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A Guide to Openly Accessible Media and Streaming Video Content (January 2021): Teacher Education

by Susan Ariew, LeEtta Schmidt, and Matt Torrence

Teacher Education

There is abundant material online for teachers interested in professional development and homeschooling parents who need to learn how to teach various concepts to students or enhance instruction with multimedia sources.

For purposes of professional development, Annenberg Learner, sponsored by the Annenberg Foundation, offers coordinated resources and videos for the professional development of K–12 teachers on how to teach various subjects. Education Week/Video provides a gallery of dozens of videos on current topics for K–12 educators, including segments from PBS NewsHour. Kathy Schrock’s amazing Videos of the Month Archive (You Tube) focuses on technology support for teaching and learning. And Teaching & Learning Exploratory (TLE) includes full-length classroom videos and curated collections of clips with integrated tools for interaction and exploration. It comprises more than a thousand classroom sessions in diverse K–12 settings.

The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated online instruction and homeschooling of K–12 children, and a variety of online sources are available to teachers and parents who want to supplement content with instructional videos and other digital resources.

CrashCourse (YouTube) includes brief, entertaining educational video content covering subjects at all levels of education. The videos on Vlog Brothers (YouTube) are also brief, entertaining, and instructional. Videos were created by John Green, a talented young adult author, and his brother, Hank Green. They describe this channel as “raising nerdy to the power of awesome.” Originally launched in 2007, TeacherTube is an online community for teachers who wish to share instructional videos they have created or used in their teaching. For literature lovers and those who want to promote reading to kids of all ages, Video Interviews with Top Young Adult Authors is sponsored by AdLit (Adolescent Literacy), a national multimedia project offering information and resources to parents and educators of struggling adolescent readers and writers. The organization’s umbrella website, AdLit.Org, also offers professional development videos for teachers. TedEd:Literature focuses on children’s literature videos and will send educators (or homeschooling parents) lesson plans for teaching the books discussed therein. Videos also address issues for developing readers with topics about phonics, the alphabet, and literary concepts. The site also includes read-aloud videos of songs, fairy tales, and favorite books (e.g., Eric Carle’s Very Hungry Caterpillar).