I am constantly amazed by the number of times I need to use YouTube to help with tasks around the house. I celebrated my second Father’s Day with a very neat present from my one-year-old daughter. She knows me so well and bought me a digital coffee cup. It allows me to pay for my coffees without using cash or card. It truly is a coffee lover’s best friend. Unfortunately, the cup doesn’t clean itself and this saw me pulling it apart this week to scrub it thoroughly. 

After a successful wash, I was left with seven little tiny parts to put back together. Being male, I thought not to look for the instructions but to tackle this straight on. How hard could it be? Well, quite hard actually. After 20 minutes of frustration and standing at the kitchen sink I decided to go straight to my digital campfire, YouTube. Fortunately, around 500 people had uploaded instructional videos on how to put the digital coffee cup back together. Instantly I was gifted with this week’s eLearning newsletter topic. 

YouTube is an incredible source of information where people constantly share their ideas, knowledge or ‘hacks’ on certain topics. Two amazing YouTube channels that I would like everyone to discover are Life Noggin and Crash Course Kids. Here you can view any short video on a certain topic that you might be wondering about. You can understand what would happen if the earth was twice as big or even discover the difference between climate and weather with easy to understand examples. Life Noggin answers the questions for which you rarely have the answer. Crash Course Kids is a YouTube Channel put together by a young female scientist and strives to explain life mysteries to primary students at a level accessible to all. A true gift to all lifelong learners everywhere. 

The use of this digital campfire can be easily forgotten and we need to remember that this source of information is what our students are accessing to gain instant knowledge. We must consider what they do with the information and how they use this information effectively in their learning journey. This is why the use of technology running seamlessly next to the core educational program is so beneficial to success in 21^st century classrooms, a system that Wyvern is getting right on a daily basis.

If you have any questions about the information provided above, please do not hesitate to contact me. I’d love to hear how Life Noggin and Crash Course Kids answers the big and small questions for your family of learners once you discover it!

Tony Cross
eLearning – Wyvern House and Lindfield Preparatory School