar to other commercial websites, our Site utilises a standard technology called “cookies” and server logs to collect information about how our site is used. Information gathered through cookies and server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our site, and the websites visited just before and just after our own, as well as your IP address.

A cookie is a very small text document, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier. When you visit a website, that site’s computer asks your computer for permission to store this file in a part of your hard drive specifically designated for cookies. Each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser’s preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a website to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites.

The Company reserves the right to use technological equivalents of cookies, including social media pixels. These pixels allow social media sites to track visitors to outside websites so as to tailor advertising messages users see while visiting that social media website. The Company reserves the right to use these pixels in compliance with the policies of the various social media sites.​

How we manage personal information

Midnight Music undertakes to take all commercially reasonable steps to ensure that all personal information collected by us is accurate, up-to-date, complete and stored securely. When your personal information is no longer required for the purposes which Midnight Music uses personal information, all commercially reasonable steps will be undertaken to securely destroy that information.

How your personal information will be used

We use personal information for purposes of presenting our Site and its contents to you, providing you with information, providing you with offers for products and services, providing you with information about your subscriptions and products, carrying out any contract between you and the Company, administering our business activities, providing customer service, and making available other items and services to our customers and prospective customers.
From time-to-time, we may use the information you provide to us to make you offers to purchase products and services provided by third parties in exchange for a commission to be paid to us by such third parties. Should you opt to take part in such promotions, the third parties will receive your information.

Disclosure of your information

Midnight Music considers personal information we collect about you to be confidential and will not disclose such information to third parties except in the following circumstances:

  • Where you have consented to your personal information being provided to a third party;
  • Where Midnight Music is required by law to disclose your information; and
  • Gaining access to your personal information held by Midnight Music

Except in circumstances where access to your personal information may be denied by the Privacy Act or other Law of the State of Victoria, Australia, your personal information will be provided to you upon request.

Visitors’ General Data Protection Regulation rights

If you are within the European Union, you are entitled to certain information and have certain rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These include the following:

  • We will retain the any information you choose to provide to us until: (a) you ask us to delete the information; (b) we decide to cease using our existing data providers; or (c) the Company decides that the value in retaining the data is outweighed by the costs of retaining it.
  • You have the right to request access to your data that the Company stores and the rights to either rectify or erase your personal data.
  • You have the right to seek restrictions on the processing of your data.
  • You have the right to object to the processing of your data and the right to the portability of your data.
  • To the extent that you provided consent to the Company’s processing of your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing based upon consent that occurred prior to your withdrawal of consent.
  • You have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority that has jurisdiction over issues related to the General Data Protection Regulation.
  • We require only the information that is reasonably required to enter into a contract with you. We will not require you to provide consent for any unnecessary processing as a condition of entering into a contract with us.

Contact us

Should you have any queries in relation to the above or require further information regarding the Privacy Policy please contact us:

Midnight Music Pty Ltd
PO Box 219
Glen Waverley
Victoria 3150
AUSTRALIA

Email address: support@midnightmusic.com