Online learning providers are shaking things up in higher education, and video instruction is a huge part of that revolution.
Free video education destinations such as Khan Academy and MIT OpenCourseWare show that the vision for truly universal education is shared among Web developers and leading academic institutions. Education Dive wanted to see what else is out there, who these services are meant for and where educators should look for resources that can help out in the classroom.
Here are 15 such educational video providers from around the Web:
1. Academic Earth
Target audience: Current and prospective college students
Academic Earth offers free video lectures for entire college courses on a wide range of subjects. Most of these lectures have been filmed at leading universities around the world. In addition, Academic Earth provides personalized resources for people seeking to earn a degree.
2. Khan Academy
Target audience: Everyone
Khan academy offers over three thousand video lessons on a variety of topics from Algebra to Art History. It has also expanded its services to include online tools for students and teachers to track their progress with Khan Academy and set academic goals.
3. TED-Ed
Target audience: Everyone
A recent off-shoot of the popular video site TED.com, Ted-Ed has accumulated video lessons spanning various subjects. Ted-ed also allows a "flip" option for each video, enabling the user to create a customized lesson based on the video's contents.
4. MIT OpenCourseWare
Target audience: College students, high school students and teachers
MIT OpenCourseWare has created a large bank of video and audio files from over two thousand MIT classes. While the site's main focus is on college-level education, it also features a "Highlights for High School" section offering educational resources for both teachers and students.
5. neoK12
Target audience: K-12 students and teachers
Geared towards grade school, neoK12 offers multiple video lessons on essential topics taught throughout primary and secondary education. Each topic also contains interactive materials such as games and quizzes.
6. YouTube EDU
Target audience: Everyone
Categories have been easily defined in YouTube's education channel, specifying where to find videolectures for grade school, college or general interest. The channel includes links to many educational series including full university courses and how-to channels.
7. CosmoLearning
Target audience: College students, high school students and teachers
CosmoLearning is a useful resource for both students and teachers wishing to enhance the visual aspects of classwork. It lists free video lessons, full courses, documentaries and images concerning a wide variety of topics.
8. Open Yale Courses
Target audience: College students
Open Yale Courses offers full online courses free of charge. Although these courses don't award college credits, they are complete with class materials such as exams and paper topics. The site emphasizes that using Open Yale Courses is useful for those seeking to audit a class.
9. WatchKnowLearn
Target audience: K-12 and teachers
WatchKnowLearn has compiled educational videos from all over the web ranging from children's book readings to vocational training. It also contains a classroom section, in which videos are matched with certain grade levels according to Common Core standards.
10. SchoolTube
Target audience: K-12 and teachers
SchoolTube fosters an inter-school community in which students and teachers can share their projects and activities with the world at no charge. Videos can be academic, extracurricular or just for fun as long as they are associated with school.
11. videolectures.net
Target audience: College students
Videolectures.net brings thousands of videos of scholarly lectures to the web for free. While containing a wide breadth of topics, the website also categorizes videos by people and conferences, creating a helpful resource for people who want to be at the forefront of scholarship for a particular topic.
12. Knowmia
Target audience: High school students and teachers
Knowmia is on online platform for teachers to share educational videos. Teachers have uploaded thousands of videos to the site, many of which highlight their own personalities and unique approaches to instructing students. Knowmia also offers Knowmia Teach, a smart phone and tablet app for lesson planning.
13. Annenberg Learner
Target audience: Teachers
With an emphasis on professional development, Annenberg Learner contains multimedia resources for teachers to use on a wide range of topics taught from Kindergarten to College. Teachers are not only provided with images and videos for classroom use, but are also given information on instructional methodology.
14. webcast.berkeley
Target audience: College students
Webcast.berkeley provides free audio and video lectures of full UC Berkeley courses. The courses are categorized by department and semester taught going back to the year 2005. Video lessons vary from slideshows to live classroom settings.
15. iTunesU
Target audience: Everyone
With iTunesU, an iTunes library can include full courses along with videos and music. Just like other online educational video websites, students can use iTunesU to gain access to courses from academic institutions around the world. However, iTunesU also comes in the form of an app, offering teachers organizational tools to build their own online courses.
Want to see more education news and resources like this in your inbox on a daily basis? Subscribe to the Education Dive email newsletter! You may also want to read our "8 ways to use Learnist" list.
