No Cost Educational Videos
From IAE-Pedia
Introduction
Teachers, and their students, are used to the 45-minute or 50-minute class period. The teachers know that such a long period of instruction needs to be broken down into a number of much shorter "pieces" of instruction, large group and small group interaction and activities, seat work, and so on.
Teachers and their students are well aware of videos and their use in instruction and learning. Today's students (and indeed, their parents) have grown up with television and a steady diet of the fast action of the wide range of programming that is available. They have also grown up with electronic games that are interactive and engaging. Many of these games are video-like, with the computer system generating relatively high quality video in real time.
The use of films, film strips, slides, and video in teaching has been common for many decades. Often they have been over hyped. Indeed, educators like to laugh at the following two forecasts by Thomas Edison:
- Books will soon be obsolete in the schools. ... Scholars will soon be able to instruct through the eye. It is possible to touch every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture. (Thomas A. Edison, 1913.)
- I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks. (Thomas A. Edison, 1922.)
There are a huge number of excellent educational videos. From a teacher point of view, it is desirable that the equipment to show videos be a standard part of their classroom setup, that videos need not be ordered well in advance, and that whatever video they want to show is immediately available. None of these conditions existed in "the good old days" when a school had a couple of film projectors, a school district had a central repository of films, and individual teachers were unlikely to own films that they used in their teaching.
The VCR helped change this situation. Many classrooms were equipped with a large TV display and a VCR. The school district's film library was gradually changed into a video library. Individual teachers collected videos and segments of videos. With diligence, it became possible for a teacher to accumulate a large collection of videos, including a large collection of short segments designed to fit into various instructional units, and to routinely use video as an aid to instruction.
Computers and the Web brings us a new way of storing and accessing videos. The teacher who collected short video segments—perhaps maintaining a personal library of many hundreds of short videos—can now store these materials on a computer. This computer may be a server available to teachers, a classroom computer, or a teacher's laptop computer. Assuming that there is a computer projector or large computer display screen available in a teacher's classroom, the teacher can quickly access video and display it to the class.
A very large number of people and organizations make available free videos on the Web. The makes it possible for people to access video materials from their computers, and at a time they find convenient. This also opens up a new way of teaching and of providing staff development.
A Teacher's Digital Filing Cabinet
Many teachers are finding it desirable to keep some of the contents of their "traditional, hard copy" filing cabinets in an electronic digital filing cabinet. Videos can be a quite useful component of such a filing cabinet.
Here are two examples of Digital Filing Cabinets designed for use by teachers and by teachers of teachers.
Creating Videos
Retrieved 6/3/09: Two minute video on free resources containing information about creating educational videos.
We are all used to the TV format of half hour (perhaps 24 minutes without the ads) and hour length programs, 90-minute or longer feature "films" and so on. While these can be useful in a classroom teaching or teacher workshop setting, much shorter is often much better.
The Web and powerful, inexpensive hardware and software for creating and editing videos, has brought us a huge number of short, educational and entertainment videos. For example, we now have the idea of a "five minute workshop." A short video can be used to help teach a specific topic. Indeed, the idea of five-minute workshops has recently received a lot of attention. Here are some examples:
One relatively standard format is to put together a small collection of slides and then do a voice over for the short set of slides. The slides might be text, pictures, graphics, or some combination. A brief discussion of this technique and some examples are available at:
Another approach is to video "something," recording it with sound and then adding text and/or voice overs to enhance the overall production. Here are a few examples that you might enjoy viewing.
Some Major Free Video Resources
There is a large and steadily growing collection of suitable video materials that are available free on the Web. Here are a view examples.
General Video Sharing Sites
YouTube. Access at http://www.google.com/support/youtube/. YouTube is a good example of a video sharing site. Quoting from a Wikipedia entry on YouTube:
- Few statistics are publicly available regarding the number of videos on YouTube. However, in July 2006, the company revealed that more than 100 million videos were being watched every day, and 2.5 billion videos were watched in June 2006. 50,000 videos were being added per day in May 2006, and this increased to 65,000 by July.[3] In January 2008 alone, nearly 79 million users had made over 3 billion video views.[4]
- In August 2006, The Wall Street Journal published an article revealing that YouTube was hosting about 6.1 million videos (requiring about 45 terabytes of storage space), and had about 500,000 user accounts.[5] As of April 9, 2008, a YouTube search returns about 83.4 million videos and 3.75 million user channels.
