We've come a long way since the days when we had to book the TV trolley days in advance to show even the shortest clip of a TV show in class and - like most of us - I have by now built up a few favoured videos that I return to over and over again when covering specific topics. Some are only a few minutes long and very to-the-point, whereas others are full length and can take too much time to show, in full, in class but are worth dipping into. And, of course, now that so many schools have well established Teams pages or email contacts for their students, its easy to share a link so that the more interested students can watch a longer video at home that we might have just dipped into in class.
For years, for example, I always finish up our study of optics by watching bits of David Hockney's documentary in which he suggests that the renaissance artists were all projecting real images onto a screen and painting over those, making the incredible realism of their work a little easier to understand: BBC David Hockneys Secret Knowledge 1of2 DivX MP3 MVGForum - YouTube
And this famous video is great at showing students the connection between the physics we learn in class and the music they might listen to themselves: CYMATICS: Science Vs. Music - Nigel Stanford - YouTube
Or this one, which a student shared with me a few years ago and which I find very useful when talking about colour mixing and how the eye works: How Color Blindness Works - YouTube
The problem is, of course, that it can be hard to keep track of all these great videos: we forget where we found them or where we have them stored, links change, updates are overlooked etc. And the sheer overwhelming variety of available video resources has become a problem in itself. Search any topic in YouTube and you will hundred or thousands of links, but without any easy way of separating the wheat from the chaff.
So before mid-term I started up this Padlet, where I'm hoping we can build up a shared resource of videos that are relevant (or at least sort of relevant) to Leaving Cert Physics.
I've included whole sections for some of my own favourite TV shows from the past, and also sub sections related to key syllabus areas. It's very much a work in progress (and will always be) but it's beginning to take shape.
Please have a look and upload a link to any of your own favoured video resources. The more of us who contribute, the richer the resource will be.
And particular thanks to Mariea Murphy, who has already shared some really interesting links that I hadn't come across before.
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