WGBH Videos / iTunes U

In the iTunes U section of iTunes, there is featured provider, WGBH, who provides some excellent videos than could be used for many classroom purposes. These videos are relatively short (around 2 to 3 minutes) and they are broken into age appropriate categories (K-5, 6-8, 9-12). Some of the videos I checked out, included 'A Night in the Coral Reef' that presented great visuals of the night life in these fascinating ocean areas, 'Precipitation' was a quick piece that gave visuals of rain, hail and snow, and the 'Solar Eclipse' video provides a demonstration of that event and explains how and why it happens. All three of these were in the K-5 group and all were simple in form and certainly geared to a younger audience. In the 9-12 section, I watched a video on the 'Charateristics of the Sun'. This video was more detailed and touched on it's subject in more depth, as it's purpose is for an older student.

As a teacher, access to these free videos can provide a great resource to help reinforce points, introduce new concepts, or to give the students a break from the usual bookwork! There are many videos available all clearly titled with subject information to make it easy to search for applicable material. As one of my professor's likes to say, there's no use reinventing the wheel. If there are free videos available, why not take advantage of them? Make learning more fun for our students AND in the process help better explain a concept with images.