At TED-Ed, we’re passionate about sharing vibrant, diverse, and meaningful student voices with the world. Since 2014, thousands of student groups across the globe have been developing and sharing their ideas using our free idea presentation literacy materials. And, in these last few years, we (the TED-Ed team) have learned SO much about what students and educators really need on the journey toward that best possible Talk.

Central to the program of course are the TED-Ed Student Talks materials, designed to help students more fully realize and develop the core ideas they’ll share with the world.

Behold: the wonderfully colorful Guidebook, Idea Journal, and Curriculum Standards packet!

The Guidebook:

The main idea: This is your road map for navigating a group of students through the process of developing and sharing their TED-Ed Student Talks. It has specific guidelines and ideas on how to structure your sessions, but leaves room for creativity so you can adapt meetings to fit your group!

Supporting details: The sessions (or, as we call them, “Explorations”) are broken into 3 phases: Discover, Develop and Share. You can see the basic arc of the program here. The activities in each Exploration offer videos to watch, discussion prompts, partner and group work, and individual reflection time.

Included are activities for identifying and prioritizing good ideas, a model that trains students to effectively give and receive feedback, extra help building throughlines, and “Talk Tools” that teach storyboarding and presentation skills like voice and presence.

The Idea Journal:

The main idea: This journal is a safe and creative space for every speaker to explore and develop; it is a colorful, fun and personal way to track the development of your idea.

Supporting details: Students will use this journal as they complete Explorations in the Guidebook. The sections of the journal correspond to various activities in the Guidebook and offer students a place to brainstorm, draft ideas, take notes, and build on their script.

This should feel like a journal. There are space to draw, to draft, to reflect, to check items off your to-do list, and to keep track of your amazing progress!

The Curriculum Standards Packet:

The main idea: We created this packet to help illustrate the ways in which the TED-Ed Student Talks program aligns with national and international educational standards used by many schools in our global community!

Supporting details: If you are an educator using these materials in your classroom, you can easily track the standards covered by each step in the process. This document also clearly outlines the skills students will develop as they complete the program.

We’ve included Common Core standards, Cambridge Global Perspectives Program standards, ISTE standards for Students, and International Baccalaureate Learner Profile Standards.

So how can you use these materials?

If you aren’t registered with us yet, submit your registration here to access our Resource Library and download the free materials. You have a few options for how to use these materials:

• In a classroom: as a group of students in a class, led by a teacher.

• In a Club: as a group of students in an after-school setting, led by an adult educator.

• As part of another youth/education program: as an addition to an existing program—for groups of students who are part of programs run by our collaborative partners.

If you are currently a registered TED-Ed Student Talk Leader, visit your Resource Library, and please let us know what you think!

Blue whale researcher and TED Senior Fellow Asha de Vos unveiled her TED-Ed lesson today on the TED Fellows stage. The video — “Why are blue whales so enormous?” — stars a puppet version of de Vos, which she had been coveting for weeks. So Fellows & Community Director Tom Rielly presented her with it, hand-carried from London by TED Senior Fellow Taghi Amirani. We asked her how she felt to be gifted with her own plush doppelgänger.

“It was such an amazing surprise! When I saw the first cut of the video, I was roaring with laughter. I hadn’t known they were going to make a puppet of me. So I had actually been pestering Tom and all the TED staff for the last few days about how I could get my hands on it. Tom was very convincing when he said it was in the middle of nowhere and it would be impossible to get it,” says de Vos. “I realize now in hindsight that they’ve been avoiding me a little bit for the last two days. It was a well-kept secret. I’m looking forward to using it when I talk to kids about the ocean, which I usually do wearing a mask and fins! Now she [the puppet] can do it.”

Original Post and Photo: Karen Eng

Learn more about TED Fellows here, and get more news from TED at the TED blog.