YouTube can be a good place to find educational videos to support your lessons. We've all had students who struggle to hold their comments until the video has stopped. One strategy that many teachers have used in those cases is to tell students to "write it down." The web makes it possible to take that strategy a step further and have students not only "write it down" but also enable teachers to instantly respond to students' comments while watching a video. Here are three tools that enable users to watch videos online and discuss them with others at the same time.
Synchtube is a free service for watching videos and chatting about them at the same time. Here's how it works; find the url of your favorite YouTube, Vimeo, or Blip.tv video, copy that url into Synchtube, and begin chatting with your friends while the video is playing. You can comment on the video and share thoughts inspired by the video while you're watching it.
Watch2gether is a neat site through which you can watch YouTube videos and host text chats about them at the same time. It is really quite easy to use Watch2gether. To get started enter a nickname for yourself (it could be your real first name) then search for a video or enter the url of a video that you have previously bookmarked. When you have found the video you want a chat column will be present on the right side of your browser. You can invite others to chat with you by sending them the url assigned to your chat. Together you can watch a video and discuss it.
Google+ Hangouts provide the option to watch YouTube videos with a small group. Now that Google+ is open to anyone over 13, this could be a good option for high school use.
The Mariana Trench is more than a mile deeper than Mount Everest is tall. Filmmaker James Cameron is planning to dive to the bottom and film it. National Geographic has released a couple of preview videos about the dive. The two videos, embedded below, provide a couple of quick lessons about the deepest valley on Earth.
Sounding the Bottom is a short explanation of how sonar is used to measure depths.
The Long Way Down offers a nice visual perspective of just how deep James Cameron will be diving.
I just watched the premiere of Discovery's new series Frozen Planet. In fact, I watched it at Discovery's headquarters then came back to my hotel room and watched part of it on television again. As I was watching Discovery had a pop-up on the television screen directing me to Discovery.com/frozenplanet for behind the scenes information and more. I was hoping to find a lot of useful classroom materials at that site, but I didn't. There are two neat infographics and a nice set of reference pages about the animals in each episode, but beyond that there isn't much more than video clips. So I decided to write a round-up some of the resources about the Arctic and Antarctic regions that I've found over the years.
ARMAP is a comprehensive resource of interactive, online maps of Arctic research. ARMAP's resources include files for use in Google Earth as well as ArcGIS explorer. You can also access 2D maps directly on the ARMAP website. ARMAP provides map layers and placemarks about a wide range of topics related to Arctic research. Before opening the general ARMAP map, visit the map gallery for a primer on the type of resources that can found on ARMAP. You should also check out the links section of ARMAP to visit the sources of much of the ARMAP content.
The Extreme Ice Survey offers a Google Earth file that displays the results of the Extreme Ice Survey. In this Google Earth file users can view glaciers, historical data about glaciers, and some video clips about shrinking glaciers. The Extreme Ice Survey website has high quality photos and time lapse videos from the surveyors. Embedded below is one of the videos from the Extreme Ice Survey.
Snag Learning hosts a couple of films about Antarctica. Terra Antarctica documents a six week kayaking exploration of Antarctica. The expedition was funded by National Geographic to document the effects of global warming and ecotourism on Antarctica and the world at large. Click here to watch the film and read the viewing/ discussion questions. Watch more free documentaries
Snag Learning also makes the National Geographic film Emperors of Ice available for free viewing online. In Emperors of Ice viewers will dive under the ice with the penguins, learn how the Emperor Penguins select a mate and raise young, and interact with other penguins. Viewers will see how the Emperor Penguin is uniquely equipped to survive in the harsh environment of Antarctica. Finally, Emperors of Ice, produced by National Geographic, documents the potential effects of climate change on the Emperor Penguins of Antarctica. Watch a preview of Emperors of Ice below. You can find discussion questions here. Watch more free documentaries
Frozen Planet: Explore the Polar Regions comes to us from The Open University. Frozen Planet: Explore the Polar Regions features an interactive display through which you can view the history of polar exploration and the science of the polar regions. The interactive display is created through the use of the Google Earth browser plug-in and a timeline. You can click along the timeline to see and read placemarks on Google Earth. You can browse through and click on a list of important places in both polar regions. For further investigation and analysis of the polar regions you can activate a number of Google Earth layers within the Frozen Planet display. The display also includes videos about each region although the playlist for the Antarctic region is much longer than the playlist for the Arctic region.
