This was my son’s project for Tracing Matter and Energy at Boulder Creek High School in Anthem. He decide to make a video, as he is fond of doing. Less scientific videos he made can be found at youknowmeHy.  He just uses a small Sony camera that is primarily for taking still photos and Adobe Premier. This Christmas he is hoping for an upgrade.

Here is his video: Radioactive Tagging and the Carbon Cycle

A scene from Adaptive Curriculum's "Significance of Carbon Dioxide-Oxygen Cycle."

I was presenting a lesson on engaging starts for my preservice elementary science methods class, and I did the lycopodium flash to model an engagement on surface-area to volume ratio. Lyndon Brooks emailed me this video of the demonstration that he shot with his cell phone. This is my first reception of a video of a class I am teaching. Rillero Lycopodium Flashmov.mp4

This week I was at Santa Clara Unified School District visiting Kathie Kanavel,  Coordinator for Educational Technology. Kathie told me about her math teachers using their Lumens document cameras to record their lessons, with audio, and then they post them to YouTube. What a great way for students to review the lessons. Parents who are trying to help can also experience the lesson.

Adaptive Curriculum has a different way of engaging students in a lesson on surface-area to volume ratio. They use the discrepant event of cheese cubes in a microwave. Most of us, because of conventional oven experiences, would think that the smaller cubes would melt first. But with a microwave oven, the cheese heats from the inside and the larger cube, because it has a smaller surface-area to volume ratio, retains heat better and it melts first.

In my “Physics for Teachers” class, when student groups present hands-on lessons, they sometimes start with a YouTube video. They are usually well selected and they turn out to be interesting and short. These videos are easy to find and in a university setting easy to display. While some schools have blocked YouTube as a website because of some content, there are workarounds for downloading the videos as .flv files (such as TechCrunch) and playing or converting them with flv players (my favorite for the Macintosh is the free iSquint.

On August 12, 2008, Smartteaching.org posted their 100 top YouTube videos for teachers. Below, I present their science list.

Resources

Adaptive Curriculum’s “Making Sperm and Eggs: Meiosis” Uses Flash-based animations and interactions.