TeacherTube. Access at http://teachertube.com/ . Identical in design and function to YouTube, TeacherTube focuses specifically on sharing videos of interest to teachers. To quote the site, "It is a site to provide anytime, anywhere professional development with teachers teaching teachers. As well, it is a site where teachers can post videos designed for students to view in order to learn a concept or skill."
More Video Sharing Sites. A list of about 50 sites is available in the Wikipedia.
There is a lot of literature on video sharing sites. For example, a 8/11/08 Google search of the expression video sharing site produced more than 41 million hits. Some people will be interested in MetaTube: Search 100 video sharing sites at once.
The resources list next are not specifically oriented toward education. However, many of the videos can be "re purposed" for use in education.
- Internet Archive Movie Archive. Quoting from the site:
- Welcome to the Archive's Moving Images library of free movies, films, and videos. This library contains thousands of digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download.
- News and Public Affairs from Internet Archive Movie Archive. Quoting from the Website:
- An analysis of news and public affairs independent from traditional corporate media is available from this diverse video library. From Democracy Now's daily news program, to three days of TV news coverage following the 911 attacks, to Mosaic’s timely clips of Middle East newscasts, to UCSF's Tobacco Industry Videos: These collections offer an alternative way to view and interpret current news and public affairs. Many of these videos are available for free download.
BBC News. Quoting from the Website:
- Watch online videos of the BBC's Click programme, sorted by date, from every week since September 2004.
Video Lectures
Thousands of video lectures from the world's top scholars. Requires (free) registration to LinkedIn. Retrieved 4/12/2010 from
A 21st Century Education and the Future
Eleven 10-minute videos. Quoting from the site:
- The Pearson Foundation and Mobile Learning Institute film series “A 21st Century Education” profiles individuals who embrace and defend fresh approaches to learning and who confront the urgent social challenges that are part of a 21st century experience. “A 21st Century Education” compiles, in short film format, the best ideas around school reform and innovation. The series is meant to start, extend, or nudge the conversation about how to make change happen.
Five short 2020 forecast videos from Forbes retrieved 4/13/2010. Topics are home, job, diet, health, and reputation. For each, you must first view an ad.
Children Full of Life (Japanese 4th grade)
See five videos of about 5 to 10 minutes in length. Quoting from the site:
- In the award-winning documentary Children Full of Life, a fourth-grade class in a primary school in Kanazawa, northwest of Tokyo, learn lessons about compassion from their homeroom teacher, Toshiro Kanamori. He instructs each to write their true inner feelings in a letter, and read it aloud in front of the class. By sharing their lives, the children begin to realize the importance of caring for their classmates."
Teachers’ Domain
Quoting from the Teachers' Domain Website:
- Teachers’ Domain is an online library of more than 1,000 free media resources from the best in public television. These classroom resources, featuring media from NOVA, Frontline, Design Squad, American Experience, and other public broadcasting and content partners are easy to use and correlate to state and national standards.
- Teachers’ Domain resources include video and audio segments, Flash interactives, images, documents, lesson plans for teachers, and student-oriented activities. Once you register, you can personalize the site using “My Folders” and “My Groups” to save your favorite resources into a folder and share them with your colleagues or students.
- Teachers’ Domain strives to strengthen teacher knowledge by providing innovative teaching methods that incorporate technology in the classroom and inspire students to learn.
Bill Gates—Improving Education
Gates, Bill (2009). How I'm trying to change the world now. TED. Retrieved 2/12/09: http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_unplugged.html.
- See, especially, the second half of this 18 minute video. It provides Gate's insights into improving education through having more of "better" teachers.
- Bill Gates hopes to solve some of the world's biggest problems using a new kind of philanthropy. In a passionate and, yes, funny 18 minutes, he asks us to consider two big questions and how we might answer them.
