Great Sources for Frontloading Videos – Part 2

Our regular readers will remember last Monday's post on this topic in which we introduced MinutePhysics and MinuteEarth as sources for frontloading videos for middle and high school students. As we explained in the previous post, frontloading is an effective instructional technique in which students are given a brief overview of a topic before learning it more thoroughly. Frontloading gives students an idea of what to expect, helps them to focus on the salient information more readily, and aids in memory.

Here are two more sources for great videos, all available free! Handwritten Tutorials will be useful to students of high-level biology and anatomy, while CrashCourse offers a broader range of courses on science, literature, and history.

Handwritten Tutorials  – high school, college, and nursing/medical school

Martin Wardle, the brainy artist behind Handwritten Tutorials, follows three guidelines as he conceives and draws up his lectures: they should be under ten minutes long, free, and enjoyable to watch. Martin has uploaded more than 75 videos in which he quickly draws all of the most important aspects of topics like anatomy, biochemistry, neuroscience, and more, narrating all the while. The explanations are easy to understand and the helpful sketches make things crystal clear. Want to take a closer look, make your own notes, or spend a bit more time studying? Students can even download the completed drawing as a PDF from the Handwritten Tutorials homepage.

CrashCourse – high school and college

Teenagers who are fans of author John Green’s quirky humor will love this channel just as much as they love his popular novels, which we have recently reviewed in our Recommended Reads series. Brothers John and Hank Green take on the task of explaining U.S. and world history, chemistry and biology, literature, ecology, and psychology on this channel, which has dedicated playlists for each topic. The videos tend to be longer, between ten to twelve minutes, because they cover more ground than the Minute videos described above. The Greens’ fast-paced delivery, visuals (comprised of diagrams, photos, maps, and animations), and joke-a-second, cerebral humor will pique adolescents’ interest in the topic before they get into the nitty-gritty of learning it in detail. There are over 100 videos to choose from.

We hope that you’re as impressed by these videos as we are! We think any of them would make a wonderful starting point for more in-depth learning.