Educational videos

This is just a simple list of some educational videos and movies that may be very useful for educational purposes.

The link below accesses a video of mine that relates to techniques I've used in Documentary Filmmaking.

I thought it might be useful to present them in a Video Tutorial:

• http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-4223516475493964954

First there are these famous videos about learning itself. You can view these videos free online.

Both "A Private Universe" and "Minds of Our Own" start out with interviews of Harvard graduates on the day of their graduation. They are asked deceptively simple questions or given simple tasks, such as, given a bulb, wire and battery, can you make this light bulb light? A significant proportion of students cannot. These videos highlight the nature of understanding, and how too often our courses (at both the K-12 and college levels) are failing to properly help students understand what we are teaching. Instead, we are using tests of superficial and easily memorized facts and trivia, which are quickly forgotten by students after the course is over.

• A Private Universe
• Minds of Our Own
• Private Universe: Science
• Private Universe: Math

free dvd of the above: http://www.aprivateuniverse.org/order/
survey: http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/smg/survey.pl

These are some videos seen recently on TV channels such as PBS, The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, and so forth.

Comets: Prophets of Doom
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805509/
http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=75605
about the theory that comets brought the components needed for the formation of life on earth

Little Ice Age: Big Chill
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425199/
http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=74653
Interesting look at how a drop of a few degrees in temperature during the middle ages affected human life. Interesting things like about how wheat wouldn't grow well anymore, so people had to switch to potatoes, but the church said eating potatoes was evil.

How Art Made the World
http://www.pbs.org/howartmadetheworld/
Great stuff on art and the meanings and origins of religious symbols and how they relate to social issues. How for example reminding people about their own deaths (like with the crucifixion) elicits fear and dislike for outsiders.

Guns, Germs, and Steel - based on book by Jared Diamond
http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/

Scientific American Frontiers - hosted by Alan Alda and Woody Flowers
http://www.chedd-angier.com/frontiers/season1.html
some interactive stuff is archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20060206220406/http://www.pbs.org:80/saf/previous.htm
Great shows on cognition, technology, science, etc.

Modern Marvels
http://www.history.com/minisites/modernmarvels
Series on various topics, such as an episode on water. That episode explained some of the unique characteristics of water and how these characteristics helped facilitate life. It allso explained heavy water (water with an extra neutron), and how it is useful in nuclear power production (neutrons from the uranium rods bounce off water molecules rather than being absorbed by the water, thus better creating kinetic energy, or heat).

Some various movies which have quite a bit of educational value, although some are perhaps too violent for younger audiences.

• Learning about nanotechnology through video
• Learning about metallurgy through video
• Learning about engineering through video
• Learning about computer graphics through video
• Learning about machining through video
• Learning about design through video
• Learning about robotics through media

• Indextube education - wiki catalog of videos

• August 2008 Why Fight Aging?