June | 2010 | Free Resources from the Net for EVERY Learner

Quintessential UDL Resource

In Teaching Every Student, David Rose and Anne Meyer observe that “…a person who appears learning disabled in a print-bound, text-based environment may look extraordinarily skilled in a graphics or video-based environment.” There are indeed learners for whom video is especially helpful, but I believe that all learners benefit tremendously from access to video. That’s why, in a universally designed learning environment video is made freely available to everyone.

With all the online video that is readily available on almost any subject imaginable, it is a truly wonderful time to be a learner! TechCrunch reported recently that there are now nearly 17 billion video clips online. The challenge, therefore, lies in finding the most useful and highest quality video. WatchKnow does a great deal to help meet this challenge; and it is a resource that should be familiar to anyone who wants to foster a UDL learning environment.

WatchKnow has indexed and organized 18,485 online educational videos as of today. Site organizers aim to increase that total to 50,000 by the end of 2010. All videos have been organized by category and sub-category. For example, the 2,490 videos listed under mathematics have been sub-divided into 15 categories that range from “Number Sense” to “Calculus” and “Math in the Real World”.

WatchKnow has been organized as a Web 2.0 community where input is welcome from all. Users are encouraged to add videos. Since WatchKnow is funded by a foundation, however, teachers and librarians have been hired to edit the directory. Each video is accompanied by a description, age level information and rating. Access to videos does not require registration, but you must register if you wish to add videos to the collection.

Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, is the executive director of WatchKnow. He offers an overview of WatchKnow in the video below.

Congratulations, Jeff!

I’ve subscribed to Jeff Utecht’s blogs The Thinking Stick and U Tech Tips for more than four years. Jeff was also one of the first edubloggers I followed on Twitter. I’ve appreciated what Jeff has had to share, and it has impacted my thinking significantly. As of today, Jeff is a published author. His book Reach, about building “learning communities and networks online” has been released today. I’ve just downloaded a copy, so I haven’t had time to read it; but I’m looking forward to doing so.

The book may be purchased from Lulu, but just for today, June 15th, Jeff is making the book available for free to those who read his blog. I encourage you to check out both of his blogs by clicking on the links above. I would especially encourage you to read what Jeff wrote about writing this book in his post of June 2nd.