Explore.org offers some very nice footage of Polar Bears in their natural habitats. I've included one of the videos below.
Embed Plus is a free service for clipping and annotating YouTube videos. I wrote about the service and included a demo of it last winter. This morning I learned from Learn It In 5 that Embed Plus also provides a nice service for learning how to pronounce words and watch some examples of those words being used in a real-world context.
Embed Plus Dictionary allows you to search for a word, hear a pronunciation, and watch a video clip in which that word is used in a real-world context. The example that Embed Plus features is about the word "salmon." I've embedded their example below.
Applications for Education Embed Plus Dictionary could be a good resource for students of high school age or older. The video clips that I saw would not be terribly engaging for younger students. If you're looking for clips that would be appropriate for K-8 students, I recommend visiting Wordia.
The Science of Gardening is a superb collection of interactive graphics and videos about gardening that I learned about from Mark Dunk on Twitter. Produced by Exploratorium, Science of Gardening has three basic categories; Feed, Control, and Bloom. In each category there are multiple videos and interactive graphics for students to explore.
In the Feed category students learn about dirt, compost, and seeds. The "garden variety" interactive reveals to student the origins of some common plants like corn, squash, onions, and carrots. Students can also take a video tour of a garden and learn what it takes to create good soil.
In the Control category of Science of Gardening students learn about like hybridizing plants, biodiversity, growing plants in a greenhouse, and take a look at a giant pumpkin competition.
Finally, in the Bloom category students explore pollination, the attraction of flowers, and see that a garden can grow just about anywhere when it is cared properly cared for.
Applications for Education As spring approaches in the Northern Hemisphere (just a week away now) I'm sure many of us will be thinking about the blooming plants around us. Some of us may even have students planting gardens at home or at school (the alternative ed school in my district does that). The Science of Gardening could be a good resource to build a science lesson around that students can relate to outside of the classroom.
Words of the World is another great series of videos from the University of Nottingham (they also brought us the Periodic Table of Videos and Foodskey - The Science of Food). Words of the World is a collection of videos featuring historians and linguists explaining the origins of and history of the use of words in the English language. The videos attempt to put the words into a somewhat modern context. For example this video about the word guerrilla makes reference to Che Guevara. The sample I've embedded below explains the history of the word California.
Applications for Education Words of the World could be an instructive model for your own lesson combining history and language arts. Have your students pick a word or two that they think is common and research it. Then have them create their own short videos in which they explain the history of those words. You might even have them research the dialect of the areas in which they live. For example, where I live we have Streaked Mountain. Most people would pronounce that as streaked yet everyone around here pronounces it as streak - ed. I'm not sure why that is the case, but I would love to find out.
I Tweeted this last night and it got reTweeted a bunch of times so I thought I should share it here for people who missed it. When I was in elementary school I really enjoyed watching Mathnet on PBS. For those that aren't familiar with it, Mathnet was part of Square One which was a show designed to teach math lessons in a fun way. I did a quick search on YouTube for Mathnet and sure enough many of the stories are available in their entirety on YouTube. I don't know what kind of copyright restrictions are or are not being broken by the people who uploaded the videos, so I can't say if the videos will be up forever. In the meantime if you want to show an episode to your students or just want to feel a bit of elementary school nostalgia, I've embedded a few episodes below.
For some reason these videos reminded me of the old Mathnet show that I used to watch on PBS in the 80's. So of course I had to see if Mathnet was on YouTube, it is! A quick search for Mathnet on YouTube will take you to multiple full-length episodes of Mathnet. Here's the pilot episode.
