Tag Archives: videos

Astronomy resources for students

Good morning!

Today I’m doing a little site maintenance, incorporating as many digital resources as possible into the various science pages on my website. The resources include simulations, videos, and activities created by other teachers and educational institutions. Instead of linking this blog post to a bunch of bookmarks I’ve saved over the years, I’ll just suggest that you check out my astronomy page under the “Sciences” tab on my homepage.

Among the many dozens of resources I’ve added, I think you’ll find something educational, engaging, and entertaining for a wide range of audiences.

Happy learning!

Physics resources for students: part 1

Good afternoon!

Today I’ll share a few of the resources  I use to teach the fundamentals of physics. One of the most fun aspects of teaching physics is that it lends itself to so many entertaining and engaging activities and demonstrations in class. Along with chemistry, physics is probably the most hands-on science I teach; therefore, real-world demonstrations and activities are the bread and butter of my physics units. However, there are any number of situations in which hands-on demonstrations aren’t possible or feasible: a lack of funding or resources at a school, broken equipment, abstract concepts or perhaps a student is simply reviewing material at home. In these cases, animations can provide a tremendous amount of help in understanding the essentials of physics. Most of the resources I’ve listed here are collections of animations to help students learn (and teachers teach!) about physics.

Explore and enjoy! Happy learning.

Ecology resources for students: Part 1

Good afternoon!

I’m back with another set of bookmarks for students and teachers. Because I’ve taught the IB Environmental systems and societies course for several years, this set of online resources is closest to my heart. Some of these links are here simply because I think they’re cool or fun. Many may also be applicable for studying biology and chemistry as well. Let’s get to it:

Happy learning!

Cheers,

Mr K

Biology resources for students: Part 1

Good morning!

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been updating various pages within my website, and as I work, I keep encountering all these different websites and digital resources I’ve bookmarked over the years. My bookmarks bar is organized by broad scientific subjects: astronomy,biology, chemistry, ecology, and physics. I’ve also got a folder dedicated solely to scientific games. I will share the resources in these folders in subsequent posts, organized by subject area. Once posted in the blog, I’ll then add all bookmarks to the general science pages in my website, but I thought I’d take this opportunity to share them with the broader global community as well. I have so many of these resources that I’m going to have to split the list into two parts – the bookmarks from my Chrome browser and those from Firefox.

Today: biology resources for students (and teachers!) in no particular order.

  • The Cell: Basic Unit of Structure and Function by McGraw-Hill. Animations, quizzes, flashcards, and other resources aligned with their Human Anatomy textbook. Links to other chapters can be found in the sidebar.
  • Bioman Biology. Interactive biology games on a variety of topics, including physiology, cells, ecology, genetics, evolution, DNA, respiration, and photosynthesis.
  • Carbon cycle animation from the University of Alberta, Canada. A simple but comprehensive flow chart (system diagram) of the global carbon cycle.
  •  InstaGrok interactive concept maps. Pre-made concept maps showing links between a whole bunch of topics in general biology. Click on a term to see links to other biology topics, facts, websites, videos, images, or add your own notes.
  • Cells Alive! This site has been around for years. Good, easy-to-understand interactive cell models.
  •  DNA video from NotCot.org. A beautiful 3 minute animation explaining DNA for BBC Knowledge from Territory.
  • John Kimball’s online biology textbook. This guy has been teaching biology for decades, and he’s amassed an incredible amount of resources on his site around every conceivable topic in biology. It’s kind of an old-school site, but it’s thorough.
  • Learn.Genetics at the University of Utah, USA. I use the tutorials from this site extensively in my genetics and evolution units.
  • Bozeman Science biology playlist on YouTube. 76 videos! 76! This playlist contains videos that could be useful in AP Biology, IB Biology, Biology, and other life sciences, all from the amazing Paul Andersen.
  • Mitosis World Home at University of North Carolina, USA. An aggregate of several other biology resources.
  • Discover Biology animations from W.W. Norton & Co. High-quality animations that can be viewed straight through, step-by-step, or narrated.
  • Interactive transpiration animation from ScienceMag. Adjust plant parameters and environmental conditions to see different effects on the movement of water through plants. With some creativity, you could run a virtual lab from this animation.
  • Understanding Evolution at the University of California – Berkeley. Densely packed with information and thoroughly researched. I use this site as a main reference for my evolution units. The site has been around a long time and is showing its age, but it’s still highly useful.
  • Sex determination video at TED-Ed. One of many useful resources from the TED people. Includes a review quiz and discussion questions.
  • Biology for Life. A great website from Gretel von Bargen at Skyline High School in Washington state, USA. It follows the new IB Biology syllabus. Also linked to her Twitter feed. I use this site a ton.
  • Bioknowledgy. Probably my favorite site for IB Biology. Chris Paine in Shanghai has created an extensive library of resources and materials aligned with the new IB Biology syllabus. Includes presentations, videos, and guided revision questions, among other resources. Awesome!

