TED-Ed : Lessons worth sharing
TED-Ed is the latest initiative by the people behind the popular TED talks. TED-Ed’s videos aim to capture and amplify the voices of the world’s greatest educators. They have paired educators with talented animators to produce a library of educational videos.
This platform also allows users to take any useful educational video, not just TED’s, and easily create a customized lesson around the video. Users can distribute the lessons, publicly or privately, and track their impact on the world, a class, or an individual student.
Like the Khan academy and other sites, resources like this may not be suitable for all classes and all students – use wisely. The animation aspect does make them feel more student-friendly than just a recording of someone giving a lecture.
The “flip this video” button allows you to turn a video into a customized lesson that can be assigned to students or shared more widely. You can add context, questions and follow-up suggestions. You’ll need to register with the site to do this.
Videos are hosted on YouTube so you’ll need to check your settings in school before using. Pupils will be able to access these at home quite easily.
For example, here’s a video about atoms:
To take a look at the videos available visit : http://ed.ted.com/lessons
Read MoreGCSE Science Videos from MyGCSEScience
MyGCSE Science contains over 50 different Khan-academy-style videos covering different aspects of GCSE level science. The website is designed specifically for the AQA Core Science, Additional Science, Biology, Chemistry and Physics courses but you will find many of the videos will be suitable for any KS4 science course. The site is free, but they do plan to offer additional resources for a small fee.
They are lecture-style and so might not be suitable for all learners, but for additional support for students or for revision purposes it would be a handy website to have bookmarked.
The site hosts all the videos on YouTube, so you’ll need to check it’s not blocked before planning to use in a lesson.
See all the videos at : http://www.my-gcsescience.com/
Thanks to Martin Burret (@ICTmagic) for the link via Twitter. Don’t forget to visit his ICT Magic site.
Read MoreVirtual Nerd Maths Teaching Videos and Resources
Virtual Nerd is a selection of dynamic videos and award-winning content that helps boost students’ mathematics skills. The resource aims to help pupils to master algebra and geometry by bringing content to life through images and sound, while making it relevant to 21st Century learning.
To celebrate World Maths Day (7 March), the Virtual Nerd interactive whiteboard mathematics lessons are now available free to teachers via Promethean Planet! Teachers can now access the resource free of charge on Planet, including its proprietary interactive online platform (Dynamic Whiteboard) and an extensive library of pre-recorded video tutorials.
There are over 800 resources available. Each video is in essence a recorded lecture – but as well as the video of the teacher, there are also two other parts of the screen, one showing the equation and the other showing a stepthrough of the calculation. Mouse over these areas to access additional information.
It’s an interesting free resource and will be of interest to secondary school maths teachers. You need to be a Promethean Planet member to access them, but it is free to do so. This will make it tricky to give students access – perhaps set up a class Planet account? Alternatively it will give you a taste of Virtual Nerd and help you decide if it’s worth getting a school subscription.
Read MoreThe O2 Learn Awards 2012
If you haven’t been to the O2 Learn site for while, you might not know that their awards are back and they are awarding £2,000 every week! They are continuing to help everyone connect to great teaching by creating Britain’s Biggest Classroom via teacher-created content.
This year, they are thanking every UK teacher who uploads a video lesson to O2 Learn with a free mobile broadband pack. They’re also introducing a weekly Best Lesson award, giving you the chance to win £2000 for you and your school department every week .
They will also be presenting three Awards for Teaching Excellence with £80,000 prize money up for grabs.
To date, O2 Learn has over 1,000 lessons available. All of which are curriculum focused and checked by their “Learning Champions”.
They have also recently introduced ‘Related Video’ functionality to make it even easier to find the lessons that are useful to you.
So, the competition works like this in 2012:
1. Secondary teachers upload a short video of their favourite lesson to O2 Learn and receive a free mobile broadband pack
2. Thousands of students across the country watch and rate the lessons that are useful to them
3. O2 Learn award prizes to the best lessons every week.
Visit O2 Learn to find out more.
Read MoreExplania – instructional animations
Explania is a website which contains loads of animated explanations, interactive tutorials and instructional videos.
The site covers a wide range of topics from “What is Twitter?” to “The Human Heart” as well as software guides for MS Office and more. For example How to apply conditinal formatting in Excel 2007
It even tries to explain the offside rule in football:
What is offside in football? – Explania
It’s rather a strange mix of videos, some will be useful for teachers, whilst others might want to be avoided. But it is worth a look and you might find a few gems in there that you will find useful. Videos are pulled in from YouTube so if you school blocks YouTube you won’t be able to access the videos.
Thanks to Richard Byrne at Free Tech for Teachers for the link
Take a look at Explania and let me know what you think in the comments.
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Espresso Education : Video in the Classroom
A short video by Espresso Education about the power of video in the classroom. Take a look!
I deliver freelance training for Espresso and think it’s a fantastic resource to have in the classroom. Access some free Espresso resources here.
Read MoreYouTube for Schools Launches
Following on from Septembers launch of YouTube for Teachers, comes the launch today of YouTube for Schools.
YouTube for Schools “lets schools access free educational YouTube videos while limiting access to other YouTube content. Students can learn from more than 400,000 educational videos, from well-known organizations like Stanford, PBS and TED, and from up-and-coming YouTube partners with millions of views. Schools can also customize their YouTube for Schools experience, adding videos that are only viewable within their school network.”
School admins and teachers can log in and watch any video, but students cannot log in and can only watch YouTube EDU videos and videos that their school has added. All comments and related videos are disabled and search is limited to YouTube Edu videos.
It’s an interesting idea, and only time will tell if this will convince many schools and local authorities to unblock access to YouTube and allow access in this way.
Schools can find out more and sign up at http://www.youtube.com/schools
Read MoreFileLab – online video and audio editing
FileLab is an online Video and Audio editor. It’s a free, alternative to software such as Windows MovieMaker or Audacity. OK, both of those are already free, but especially in the case of MovieMaker any alternative is welcome.
FileLab provides a very user-friendly editor. I had a play with the video editor and found it quite simple to add some clips, add text over the top and create a transition. There are quite a few video effects and transitions available.
To use the site you do need to install a plugin – so you might need to speak to your ict technician to get it installed on your school computers. The same plugin is used for both the audio and the video editor.
Also – to download your finished movie you will need to sign in to the site with either your Facebook, Google or Yahoo accounts. This may be a problem in schools. There’s no option to sign up directly with the website. You could set up a class Google or Yahoo account I guess.
If you are looking for an alternative to MovieMaker (and who isn’t) – then it’s well worth taking a look at FileLab.
Try it out at : https://www.filelab.com/
Read MoreBBC Nature Video Collections
The BBC Nature Video Collection is a large library of video clips from the excellent BBC Natural History archive, many narrated by the legend that is Sir David Attenborough.
The video clips include some from the amazing Frozen Planet, the latest exploration into the remote and isolated polar environments. Some of the scenes are totally jaw-dropping. For example the Brinicle; icy finger of death 
Other other collections include Minibeasts, Baby Animals, Dinosaurs and more. Teachers looking for clips of animals/plants to use in science lessons may well find something useful here. Clips can be embedded into your VLE or website.
It’s an excellent collection of science clips and I definitely recommend bookmarking it.
I’m not sure if these clips will be available outside the UK. Can any of my US/Canadian visitors check and leave a comment?
Take a look at : http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/collections
For more Science media clips, I’ve bookmarked a few at : http://www.delicious.com/dannynic/essentialmedia+science
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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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