Applications for Education Numberphile's videos could be a fun way for students to explore and learn some fun facts about numbers. Perhaps you have a student whose thinks the way I did in high school, I wasn't good at math, but I did like and still do like fun facts about numbers (or any fun fact about anything). A fun number fact could be the "hook" to get that student interested in an aspect of mathematics.
This morning the TED Blog announced the launch of TED-Ed. I've watched three of the twelve videos in the TED Ed channel on YouTube and would say they're more like thought prompts than they are instructional lessons. I guess when I first saw the headline that I was hoping for a bit more, but this is a good start. I've included one of the videos below.
Applications for Education The TED-Ed videos could be good for sparking discussion in your classroom about the topics you're teaching. For example, use this video, The Power of Simple, as part of a lesson on writing. Have students watch the video then give them the task of editing wordy passages into succinct messages.
In case you haven't heard, this year the United States is choosing a President. The process started a while ago and we still have almost eight more months of hollow promises to hear campaign activities to go before the election. I've been bookmarking videos related to the election process for a while, here they are. I hope this help you help your students understand the process of choosing a President of the United States.
It's pretty much a given that an incumbent first term President will receive his party's nomination. That's an advantage. There are some disadvantages to being the incumbent. Here's a look at the advantages and disadvantages of campaigning for re-election.
Now that we're down to just two viable candidates remaining, let's pick a victor through the Electoral College. Here's one explanation and here's another.
Last month I wrote about the YouTube channel Crash Course. At that time I was highlighting the Crash Course history videos. Today, I want to point out the science videos. Crash Course is now up to six biology videos. Like the history videos, the biology videos are rather fast-paced and in a couple of spots make some borderline inappropriate comments But as a general rule, the Crash Course videos should be okay for high school students (use your discretion, what's okay at my school might not be okay at your school, before showing the video to a classroom).
Last month Mastery Connect added LearnZillion videos to the resources available in the Mastery Connect teachers' community. On Friday they added more videos in the form of Khan Academy videos. All of the videos from LearnZillion and Khan Academy are mapped to Common Core standards.
By request, here's a screenshot of how to find the videos once you've signed into your Mastery Connect account. Open the "common assessments" tab in Mastery Connect to see this screen.
Applications for Education If you're looking for some videos that could help your students learn a concept that is a part of the Common Core standards that you have to teach to, the Mastery Connect community could be a great place to start your search.
The Faculties is an interesting video project, based in the UK, that presents short videos of university lecturers speaking on topics in their fields.
There appears to be two purposes for these videos. The first purpose is to provide short lessons to high school age students about topics in the subjects in which they have an interest. The second purpose is to provide students with information that will familiarize them with the expectations and realities of being a college student. For example, in the history section of The Faculties you will find a videos like this one about the Russian provisional government of 1917, but you will also find videos like this one about writing undergraduate history papers.
Applications for Education The Faculties could be a good place for students to learn more about the subjects that they're considering pursuing degrees in. The Faculties could also be a good place for students to learn, in advance of stepping on campus, what they will need to do to have a successful undergraduate experience.
There are six sections to The Faculties; English, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, History, and Psychology.
Applications for Education If you're looking for some simple science demonstrations to add to your classroom website, Frostbite Theater might have what you need. On a related note, Sandra Goodrich's blog has some great ideas for science teachers. Check out her Marshmallow Chemistry post.
Foodskey is a site produced by The University of Nottingham who also produces the Periodic Table of Videos. Foodskey is a set of fourteen videos about the science of food. The videos cover topics like nutrition, food security, and crop technology. I've embedded the video about broccoli below.
Applications for Education Foodskey isn't terribly in-depth yet, but the content that is present could be useful for a short lesson on the science of food. You might use the videos an introduction to a lesson or as part of an editorial moment in your lesson.