WatchKnow Videos for Kids
This site provides access to nearly 15,000 video and audio recordings. Examples as of 2/2/2010 include Language Arts (1380), Literature (1161), Mathematics (1495), Science (2735), History (2832), and Social Studies (1198). Quoting from http://www.watchknow.org/Video.aspx?VideoID=131:
- In 2007 and 2008, a Memphis-area philanthropist began conversations with his local network, and especially the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi and its president, Tom Pittman. Eventually they tapped Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger to plan a new, non-profit educational video service. Sanger became Executive Director of the project, directing the development of the new system.
- … in mid-2009, many teachers, and some librarians, were hired to add videos and edit the Directory. Their work in particular—adding over 10,000 videos—has led to some very positive early “buzz” in the blogosphere and on Twitter from teachers and ed tech people.
Kahn Academy
The Khan Academy Quoting from the Website:
- The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Despite being the work of one man, Salman Khan, this 1600+ video library is the most-used educational video resource as measured by YouTube video views per day and unique users per month. We are complementing this ever-growing library with user-paced exercises--developed as an open source project--allowing the Khan Academy to become the free classroom for the World.
See http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/23/technology/sal_khan_academy.fortune/index.htm for an article in which Bill Gates praises Sal Kahn's materials.
Learning and Forgetting
Pashler, Hal (July 31, 2008). Retrieved 4/25/09: http://www.scivee.tv/node/6713. Quoting from the Website of this 11 minute video:
- Hal Pashler talks about the correlation between the time periods elapsed between review of information (study gaps) and the time frame for retaining that information, as well as the implications of this study in education.
Renewable Energy
Wikipedia article on solar energy..
Solar energy technology breakthrough
American Solar Energy Society.
Environment
History
Archives.gov (n.d.). The National Archives. Retrieved 4/12/08: http://video.google.com/nara.html.
Ease History (n.d.). An Experience Acceleration Support Environment. Retrieved4/12/08: http://www.easehistory.org/index2.html.
History.com (n.d.). Video Gallery. Retrieved 4/12/08: http://www.history.com/media.do.
HNC (n.d.). History News Network. Retrieved 4/12/08: http://hnn.us/roundup/42.html.
iCue (n.d.). Site sponsored by NBC News. Provides no cost access to a large number of film clip. Both student-oriented and teacher-oriented. http://www.icue.com/portal/site/iCue/welcomepage.
Knowledge Navigator. Apple's 1987 view into the future.
NASA (n.d.). Video Tour of Spaceflight History. Retrieved 4/12/08: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/history/h-t-video-main.htm.
Seattle Cable Channel 21 (2006). Black History Month. Retrieved 4/12/08: http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/watchVideos.asp?program=blackHistory.
Juggling
- Juggling is a physical human skill involving the movement of objects, usually through the air, for entertainment (see object manipulation). The most recognizable form of juggling is toss juggling, where the juggler throws objects through the air. Jugglers often refer to the objects they juggle as props. The most common props are balls, beanbags, rings, clubs, and bouncing balls. Some performers use dramatic objects such as chainsaws, knives and fire torches. The term juggling can also refer to other prop-based circus skills such as diabolo, devil sticks, poi, cigar box manipulation, fire-dancing, contact juggling, hooping and hat manipulation.
Spend a minute thinking about whether it is appropriate to teach juggling in school. What might students learn about? Some possible answers include physics, math reaction time, hand-eye coordination, concentration, an island of expertise, self esteem, how one gains in expertise over time through study and practice, and so on. See the article at http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr393.shtml.
There are lots of free materials on juggling available on the Web. Quoting from http://www.juggling.org/:
- Welcome to the World Wide Web's Juggling Information Service, serving the Internet juggling community by connecting all of the juggling related resources that we can find. If you're a juggler, or want to learn to juggle, or just want some information on juggling, this is the place to be.
Free Juggling Instructions provides instruction for beginners. Video of three ball juggling.
Here are some short videos showing world class jugglers in action.