I hope that’s a good start for now. If you find any helpful resources you think I’ve missed, please send them my way in the comments, and I’ll add them to the second batch.

Cheers!

Mr K

Why TED-Ed is my new favorite teaching tool

Good morning!

Yesterday I was searching for some content to help my 10th graders gain a deeper understanding of the mole concept, when I got distracted. Like really, really distracted. I started with the TED-Ed video asking “How big is a mole?” and ended up spending about 2 hours adding video lessons to all the units I teach: plant physiology, the solar system and deep space in grade 8, physics energy transformations and evolution in grade 10, as well as every single topic in my Environmental Systems and Societies class.

Image from screen capture of a sample video lesson on TED-Ed.

Image from screen capture of a sample video lesson on TED-Ed.

These video lessons are great for flipping my classroom, which enables me to introduce new concepts or content on students’ own time and use our contact time together to push their knowledge deeper. If you haven’t heard of flipped classes or blended learning, check out these hyperlinks for a basic introduction to the idea. Using Google Classroom and Drive are a big part of the blended learning experience my students get in science. I think the graphic below neatly summarizes what I’m describing.

Flipped classroom image source: www.knewton.com.

Flipped classroom image source: www.knewton.com.

Back to TED-Ed: Each video lesson contains a brief series of activities which scaffold students’ learning. There are some comprehension-check questions in the form of a brief “Think” quiz, some additional resources in the “Dig Deeper” section to promote further exploration and higher-order thinking skills, and some lessons also include a “Discuss” section including guided discussions with other students around the world. Overall, I think it’s a pretty cool way to learn, and it’s much more engaging for tech-savvy kids compared with my lectures and/or presentations in class.

Happy learning!

More Science Video Resources

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I’ve stumbled across some valuable resources this morning – I shared them via Twitter – and they inspired me to share some more science-y things. Here are a few more channels I follow regularly on YouTube, all of which are great for support and/or inspiration in your scientific endeavors.

First up today is Numberphile. Numberphile makes videos about numbers, and since science and mathematics are so inherently intertwined, this channel is kind of a natural pairing for a lot of what we do in our studies of physical science and astronomy. Lots of entertaining and fascinating stuff here.

Next is The Bad Astronomer. As you might guess, this channel focuses heavily on astronomy and space science. Mostly it’s a collection of cool informational videos that don’t seem to be organized around any one central theme – just neat stuff about outer space.

The Science Channel is a really broad, very well-curated channel dedicated to all the major branches of science. Check out their playlists to filter your search down to specific topics or subjects within a given field of study. Highly professional.

Finally, I’ll link to NASA’s official YouTube channel. Here you’ll find literally hundreds of videos assembled by a large team of scientists working on a wide variety of projects at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, USA.

