Youtube – undervalued information source?

I have been challenged in the past few weeks searching for some information and was pleasantly surprised by what I could find on Youtube.

Some students needed help with transposing formulas, for example, “What is the value of L if you have the values of P and G in this formula: P= L x G?” I tried to find it on Khan Academy but couldn’t without logging in. I wanted a quick solution for the students, not a website where you had to spend time entering details and registering. So I searched for “transposing formulae” in Youtube and was spoiled by choice. I searched quite a few and I eventually chose 2 – the first was an easy introduction, and the second involved square roots which my students needed. What impressed me about both is that the whole screen was taken up by the equations, not the presenter’s back or face, and the presenters left the working on the board to show the steps they had followed.

Transposing formulae - easy

Transposing (Rearranging) Formulae https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeWdpi3kCbs

How To Transpose Formulas With Square Roots

How To Transpose Formulas With Square Roots https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsSZZaH7-ME

The second problem arose when I acquired a Samsung Galaxy Duos and wanted to insert my SD micro-card into it. I couldn’t find where to insert it, then called my 11 year old son to quickly show me what I had obviously overlooked. Surprisingly, even he couldn’t find the slot. So I searched Youtube and found a video which showed me it is inserted just above the where you insert your SIM card. Well hidden!

Youtube, like most other resource repositories, has good and poor resources. It is well worth searching through it now though – especially for visual and aural learners.

Update Jan 2015:

My kids went to swimming lessons and were presumed to know how to do the Survival stroke. Although they were good swimmers and had had lessons before in Abu Dhabi, they had never heard of this stroke as they were new to the system here in Western Australia. The teachers thought the kids were being cheeky when they asked the teachers to demonstrate the Survival stroke, and didn’t show them it. Thankfully, after Robi decided to Google it, he found a Youtube video that was a perfect instructional video for this!

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