Computer Science and Computer History
The Website Computer Science Unplugged contains lots of free materials, including links to a number of videos. Quoting from the Website:
- Computer Science Unplugged is a series of learning activities that reveals a little-known secret: computer science isn't really about computers at all! … You'll find supplementary material for each activity: videos, links, photos, feedback, curiosities and more. We're also working on online games, competitions, links to curricula, and new material.
Here are some of the video links posted at Computer Science Unplugged:
- Computer Science for Children (50 minutes). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j28hg8XHugU&NR=1. This is a live presentation before an audience of middle school students.
- Treasure Hunt (2 minutes) http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=8kagtp2gWhU.
- Orange Game (2 minutes) http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=WforXEBMm5k.
- Computer Science Unplugged: The Show" is available as a 65 minute version at http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=VpDDPWVn5-Q. Or to avoid swamping your bandwidth limitations in one go, you can get 10-minute chunks starting at: http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=voqghyZbZxo. This is a live presentation before an adult audience.
- Additional instructional videos are available at http://csunplugged.org/index.php/en/unplugged-for-teachers/videos.
The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California provides a considerable and growing collection of videos. An outstanding example is a 5:47 video titled Charles Babbage and his Difference Engine #3, available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBuJqUfO4-w&feature=channel_page.
The Playlist of videos (see http://www.youtube.com/computerhistory) includes:
- Computer History Museum Overview (6:61).
- Internet/Networking (6 videos).
- Personal Computing (10 videos).
- Semiconductors (12 videos).
- 60 other videos of varying length, many being presentations by people important in the history of computers.
Math
See Math Education Free Videos. Quoting from this Web Page:
- There is a steadily increasing amount of video materials available free or at low cost on the Web. This page explores some of these sites and what they have available.
- Math education is traditionally taught in a stand and deliver manner. In higher education, the stand and deliver usually provides a reasonable amount of interaction in the form of students asking question, but the "deliver" part dominates the class period.
- At the precollege level, much less time is spent in the stand and deliver mode, because quite a bit of class time is devoted to students doing seat work.
- In both settings group work can be a useful aid to teaching and learning. However, for many teachers, this represents a considerable change in how a class is structures and the values places on non-traditional activities.
- In group work, for example, students might work on an activity together, or them might explain to each other the process they used to solve a problem. A short video may be quite helpful in stimulating small group or whole class discussion.
Miscellaneous, Noteworthy Videos
- This video shows the winner of "Ukraine’s Got Talent", Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II. Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one, is mesmeric to watch.
- The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about £75,000. She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.
- There has been quite a bit of research on the intelligence of non-human animals. See the short video at: http://list.weim.net/pipermail/weim/attachments/20070506/6cbde5af/attachment-0001.wmv
- Baby Squirrel and a challenging wall. Four minutes. Illustrates learning by imitation (mirror neurons) and succeeding through persistence with some outside help.
- World's largest model train exhibit. (5 minute video.)
Steve Spangler Science. See http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/who-is-steve-spangler.html for information about Steve Spangler. On the right side of the page is a list, "Top 10 Experiments." Each is accompanied by one or more short videos. Here are a few examples:
Dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) experiments. See:
- http://wm.kusa.gannett.edgestreams.net/news/1098140376903-10-18-04-spangler4p.wmv
- http://wm.kusa.gannett.edgestreams.net/news/1129590272310-10-17-05-spangler-dryice-4p.wmv
- http://wm.kusa.gannett.edgestreams.net/news/1162253013446-10-30-06-spangler-4p.wmv
- http://wm.kusa.gannett.edgestreams.net/news/1130195012346-10-24-05-spangler-icebubble.wmv
Corn starch and water. See http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/00000088.
Bill Nye the Science Guy. I spent some time searching, but did not find much of his work available free on the Web. See:
- The Eyes of NYE, work supported by the National Science Foundation.
Science and Technology
See Science Education Free Videos. See also:
The New Inventors. Short videos about new inventions. See the archived collection at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/video/video.htm.
Brain Science
Jill Bolte Taylor discussing her stroke; 2008 TED video.
Neville, Helen (2009). Changing brains. University of Oregon Brain Development Lab. Retrieved 2/27/10 from http://changingbrains.org/. This nine-part video is available free online, can be downloaded for free, and can be purchased on a DVD. For more videos and information about brain science see:
Humor
Humorous five minute video of Father Guido Sarducci. The first part of the transcript is given below.
