Instructify

January 5, 2010

Teachers rely on video for reaching different learners, as a resource to help those couple kids who didn’t “get it” the first time around, and as an instructional resource for conveying concepts that are visual and complex. As the lead science teacher at a high school in Raleigh said recently at a professional conference, “We use YouTube every day. I couldn’t teach biology without it.”

But finding quality instructional video takes time. What if there was a website that collected the best free educational videos for children and made them findable and watchable on one website?

WatchKnow is a resource for you and your students, collecting the best free educational videos for children and made them findable and watchable on one website. WatchKnow organizes and categorizes video according to subject and education level. You can go or send your students to WatchKnow to find video that explains every topic that is studied in school instantly and reliably.

Content

To find out what videos have been identified for that next unit you are planning, browse the site by subject by drilling down through the topical menu on the left side. For example, Physical and Health Education: diseases: bacterial infections nets a return of nine videos including an animation demonstrating how bacteria gain entrance to the body, and a CDC-produced news clip that explains how a salmonella outbreak associated with peanuts was identified and how the affected products were tracked and recalled.

If your information need is more specific, search the site. A search for “mammals” returns many videos, but you can filter the results by age, choosing just the age range appropriate to your need to narrow the results.

Community organization

WatchKnow is both a resource for users and also a non-profit, online community that encourages everyone to collect, create, and share free, innovative, educational videos. Adding a video is only the first step. Once the video is approved and available, the users can suggest different categories and add an age range. Like a wiki, the records for each video may be edited by users over and over again.

It is through the participation of the user base that these videos are made most useful, as users can categorize and re-categorize, add to descriptions, rate and sort these videos to make the most useful videos simple to find. To learn more about how to use this in your classroom, take advantage of the site’s help resources including Tips for Teachers and view the videos (of course!) about WatchKnow linked on the bottom left side of the home page.

While joining WatchKnow is not required for participating as a content contributor, if you join, your ratings are weighed more heavily. Most teachers will need only a simple account which requires no email address, yet provides the ability to track your activities. If you find that you are adding and editing content and would prefer to do so without moderation, the simple account is upgradable to Confirmed Account which requires your real name, e-mail, location, statement and legal agreement required. [You need not use your real name as a username.] Finally, if you want to enter WatchKnow contests, upgrade to a Contest Account [only for U.S. residents ages 13 and over].

I find this resource is oddly compelling. Something in the easy and flexible yet highly functional way the site works makes me want to revisit and add to the collection. WatchKnow captures that best aspect of online community, building upon the integrity of the educational user base and the energy of the teachers who get excited when they find that gem of an instructional video that will help them to reach the one student they have been struggling to reach. The premise of this website and the collaborative way the users work to make it more useful is in keeping with the trend toward crowd-sourced development of content and exemplifies some of teaching’s best qualities, collaboration and sharing.

Cons

Even though the need for quality video is great, there may be issues with using the content identified on WatchKnow. The video comes from a variety of online video sharing sites including YouTube, TeacherTube, and eHow, as well as some more traditional educational sites like National Geographic. If these sites are blocked at your school, you will be able to find the videos on WatchKnow, but you will not be able to view them, as the filter blocks the source of the video.

Given the fact that many schools and school systems cannot afford the cost of paid multimedia content, free content identified on WatchKnow may represent the best opportunity for finding and using video content for many of our less advantaged students. If you can’t take full advantage of quality, vetted video in your classroom because of indiscriminate, across-the-board filtering of video, take this argument to your educational leaders, your school boards, and others to bring attention to this issue of equity (for more information on content filtering, please see the bottom of this page).

WatchKnow

Cross-posted at LEARN NC

SpaceTime TV: Quality science videos that are not just about space…or time!

Produce an Educational Video in Your Classroom

All Educational, All the Time–TeacherTube

Filtering info

For more information about filtering, equity, and information access issues, visit these sites:

AASL Essential Links: resources for school library media development