For Your Periodic Viewing Pleasure…

More video resources today. I’ll keep this up until I have exhausted my subscription list on YouTube. For more science-related content, be sure to check my Twitter feed, which I’ve also embedded on the mrkremerscience.com homepage.

Screen shot - Periodic Videos

Screen shot of the Periodicvideos.com homepage.

Brady Haran is a supremely entertaining master of chemistry at the University of Nottingham, and he posts new videos every single week on his YouTube channel called Periodic Videos. (It’s a play on words! Get it?) Mr Haran claims that his channel is “Your ultimate channel for all things chemistry. [It includes] A video about each element on the periodic table.” He’s also got an excellent related website by the same name, which shows the most recently updated element videos. You can have lots of fun with this channel.

SciShow is another YouTube channel worth checking out. The host Hank Green “discusses science news, history, and concepts,” which means it’s more than just how-to science. SciShow includes analysis, interviews, and storytelling “with equal parts skepticism and enthusiasm.”

Last but definitely not least is one of my favorite online resources for exploring biology and life science. John Kyrk is a Harvard-trained biologist and artist living in California, USA. He specializes in making Flash animations for science, and they are incredible. Please check out his website, JohnKyrk.com. My personal favorite is his evolution animation, which shows the history of all the elements and living things since the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago! 

Screen Shot - Kyrk Evolution

Screenshot of John Kyrk’s evolution animation.

More Cool Science Resources

It’s Monday morning, which generally means I’m still waiting for that second cup of coffee to kick in, but today I have reason to be a little more awake than usual.

My colleague and partner in the battle against ignorance, Matt Erdosy, passed along the following website at the end of last school year, and I’ve only just begun to explore it. “The Big History Project” may not sound like a science resource, but the site labels itself as “A journey through 13.8 billion years of history,” and it includes all the major events in the history of the Universe. So it’s not like a History Channel history or a Mr Price’s European history class kind of history. It’s literally a history of everything. I’ve just started to scratch the surface of what’s in this site, but as I learn more about it, we will explore more of it in class, particularly in my 8th grade astronomy lessons.

I’ve also included a couple more science-y YouTube channels to today’s post, since students seem to respond so well to them. First up today is the very well-regarded Minute Physics. Minute Physics, as you might guess, includes a lot of physical science lessons broken into one-minute videos. It’s like Short-Attention-Span Theatre for science class! According to the channel creators, “Simply put: cool physics and other sweet science.”

The next channel I’ll share is Crash Course. Many of my students are already familiar with the Green borthers’ great series on YouTube. Crash Course doesn’t cover only science. There are 8 separate courses available on the channel, but of course in my classes we focus on the science end of things. Quick-hitting, entertaining, and loaded with resources such as external links, additional footage and explanations, as well as quizzes corresponding to the videos, this channel is well worth bookmarking.

Happy exploring!

YouTube Science Channels of the Day

I subscribe to a number of cool science channels on YouTube. If you’re a fan of science, you’ve probably already discovered these on your own, but if you’re just beginning your scientific journey of discovery, then you should check out some of the following channels. They are all entertaining, educational, scientifically accurate, and generally fun. I use them in my class routinely because the curators of these channels are soooooo much more talented at inventing and creating engaging content to explain science.

I’ll post a few of these recommendations here from time to time as I work through my own subscriptions and as I unearth channels that are new to me. But enough of my rambling. Here are my recommended YouTube Science Channels of the Day:

Smarter Every Day: Destin is a science guy who simply tries to get smarter every day, which I think is a pretty laudable goal. He’s also got a presence on Tumblr, and of course he’s on Twitter as well. If you want to get smarter every day – even just a little bit – you should check it out.

Veritasium: Derek Muller is the master behind this great channel, and to quote the information straight from the homepage, “Veritasium is a science video blog featuring experiments, expert interviews, cool demos, and discussions with the public about everything science.” He’s also quite active on Twitter. Follow Derek to discover more of the truth in science!