YouTube Edu
YouTube has now launched a new section of its famous video sharing website that organizes the video channels of more than 100 colleges and universities. It’s called YouTube Edu.
YouTube Edu lets viewers sort clips by school or number of views, and the schools offer content ranging from complete courses to campus events to information for prospective students. There’s also a search facility to find clips on the subject you want. The bulk of the content so far seems to be from US colleges and Universities, but I would expect UK (and other) colleges to get involved in the future – I know Oxford and Cambridge are on iTunes U already, as is the Open University.
The content may be too high level for KS3/KS4 but you might find it useful for A Level students.
One of the most popular videos so far is The Science of Watchmen:
An alternative site, Academic Earth also launched last week, offering lectures from Harvard, Yale, MIT and other schools. And don’t forget Teacher Tube as another educational video site which is probably more useful for KS3/KS4.
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Planet Orbits
Here’s a link to a cool website that lets you view how the planets in the Solar System move around the Sun : http://www.gunn.co.nz/astrotour/
You can run it automatically, and change the speed. or pause it and step through slowly. You can choose to view the whole thing with the sun at the centre, or to follow a particular planet around.
The controls at the side let you zoom in so you can see a few planets more closely. You can also make the planets bigger to make them easier to see on an IWB.
Another nice touch is that if you click and drag any planet, all the others will move in time with it.
This is a neat little tool to show how the planets orbit the Sun. You can see how some move faster than others and use the dates to calculate how long it would take some of the outer planets to complete one orbit. Visit the site now and have a play!
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About Me
Danny Nicholson : Educator, Science teacher, ICT Consultant, PGCE lecturer, Author and Web2.0 / SMART Masters/ Interactive Whiteboard Trainer. Contact me for any training requests. 
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