Education

Teaching on the TED plan

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Michael Lee at the blog Addison Road is trying a new teaching style this semester — and a key part of it is adopting the TED time limit:

I’ve made it a goal to never “lecture” for more than 20 minutes at a time. At the 20-minute mark, I stop, and we do something else. Either a class discussion, or a small project, or a break, something else. I’ve been on a steady diet of TED talks for the past 12 months, and I’ve been trying to capture the power of that strict time limit, the intensity of a well-crafted 20 minutes. I think it represents the upper limit of my students’ attention span, and rather than fighting it, I’ve decided to embrace it and use it to my advantage.

The entire essay is well worth checking out, for teachers and other interested parties.