There are any number of fine sites for videos to show our students, but these two are my new favorites. I like these two because they are all generally short and they treat the viewer with respect (meaning that the ideas are presented in a clear, sober, and engaging way).
The School of Life is a curated channel on YouTube. It has sixteen playlists, but the videos that would most useful for World History teachers are in four playlists: History, Philosophy, Eastern Philosophy, and Political Theory.
The History playlist has 10 videos discussing topics like Ancient Greece, Capitalism, Romanticism, and the Renaissance. Here's the video for Ancient Greece (10:56):
The Philosophy playlist currently has 21 videos on topics like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Nietzsche. Here's the video on Hegel (6:54):
The Eastern Philosophy playlist has five videos. Here's the video on Confucius (5:36):
The Political Theory playlist has nine videos. This list is particularly rich, including videos on Rousseau, Hobbes, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx. Here's the video on Machiavelli (6:53):
My second new favorite site for videos is from Macat Education.
Macat calls itself the "guide to the world's big ideas." And an excellent guide it is. Macat's curated YouTube channel has 13 playlists, most of which would be useful to use with our students. This site is different in that it is organized around important books. For example, it has channels on
The Most Important Books in Economics (one video here [3:05] is on JM Keynes's General Theory)
The Most Important Books in Politics (one video here [3:07] is on John Stuart Mill's On Liberty)
The Most Important Books in Philosophy (one video here [3:20] is on Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil)
and, The Most Important Books in Theology (one video here [2:58] is on Augustine's Confessions)
Classroom Connection: I always pair a video like one of these with a primary source. Then I assign a writing assignment that requires students to synthesize the background information in the video with the ideas in the primary source.
- What To Flip In A Flipped Class
This is adapted from my book, Deeper Learning Through Technology: How to Use the Cloud to Individualize Instruction, which comes out on the 27th (and you can pre-order now). WHAT TO FLIP IN A FLIPPED CLASSROOM To...
- World History Flipped Class Videos
This year I am co-teaching with an ESOL teacher for WHI. To that end we have decided to ditch every lecture and use flipped videos instead. We feel it will especially serve our ESOL students who will not have to ask to have us repeat everything...
- Start The Video Where You Want
Up until now I have used Splicd to set my Youtube videos to where I want them for student viewing. Splicd still is useful if you want to have a beginning and an end of the video. As you can see above you need only go to the video, click...
- Differentiated Instruction
We have been discussing differentiation in my school. Above is a super video giving you several examples of what it means to have a differentiated classroom. The video on top is even better (don't be deterred by its start mentioning...
- Youtube Blocked At Your School? Here's A Solution
Thankfully my principal has finally agreed to unblock youtube at my school, but if that is not the case for you, then you should watch the video above. Youtube has tagged (so far) about 200,000 videos that they deem educational which you can see here....