- I find that education, it don’t matter where you go to school, Italy, America, Brazil, all are the same—it’s all this memorization and it don’t matter how long you can remember anything just so you can parrot it back for the tests. I got this idea for a school I would like to start, something called the Five Minute University. The idea is that in five minutes you learn what the average college graduate remembers five years after he or she is out of school. It would cost like twenty dollars. That might seem like a lot of money, twenty dollars just for five minutes, but that’s for like tuition, cap and gown rental, graduation picture, snacks, everything.
First Tech Support Guy. This is a 2:37 video in Norwegian, with English subtitles. It is a parody on technology support, based on the tech support needed to deal with a book.
Video projector and "Shadow Guy." 2:13.
Soap and Other Bubbles
- A soap bubble is a very thin film of soap water that forms a sphere with an iridescent surface. Soap bubbles usually last for only a few moments and then burst either on their own or on contact with another object. They are often used as a children's plaything, but their usage in artistic performances shows that they can be fascinating for adults too. Soap bubbles can help to solve complex mathematical problems of space, as they will always find the smallest surface area between points or edges.
Dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) experiments. See:
- http://wm.kusa.gannett.edgestreams.net/news/1098140376903-10-18-04-spangler4p.wmv
- http://wm.kusa.gannett.edgestreams.net/news/1129590272310-10-17-05-spangler-dryice-4p.wmv
- http://wm.kusa.gannett.edgestreams.net/news/1162253013446-10-30-06-spangler-4p.wmv
- http://wm.kusa.gannett.edgestreams.net/news/1130195012346-10-24-05-spangler-icebubble.wmv
This section remains to be written.
Yo-yo
Robots
- US army military robot. PackBot See video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaP0waiz43w.
Video of an imitation of PackBot built of Legos.
Quoting from http://science.howstuffworks.com/military-robot3.htm:
- Controlled by a Pentium processor that has been designed specially to withstand rough treatment, Packbot's chassis has a GPS system, an electronic compass and temperature sensors built in. Packbot manufacturer iRobot says Packbot can move more than 8 mph (13 kph), can be deployed in minutes and can withstand a 6-foot (1.8-meter) drop onto concrete -- the equivalent of 400 g's of force.
- U.S. soldiers regularly take advantage of this ruggedness, tossing Packbot through windows of hostile buildings and then using it to search and find out where enemy combatants are hiding. Even if Packbot lands upside down, it can right itself using powerful treaded flippers, which also help it climb obstacles.
Simpson, Mary Anne (2/5/09). Japanese Robot/Humanoid Innovations Update: Mankind's Best New Friend is Getting Better. Retrieved 2/14/09: http://www.physorg.com/news153079697.html. The article contains a short video showing some of the robot's capabilities.
References
Copyright Clearance Center (June 2009). Video use in higher education: Options for the future. Retrieved 8/12/09: http://library.nyu.edu/about/Video_Use_in_Higher_Education.pdf. Quoting from the 14 page report.
- This report is based on the findings of a study designed and funded by Copyright Clearance Center and conducted by Intelligent Television with the cooperation of New York University.
- In interviews with 57 faculty and librarians from 20 institutions and across 18 academic departments and schools, the Video and Higher Education Project found data to support the following:
- The educational use of video on campus is accelerating rapidly in departments across all disciplines—from arts, humanities, and sciences to professional and vocational curricula.
- Faculty, librarians, and administrators expect their use of video in education to grow significantly over the next five years.
- Technology, legal, and other barriers continue to thwart faculty finding and accessing the segments of video they want for teaching and lectures.
- University libraries contain significant video repositories but the majority of the content is in analog (VHS) format and/or is not networkable.
- The majority of video usage today still confined to audiovisual viewing equipment in classrooms or at the library.
- Faculty and administrators expect the sources of their video to shift from offline analog storage to online delivery.
- The demand for educationally-targeted video archives and services is high.
Author or Authors
The first version of this Page was created by David Moursund.
