Introducing TED-Ed: Uniting the World's Great Teachers and Animators to Spread Lessons Beyond the Classroom

Initiative Launches with Twelve Exclusive Videos on TED-Ed YouTube Channel

ALL Teachers and Visualizers Called on to Submit "Lessons Worth Spreading" and Animating

NEW YORK, March 12, 2012 - TED, the nonprofit organization devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading," launches its anticipated education initiative today: TED-Ed.

A permanent initiative, TED-Ed harnesses the talent of the world's best teachers and visualizers, extending great lessons beyond a single classroom to anyone with internet access.

In the first stage of this initiative, TED-Ed launches a new education channel on YouTube today [http://www.youtube.com/tededucation]. It offers up original video content that marries the talent of great teachers with top animators to bring concepts like neuroscience to life in in short videos, typically 5 minutes long.  The channel is part of the youtube.com/edu offering – a collection of half a million educational videos – available in many schools as well as to the public online.

Through its open submission process, animators and educators from around the globe can contribute lesson plans and video reels on any topic [http://education.ted.com/]. Select lesson submissions will be matched with chosen visualizers to create video lessons worth learning, watching, and sharing.

Today's launch sees the first 12 videos released. New videos will be added every week, building rapidly to an archive of several hundred. The TED-Ed video content does not seek to replace traditional curriculum, but rather to supplement it by providing teachers with new tools that inspire curiosity and bring lessons to life with dynamic animation.

"TED's core mission is to spread ideas," said TED Curator Chris Anderson . "By turning great lessons into vivid scholastic tools, these TED-Ed videos are designed to catalyze curiosity. We want to show that learning can be thrilling. Because they are only a few minutes long, they can readily be used by teachers during class time. But we also envisage them being viewed by learners of all ages."

TED-Ed Catalyst Logan Smalley added: "TED-Ed has the potential to take a lesson that might normally reach just 20 students and extend it to the world. The topics we can cover are endless, and the more teachers and animators who contribute their lessons and talents, the more impactful this resource becomes. This is an exciting first step for TED-Ed, with more ideas, tools, and announcements to come in the months ahead."

Angela Lin, Head of YouTube Education, said: "Views of educational content on YouTube doubled in the last year. Schools, parents, and lifelong learners are turning to YouTube to help bring topics to life, and the new TED-Ed channel is a wonderful addition to our corpus of half a million educational videos on youtube.com/edu from some of the world's best teachers."

About the TED-Ed Channel on YouTube
The TED-Ed Channel on YouTube – the first major initiative from TED's newly launched TED-Ed program – launches today with 12 exclusive videos.

TED-Ed video content is optimized for learning and geared towards teachers, students and the classroom – especially high school and college, though content is appropriate for lifelong learners.
The video content is built to deliver a lesson quickly (in 3-10 minutes), in a way that extends beyond the lecture format for which TED is known.

The videos provide teachers with a new tool, which they can use to complement, amplify and expand their existing lessons.