10 free quality video resources for teachers
Lucie Renard —
Teaching comes with finding the best learning materials for your students. Images, audio, presentations, apps and video’s. Some of it you make on your own, others are easier to borrow.
The internet is a universe full of those learning materials. But how can you explore and conquer the internet in the best possible way? There’s just so much rubbish between all the stars.
In this blog post, I can help you with one part: finding the best video resources for in the classroom. All these free video websites contain a stock video library with video footage for young and old. So, here they are:
The 10 best video websites for teachers
And of course, for every course, you’ll need different educational videos. So, I managed to find some amazing video websites for (almost) every course. Let’s get started!
1. BBC Bitesize
Choose videos and lessons for different subjects in Primary or secondary education. The BBC has released handy and beautiful bitesize video materials, teachers can use in their classroom. All the free videos (and lessons!) are classified in levels and by topic. This is quite a discovery!
2. TED-Ed
On TED-Ed you can find animated, high quality videos about certain learning topics. You can search by subject, or you can browse for a video around your topic. Mostly, all videos explain concepts. Students can also make a quiz, after watching the video and dig deeper into the learning material so they can find additional resources. They can also discuss the video with peers on an online forum. TED-Ed has some amazing series as well. Here, you’ll be able to find a large amount of educational videos for students, concerning the same topic, like “Our changing climate”.
3. Khan academy
Khan academy started out with its famous YouTube videos. Now, you can just go to their website and search for a learning video about the topic you want to teach. Choose between subjects like Math, Science & Engineering, Computing, Arts & Humanities and Economics & Finance. By signing up, you can create a classroom, and invite your students to take some video lessons and to take a quiz afterwards. You can even Follow your students' progress as well.
4. National Geographic Education
National geographic is known for its majestic documentaries and its colourful magazines. So how amazing is it that they give teachers the right resources as well?! The National Geographic Website includes ready to use lessons with explanations, images, and free video material.
5. Check 123
Looking for some qualitative videos? All of Check123’s videos are validated by professional experts, and prioritized by quality - helping teachers find the best possible answer to their search! Next to each video, you will find its Quality Rating (1-10) alongside two metrics: Informative and Entertaining.
6. Google Video’s
Google is most known to search for internet pages, websites, articles, etc. However, you can also look for images and, probably lesser known, videos: just type in a video keyword and start browsing. You’ll find a lot of free videos to use in your classroom.
7. Free documentaries
The truth is free. Freedocumentaries.org found an easy way to bring thought-provoking, educational, and entertaining documentaries to anyone with a high-speed internet connection. They believe that the mainstream media increasingly practices self-censorship, and that it ignores many opinions and historical events. With the media distorting or ignoring information, it’s often very hard to get an accurate picture of a problem, even while watching the news. Teaching a much discussed or provoking topic? Look for a documentary to go with it.
8. Teachertube
Here, you can find classroom video materials uploaded by other teachers, or share your own. Search by subject to find a video fit for your students.
9. How stuff works
Want to teach your students how stuff works? Go through this website and find the video you’re looking for. It’ll explain you all about your topic.
10. History
Looking for a good video about history? This website has a lot of them! Search by topic and get started. Everything you need to teach your students about history is right here. Curious what happened this very day in history? Go to the tab “This day in history”, and start every lesson with a video of this day in the past.
Of course, you can find much more video material for your classroom on YouTube and other online video websites, but these are my favourites. Share these video sites for educators with a fellow teacher: you might just give them the key to the video universe!
