Weekly Digest #76: YouTube Channels to Help You Study
(cover by Shafin Al Asad Protic from Pixabay)
We've previously released a digest of educational videos, as well as a guest post on guidelines for designing them. In this digest, we wanted to highlight 5 YouTube channels that were particularly useful to those of us studying specific content.
1) Crash Course
by John Green, @johngreen, and Hank Green, @hankgreen, and others, in collaboration with Tom Frank @collegeinfogeek
This Youtube Channel has been producing 10-15 minute Youtube "classes" for the past 2 years, and now have dozens of complete "course" to choose from, including Literature, Psychology, and US History, to name a few. We already highlighted this channel in our first educational video digest, so why again? Well, last month, Crash Course started a series on Study Skills, in collaboration with Thomas Frank from College Info Geek. Beyond study strategies, they also include videos on planning and organization. The information in these videos appears to be evidence-based, and very helpful to students.
2) Smarter Every Day
@smartereveryday
This channel explores esoteric yet fascinating topics from a scientific perspective. Ever wondered how birds' wings differ to those on an airplane? Here you go. Need to find out how to light a match inside a balloon? They've got you covered. And how does a cat always land on its feet with violating the conservation of momentum?? You're probably dying to know, so see below.
This channel is the effort of academics at Nottingham University and explores - you guessed it! - words. These range from frequently used words with interesting histories, such as café, to more obscure words such as interstitial. Though they don't seem to be releasing new videos, the 50 or so that they have are fun to explore, whether you're a linguaphile or an English language teacher.
4) Numberphile
by @BradyHaran @numberphile
Perhaps you'd like to take a break from words and learn about some numbers? This channel - which is still very active - has hundreds of videos exploring everything from prime numbers, to Pi, to Pythagoras. Quirky at times, but always interesting. If you watch the video below, you'll never look at a cake the same way again.
5) Nacho Time Spanish
by AlwaysNachoTime
Finally, here's a personal recommendation from Yana. Nacho is a friend of hers - a bioinformatics expert who recently turned his hand to helping people learn Spanish. Nacho uses a combination of story-telling and deliberate practice to help the language come alive and really stick. He has been following the work of the Learning Scientists very carefully, and applying our principles throughout his free materials, which can all be found on his blog. Nacho is really passionate about helping people get out of what he calls "Spanish intermediate purgatory". If only there were resources like this for every language!
Every Sunday, we pick a theme and provide a curated list of links. If you have a theme suggestion, please don’t hesitate to contact us! Occasionally we publish a guest digest, and If you'd like to propose a guest digest click here. Our 5 most recent digests can be found here:
Weekly Digest #71: Technology to Help You Create an Active Classroom Environment
Weekly Digest #72: Talk to the Learning Scientists!
Weekly Digest #73: Concrete Examples in the Classroom