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Monday, January 9, 2012

Watch Free Educational Videos at Watch, Know, Learn

For the last 10 years, or more, Arizonan teachers have been lucky enough to use Discovery Education Streaming in their classrooms.  Well recently the Arizona Department of Education did not renew the contract with Discovery Education.  This has been a great loss felt across the educational community in this state.  Well I am all for understanding budget cuts and am one of those who will find another way to "skin a cat."  (No disrespect to cat lovers.)

For those who are feeling this loss and are looking for great video content for their classrooms there are many video sites out there.  One of the largest that everybody already knows is Youtube.  You can spend some serious and entertaining time trying to find the video right for you.   I have other video education sites listed on my Web 2.0 page list as well. There is one site though that allows you to search for just Educational videos that have already been labelled by grade level and by topic.  That site is:  www.watchknowlearn.org.

What can you do with Watch Know Learn?

  1. Browse about 3200 educational videos that come from Youtube, SchoolTube, and TeacherTube.
  2. Browse Videos by age groups.
  3. Browse Videos by content.
  4. The site has a great search tool.
  5. You don't have to worry about inappropriate comments and/or videos.
  6. These videos have been recommended by educators.
Why should I use Watch Know Learn instead of Youtube, SchoolTube, or TeacherTube?
  1. You may not want to.  Those are all great sites to use.
  2. This site filters a lot of the distractions that you might find on the other sites.
  3. The videos are all in educational categories.
  4. Videos come from all three of those sites anyway so in essence you are searching videos found on those three sites on one site.
What are some disadvantages?
  1. I find the site a little slower than I would like.  I could have been just my internet speed today though.  

Tutorial on using the site

1.  There really isn't much to know except that to change the age level of your search use the "Age Filter" by dragging the number line bar around.





2. Use the search tool to find specific content.







3.  If you want to tell the search from which video site it should pull its videos from click the drop down arrow under the search bar.










4.  You can also find videos by just browsing for them using the category list.  Just click on the + symbol to expand the category to sub categories.

That is all there is to it.  I know it is not as awesome as the Discovery Streaming set-up was, but these videos are free and this site has hundreds of excellent videos suggested by educators like yourself.

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