Videos in Education at the MDSTA

Yesterday was the annual meeting of the Metropolitan Detroit Science Teachers Association. I always enjoy this meeting. It's a good size for a local meeting and the talks are good even though the conference is relatively small.

I presented on the use of teacher created videos for instruction. Everyone assumes video is really hard and really expensive. If you want to make TV or theater quality video it is. But if all you're trying to do is get a little extra teaching done and you have access to a computer, then its free and easy. If you don't care so much about the production value it is also not as time consuming as people think either.

You can find my digital "Handout" on the Flosscience Site. This page will be growing as I go along. The professional development series I've volunteered to run at school this spring will focus on podcasting (I draw no distinction between audio and video podcasts). Additionally, I submitted to present basically the same material at MACUL this spring. I suppose if they don't accept my presentation I'll do it as a Guerrilla Session.

Periodic Table of Videos

This is a great site I fist saw go by last summer. I must have been distracted by something shiny because I didn't actually spend any time checking it out. I have remedied my mistake and added it to my collection of free science videos.

The Periodic Table of Videos is a periodic table with links to videos about each element (go figure). The videos contain some good information about the element, its properties, and uses. They've tried to make them interesting so they go into the lab and do flashy demos when they can.


All the videos are hosted through YouTube, but they've realized that a lot of schools block YouTube so they have an alternate server as well.

Site Update - New Videos

I've added two more videos in my series of video lectures for physics and I've added two new high speed videos shot just for fun.

Chapter 3 Acceleration 1-D Motion

• Section 3.1 - Types of velocity and acceleration particle model (alternate link)
  
• Section 3.1 part 2 - A continuation of 3.1 (alternate link coming soon)

New High Speed Videos

• Slap in the Face
• Juggling