Tag Archives: YouTube

June 11, 2013 · 9:36 pm

New Posts Coming – End of Year Madness

Hey guys, sorry I haven’t been as productive as before. The usual end-of-year wrap ups and such are keeping me extremely busy. It also doesn’t help that I’m creating video lessons again for LearnZillion and I want as much of them done before the break as possible.

However, no fear. A new post will be released this week, where I critique the US History Overview video lessons from Khan Academy.

(Isn’t it pretentious to name a school after a Star Trek supervillain?…oh wait, sorry, my bad 😉

Videos for the Classroom: A Day in the Life…from BBC History

As we here at the Neighborhood sit patiently while Governor Cuomo calls us for an interview, I found this cool series of videos.

In my year teaching ancient history, the BBC has been a veritable lifeline, along with National Geographic, Discovery Channel and PBS. BBC’s History site is particularly instructive, in that it includes games, projects, lessons and dense (REALLY dense) readings on many important aspects of history–mostly from a British perspective, obviously, but it works.

“A Day in the Life…” is a series of short videos about a kid’s point of view through British history. Since Ancient Rome is on the menu to end the year, I’ve included the life of Roman kid in Roman Britain. It isn’t entirely accurate, but it is fun, and cool to share with kids for a laugh.

You can go to BBC History for this and other videos.

Videos for the Classroom: Crash Course!

I cringe at the word “kid-friendly” — sounds like a bad Law and Order: SVU episode.

One of the constant missions of the Neighborhood is to find resources that tap into the caffeine-addled brains of young people. In the quest to find “kid-friendly” material, most of what I find is directed at…okay, I’ll say it…good little white children. Good little pasty white kids that sit still and believe anything told to them because a happy smiling face in a toga (or bonnet or Abe Lincoln-esque stovepipe hat) tells them so.

Today, even the good little white kids aren’t really that good nor that white–you can thank TMZ, MTV and YouTube for that.

So to connect with today’s kids, we need something a little edgier. Crash Course! is a series of films about history and science, told in an irreverent, snarky way by brothers John and Hank Green. The World History series I saw was pretty entertaining, although the producers do make clear that historical people have sex (they get around it with a folksy word that I forgot). They are, however, loaded with data, facts and historical debate, when necessary–these guys don’t hide their biases, and it’s important for kids to see someone unashamed of their opinions.

If it weren’t for the occasional sex references, I’d recommend Crash Course! to middle schoolers on up. It’s perfectly fine for high school, but you may need some discretion with younger viewers. I’ve attached the episode on Alexander the Great to get an idea. Enjoy.