Some schools see YouTube and other similar sites as an enemy, but if you have a way to project the monitor display of a computer in your classroom, YouTube can be a great source of educational material! The small icon in the lower right corner of each YouTube video's page will let you expand it so that it covers the whole screen.
For example, lots of educational songs with music videos (such as those by School House Rock or They Might Be Giants) can be found on YouTube. Some are official and copyrighted, but YouTube is still a good place to discover these resources so that you can buy them legally. Others are put together by fans, or have been released by the artists, and are fair game! All videos need to be previewed, of course, but there is just so much out there.
This is one example of a video which could be used to introduce or even help teach a unit on the circulatory system or blood. To get to the video's own webpage, click on the video.
There are a lot of pointless videos on YouTube, but there are also a lot of things that can be very helpful to teachers. I'll be posting useful videos as I find them, and I encourage you to use them in your classroom as a more entertaining way to teach or introduce a topic!
