Watchknow.org: Your one-stop shop for educational videos.
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 12/07/2009 - 4:16pm
WatchKnow.org is an educational website that launched in October, brought to fruition by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger. It currently features more than 11,000 educational videos in 2,000 categories covering subjects such as Math, Science and History; just about everything you would expect to be taught in schools today. So what's the point of this site since everyone knows that you can find any video imaginable with a simple Google search?
Well, WatchKnow is dedicated solely to educational purposes and arranges the videos in an organized manner. No more sloughing through garbage to find your gold!
Now, instead of going to individual sites, like YouTube, TeacherTube or eHow, you can just go to WatchKnow, do your search and it will pull in results from them all for viewing in one place. Pretty convenient, eh? I think so! And as Cindy Putnam mentions in her recent blog post “WatchKnow.org,” the videos aren't hosted by WatchKnow; instead, they are linked from the various video hosting sites. Unfortunately, if your school blocks YouTube or any of the other hosts, you might have a problem viewing some of the videos but since they are pulled in from all over, there should be enough from other sources to make up for the blocked vids. It's a wiki-style collaboration among users and though the initial videos were added by teachers and librarians hired by WatchKnow, anyone can add new videos to the site (they’re approved by a panel before being linked).
WatchKnow is easy to use, easy to navigate and though there aren’t millions of videos to choose from, yet, I think it will grow into a tool that all educators and students will use, just like Wikipedia did.
So what do you think? Is WatchKnow a tool that you would utilize?
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I visited the site and I have to admit that it is really nice and they had good and educational information there. Calculator CASCO
I will definitely be using this site in my classroom. This is a great resource that is fast, up to date, and free! It’s better than just using Google video or YouTube because it is organized for quick access to what teachers want.
Thanks for your positive comments & support of WatchKnow! I'm really happy that teachers like WatchKnow as much as they do. Our next step, in addition to putting tens of thousands of new videos in the system, is to try to broker deals that will allow teachers to show YouTube-sourced videos in the classroom via WatchKnow. Wish us luck....
As soon as I looked at the site I shared it with my teachers. I particularly like the fact that the videos are first reviewed, and that they're organized by content and approximate age level. Classroom teachers have very little "free time" to browse for materials, and it can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Anything that helps them is worth it to me.
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