Last month I posted a list of useful YouTube channels for history teachers and students. That list proved to be popular so I thought I'd follow-up with a list of useful YouTube channels, not named Khan Academy, for science teachers and students.
The Periodic Table of Videos is a YouTube channel produced by The University of Nottingham. One of the more useful playlists in the channel is The Elements. The table features a video demonstration of the characteristics of elements in the Periodic Table of Elements. In all there are 390 videos divided into 24 playlists about the work of chemists at the university.
Science Bob is a helpful website featuring science fair project ideas for elementary school and middle school students. Science Bob also has a YouTube channel that offers some demonstrations of science experiments and science lessons.
I covered this a couple of weeks ago, but it's worth mentioning again. The Spangler Effect is a new YouTube channel from Steve Spangler Science. Unlike his popular Sick Science videos which are no more than short demonstrations of science experiments students and parents can do at home, The Spangler Effect videos offer longer (15 minutes or so) explanations of science experiments. The Spangler Effect videos explain the science of do-it-yourself experiments and how you can recreate those experiments at home or in your classroom.
Science/Math Concepts with Mr. P is a teacher-produced channel of more than 600 video lessons organized into 40 playlists. You can learn more about Mr. P at Chemistry PapaPodcasts. Don't let the name fool you, the channel is more than just chemistry lessons.
Bright Storm is a company that I've covered before when writing about online mathematics help. Bright Storm's YouTube channel offers video lessons for biology, chemistry, and physics. The videos are nothing more than an instructor lecturing with a whiteboard for a few minutes which could be adequate if a student just needs a refresher on a science topic.
NASA has a few different YouTube channels, but the one that has the most universal utility for teachers and students is NASA eClips. NASA eClips is organized according to grade level with playlists intended for elementary school, middle school, and high school. I've embedded one of the eClips below.
Two weeks ago I wrote about Chill which is kind of like Pinterest for videos. This morning I started trying another service for sharing and discovering video content. That service is Plizy.
Plizy is a service that allows you to browse for and save videos to playback later on your iPad or Android tablet. Plizy has many video channels to choose from. If the videos you see in default Plizy channels are not to your liking, you can create your own custom channels. Unlike some apps that only pull content from YouTube, Plizy pulls content from many popular sources including TED, National Geographic, and CNET. Watch the short video below to learn more about Plizy.
To get started using Plizy you do need to install either the iPad app or the Android app. After installing the app you can register for Plizy through the app.
Applications for Education If your school is using iPads or Android tablets, Plizy could be a good way to discover, organize, share, and play educational content through those devices. You could have students in your class currate and share a channel of content related to topics that they're studying.
From the pages of "I wish this had been available when I was in high school" I just discovered that SparkNotes has videos on YouTube. The SparkNotes YouTube channel offers 23 short animated video overviews of literature commonly read in high school courses. Below I've embedded the first of three videos about The Odyssey.
Applications for Education The SparkNotes videos certainly are not a substitute for reading. The videos could be useful in helping students understand key points in the plots of the novels that they are reading.
This evening while browsing the CBS News video section I came across a short piece about William Henry Harrison. The four minute video, narrated by Mo Rocca, tells the story of how William Henry Harrison came into office and why his wife never did make it to Washington, D.C.
Applications for Education As I watched the video I noticed there were some striking similarities between Harrison's attempt to hide his aristocratic roots while campaigning and those same attempts made by politicians today. Show the video to your history students and ask them if they can draw any comparisons between the campaign practices of Harrison and of today's politicians. Then ask them to think about why some politicians may want to hide their aristocratic backgrounds.
Watch2gether is a neat site through which you can watch YouTube videos and host text chats about them at the same time. It is really quite easy to use Watch2gether. To get started enter a nickname for yourself (it could be your real first name) then search for a video or enter the url of a video that you have previously bookmarked. When you have found the video you want a chat column will be present on the right side of your browser. You can invite others to chat with you by sending them the url assigned to your chat. Together you can watch a video and discuss it.
