I don't know how many of you have ever heard of NBC Learn, but I had not. That is, until the latest edition of Technology & Learning was issued. I took a quick look around the site and I encourage you to do so, too, especially if you teach in the middle school or high school.
One thing I found particularly interesting, especially since it's still considered football season by most of us (yes, I know my Auburn Tigers have won the collegiate championship, but the Super Bowl has yet to be played). If you go to the site and click on the "Original Video" tab, you will see four areas - "Chemistry Now", "Finishing the Dream", "Science of the NFL", and "Science of the Winter Olympic Games". I selected "Science of the NFL" and once I clicked "Watch VIdeos", it brought me to a screen that had several videos from which to choose. I clicked on the very first one, "Newton's First Law of Motion". It was a quick cue card style video of less than 4 minutes but I learned a lot! I also found that you can click "Transcript" on the side of the video to actually see the words on the screen which makes it great for the hearing-impaired student. I also noticed that if you click the arrow at the top of the video screen, the "back" of the cue card will show. You can open and see the general information about the video, the description of the video, the keywords mentioned in the video, some extra links of interest, and even how to cite the source correctly if you use it in research. (And this includes MLA, APA and the Chicago Manual of Style citations.) In this case, the first video lesson that I chose to view had a Lesson Plan associated with it from Lessonopoly. How terrific this would be to use with a classroom of middle schoolers who might have an interest in football and teach them something about Newton's First Law of Motion at the same time!
Be sure to take a few moments this week and check this out! You won't be disappointed!
