Free Online Videos
There is a lot of research that shows that having readily available, content-based video increases student performance in just about all academic subjects. Having said that, it’s not always a good idea to turn students loose on YouTube in search of a video about biology or some other topic.
There are some subscription services that provide content-based video for schools. Best known among these are United Streaming Media, Cosmeo, and SchoolVideos. These services provide well-produced media mapped to student standards. Many school districts subscribe to such services, so you may already have access to some of their materials. Some sites offer samples of their videos for free viewing.
On the free side, check out:
SciTalks: Smart People on Cool Topics
SciTalk offers lectures from well-known scientists, futurists, and technologists on a wide range of science and technology topics. Best suited for high school and post secondary students.
The Futures Channel
The Futures Channel divides their movie offerings into two main categories–“Real World Movies” (animals, art & music, environment, science & tech, etc.) and “Teaching and Learning” (algebra in the real world, hands-on match, problem solving, etc.). Most are short (2 – 5 minutes) and targeted toward a very specific topic. Most come with classroom activities.
ScienceHack Science Videos Search Engine
ScienceHack provides a search engine that focuses on on-line science videos. You can also search by topic or browse a list of the latest videos that have been linked.
Google Video
Performing a Google search for educational videos (on google.video.com, type “genre:educational” in the search box) returns a huge variety of educational videos. Expanding your search (e.g., genre:educational astronomy) will narrow your topic down considerably. Make sure Safe Search in enabled in your browser for elementary students.
Research TV
Research TV produces research news stories for universities and other research organizations. They also make their productions available to watch online. Topics include Health, Science and Nature, Technology, Society, Business, Creative and Cultural, and others.
TeacherTube
TeacherTube offers a huge variety of educational videos on every imaginable topic. Many of these are school-produced, and you are encouraged to add your own educational videos to the offerings.
Video Encyclopedia of the 20th Century
The Video Encyclopedia of the 20th Century from Humboldt State University contains 2338 digitized film and video clips covering the social, cultural, and political history of
the 20th Century from 1893 to 1989, searchable by keyword or date.
Free Science Videos and Lectures
An excellent resource for high school and post secondary teachers (or as professional development for any science teacher). This site includes both science videos and science lectures and offers an excellent search engine for both types of videos.
Professional Development
Annenberg Media’s Learner.Org
Annenberg Media provides a wide variety of professional development courses and resources, including some scheduled live webcasts.
The Oklahoma Technical Assistance Center has a nice collection of professional development videos for K-12 teachers in a variety of areas including History, Science, Math, and English.
Google’s Infinite Thinking Machine is a blog with links to regularly-produced “shows” (short videos) that deal with issues related to teaching in the 21st century. Subscribe to this one…
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4 Responses to “Free Online Videos”
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Here are a couple of additional video search tools worth considering:
http://www.everyzing.com and http://www.blinkx.com
Great tools for searching video based on content! I’m adding them to my Tools page.
Very good resource to find educational videos. Thanks for putting it together.
[…] up on my earlier post, here are some additional sites that offer free videos (and some podcasts) appropriate for […]