TED’s Curator, Chris Anderson, writes this personal note on his blog:

Today marks a big new chapter in the TED story, as we unveil the first part of our TED-Ed initiative. Viewed one way, it’s just the release on YouTube of a dozen short videos created for high school students and lifelong learners. But we’re committed to growing this archive to hundreds of videos within a year, and I thought it would be helpful to jot down a few personal notes on why we’re doing this …

Teachers are heroes. That’s pretty much the founding principle of TED-Ed. TED’s core mission is to spread great ideas, and teachers are right there at the deep end. They’ve dedicated their lives to helping shape the minds of the next generation. There is no more noble or important work. TED-Ed is our way of reaching out to teachers and saying: Can we help?

Because the question we’ve been asking with increasing urgency the past couple years is: Could we do something similar to TED Talks that would work better in schools? Something that would give teachers a useful new tool to spark curiosity — shorter than 18 minutes, and targeted to the curriculum they teach. And more than that, could we create a platform that would allow teachers to share their best lesson to a much wider audience?

Read Chris’ full note >>