Educational Videos #1

Little did I know, an idea I had for a post during the AGU meeting would become such a large topic! I have decided to break up the topic of geology educational videos into several posts over the next week, and this will probably be a reoccurring topic from time to time.

This post was inspired by a series of videos posted by the American Geologic Institute Education Program about the "Big Ideas" in the geosciences. They are a series of ten videos, ranging from 5-7 minutes in length. I was excited about this new development, and to share their YouTube channel with the educational community (the videos mentioned are contained within the YouTube link). [More on their awesome videos in a bit!]

While preparing for this blog post, I read a blog post about YouTube for Schools on Mashable. Marketing a educational video database was a new concept to me, and Mashable post gave some compelling arguments for it.  Check out the commercial below:

Apparently I wanted to open Pandora's Box, because curiosity inspired me to check out the competition...

There are soooo many of these sites out there. A quick sweep of the competition revealed videos of varying scientific caliber, audience demographic, and technological quality. I will review YouTube for Schools, and other educational video databases from geoscientist perspective. Also, I would love feedback from teachers, and their experiences using these same sites! 

Expected Post Schedule

Educational Videos #2 : GamePlan
Educational Videos #3 : Random Sites

Educational Videos #4 : TeacherTube

Edcuational Videos #5 : YouTube.com/Education 

Educational Videos #6 : Weekend Thoughts

This will hopefully be completed over the coming week. Hope to see you back!