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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: What Adults Can Learn From Kids

For Students 9th - 10th
Child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs childish thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity, and especially optimism. Kids' big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups' willingness to learn from children as...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Write Your Story, Change History

For Students 9th - 10th
In this inspirational TEDYouth Talk, Brad Meltzer encourages us to dream big, work hard, and stay humble. [8:58]
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: What Aristotle and Joshua Bell Can Teach Us About Persuasion

For Students 9th - 10th
Imagine you are one of the world's greatest violin players, and you decide to conduct an experiment: play inside a subway station and see if anyone stops to appreciate when you are stripped of a concert hall and name recognition. Joshua...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: What Is Color?

For Students 9th - 10th
Colm Kelleher describes the physics behind colors- why the colors we see are related to the period of motion and the frequency of waves. [3:09]
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Is There a Difference Between Art and Craft?

For Students 9th - 10th
Where do we get our notions of art vs. craft? Laura Morelli traces the history of how we assign value to the visual arts. [5:30]
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: How Art Can Help You Analyze

For Students 9th - 10th
Amy E. Herman explains why art historical training can prepare people for real world investigation. [4:50]
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: How to Take a Great Picture

For Students 9th - 10th
For manual photography, the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO sensitivity can all be manipulated to get just the right amount of light. Carolina Molinari suggests the best exposure for an action photo, a stunning portrait, or a nighttime...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Making a Ted Ed Lesson: Two Ways to Animate Slam Poetry

For Students 9th - 10th
Slam poetry packs an emotional punch by using powerful verbal metaphors; animation can do the same using visual tools. TED-Ed animators show how two separate techniques- rotoscoping and more traditional hand-drawn animation- bring to...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Making a Ted Ed Lesson: Animating Zombies With Puppets

For Students 9th - 10th
What style of animation perfectly mimics the movement of zombies? Puppet animation allows for just the right amount of zombie-like stiff limbs and jerky stumbles. TED-Ed animators show how to bring a zombie to life through 2D puppet...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Animation Basics: The Optical Illusion of Motion

For Students 9th - 10th
How do animators make still images come to life? Are the images really moving, or are they merely an optical illusion? TED-Ed takes you behind the scenes to reveal the secret of motion in movies. [5:12]
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man of Math

For Students 9th - 10th
What's so special about Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man? With arms outstretched, the man fills the irreconcilable spaces of a circle and a square- symbolizing the Renaissance-era belief in the mutable nature of humankind. James Earle...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Making a Ted Ed Lesson: Synesthesia and Playing Cards

For Students 9th - 10th
How can a pack of playing cards accurately explain the complicated and nuanced neurological condition, synesthesia? TED-Ed animators explain the process of creating an original animation from planning to fruition, including the special...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Dissecting Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi

For Students 9th - 10th
The scene of the three wise men offering gifts to a newborn Jesus was widely painted during the Renaissance era, so how did painter Sandro Botticelli create a version that's still well known today? James Earle describes who and what set...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Gyotaku: The Ancient Japanese Art of Printing Fish

For Students 9th - 10th
How did fishermen record their trophy catches before the invention of photography? In 19th century Japan, fishing boats were equipped with rice paper, sumi-e ink, and brushes in order to create gyotaku: elaborate rubbings of freshly...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: A Cinematic Journey Through Visual Effects

For Students 9th - 10th
It's been 110 years since Georges Melies sent a spaceship slamming into the eye of the man on the moon. So how far have visual effects come since then? Working closely with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Don Levy takes...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Animation Basics: Homemade Special Effects

For Students 9th - 10th
Animation is used everywhere to communicate big ideas-- in movies, television, and media. Do you ever stop and wonder about the magic of it all? And have you ever wanted to create your own special effects? TED-Ed animators show just how...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Weaving Narratives in Museum Galleries

For Students 9th - 10th
As the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Thomas P. Campbell thinks deeply about curating- not just selecting art objects, but placing them in a setting where the public can learn their stories. With glorious images,...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: What Cameras See That Our Eyes Don't

For Students 9th - 10th
Our eyes are practically magical, but they cannot see everything. For instance, the naked eye cannot see the moment where all four of a horse's legs are in the air or the gradual life cycle of plants- but cameras can capture these...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Your Elusive Creative Genius

For Students 9th - 10th
Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses- and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. It's a funny, personal and surprisingly...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Visualizing Hidden Worlds Inside Your Body

For Students 9th - 10th
How do we see things too small to be detected by the human eye? What about things inside our own bodies? Dee Breger uses a scanning electron microscope to give us a glimpse of images including blood clots, thyroid glands, and lungs with...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Illuminating Photography: From Camera Obscura to Camera Phone

For Students 9th - 10th
The origins of the cameras we use today were invented in the 19th century. Or were they? A millenia before, Arab scientist Alhazen was using the camera obscura to duplicate images, with Leonardo da Vinci following suit 500 years later...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: How Art Gives Shape to Cultural Change

For Students 9th - 10th
Thelma Golden, curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, talks through three recent shows that explore how art examines and redefines culture. The "post-black" artists she works with are using their art to provoke a new dialogue about race...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Distorting Madonna in Medieval Art

For Students 9th - 10th
After Rome was destroyed, people were wary of attachment to physical beauty. As Christianity gained traction, Romans instead began to focus on the metaphysical beauty of virtue, and art began to follow suit. James Earle discusses how...
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Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: The Dawn of Art

For Students 9th - 10th
The images in this video come from Chauvet Cave, an ancient rock art site in France. Watch the video and try to imagine the kind of people that created the art. There are no words in this video, so check out the Dig Deeper section for...