Five Good Alternatives to YouTube for Finding Educational Videos
YouTube is the place that most of us turn to first when we need an educational video clip. Even if you use the search refinement tools in YouTube, it can be a challenge to find a clip that is appropriate for your students. Then there are still the issues of “related” videos that aren’t really related to your search and comments that don’t add any value to the video. Here are five good alternatives to searching on YouTube for educational video clips.
BoClips
BoClips is an educational video site that I started using a few months ago.
BoClips hosts more than two million videos from producers that you’re probably familiar with through their YouTube channels. Videos that you find on BoClips are actually hosted on BoClips with the permission of the video producers. Here’s a quick overview of how to find and share BoClips videos.
Next Vista for Learning
I’ve been promoting Next Vista for Learning for the last ten years. Next Vista’s purpose is to provide a place for teachers and students to share videos with other teachers and students in a safe environment. All videos that appear on Next Vista for Learning are intended to teach short lessons. This student-produced video about email etiquette is one that I found on Next Vista and I recently featured it on Free Technology for Teachers.
ClassHook
ClassHook is a great place to find video clips from popular movies and television shows to use to teach short lessons. ClassHook lets you search according to grade level, subject, clip length, standard, and decade of video production. ClassHook recently introduced a feature called Pause Prompts that lets you build discussion questions into the videos that you find through their service.
Vimeo
Unlike the first three sites in this list Vimeo wasn’t made specifically for education. Just like on YouTube, you will find some content that you don’t want your students to watch. But just like on YouTube you will find some great clips. It’s always good to have options when searching for a new video clip and Vimeo provides that.
National Film Board of Canada
My friends who live a couple of hours north of me are probably already familiar with the National Film Board of Canada. For everyone else, the NFB offers documentaries, animations, and feature-length films to view online. The videos cover a wide array of topics some of which may be a little controversial and or not suitable for school settings. That’s why I recommend using the site only to find a video that you are going to display in your classroom and not letting students search the site on their own in your classroom.
Interested in Learning How to Make Your Own Educational Videos?
On Tuesday I’m hosting a webinar titled 5 Video Projects for Almost Every Classroom. Learn more about it and register here.