YouTube is rolling out six new educational channels focusing on math, science, history, art/culture, and astronomy. The new offerings are a part of their 100 original content initiative, but recently YouTube has made a lot of strides in being a go-to source for education, with Space Lab and YouTube For Schools being announced in the past few months. The educational wing of YouTube boasts over 700 partners and over 500,000 videos and pretty much continues to show how remarkably diverse this video destination site can be.
6 New YouTube Educational Channels
I'll touch on these in random order. First, we have something simple. Math! Actually, numbers, more specifically. With Numberphile, the discussion is about certain numbers and equations that are fascinating. I think that's a pretty good way to introduce math to people: tell them what can be interesting about certain numbers and how they relate to everyday life. This particular episode talks about the number 17 and how it relates to Sudoku:
And of course, everyone loves space, right? The universe is pretty darn amazing. And how about a look into the inner workings of the lab that houses the Isaac Newton Telescope in La Palma, Canary Islands?
Crash Course will focus on history and biology. The Vlogbrothers
More Hank Green here at Scishow talking about a tremendously advanced supercomputer called Yellowstone that will be able to predict weather patterns for decades in advance:
And you know those boring science classes where you never got any practical demonstration of what you were trying to learn? Here, Steve Spangler takes his act into Coors Field and prepares for an assault of the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest physics lesson ever in front of 5,000 kids. This episode shows all the work leading into the event, which will be shown in the next episode:
Then, we have the Intelligent Channel, which appears to be celebrities or people involved in creative professions talking about their craft, moments, and philosophies. One of the highlights of the new channel is comedian/actor Richard Belzer interviewing his contemporary, Gilbert Gottfried. One of the outstanding parts of this interview is the discussion of Gottfried's "too soon" jokes about 9/11 during a roast of Hugh Hefner mere days after the attacks, and how the stunned reaction then led to lapsing into one of the most awful jokes in the world, The Aristocrats. The interview is enlightening, but be warned, this is as blue as it gets:
I like the idea of the Intelligent Channel, but an interview like that doesn't exactly lend credence to the channel's inclusion into an educational lineup. But, this is a channel for adults and learning the process behind art and culture, so it works in that regard.
So again, lots of choice from YouTube and we can expect more in the coming year.