I love learning new things, but especially since starting university and having to read over 200 pages weekly, I do not find much time for any personal reading. Still, I am way too curious and studious not to dig into any of my personal interests. This is why I love YouTube for the enormous offer of educational videos. Not only do I find that they often help me study when I want to recap something, or am not getting quite a grasp of it. But they also let me explore my personal interests in a more passive way.
CourseHero, InfoGraphicShow and CrashCourse
- Coursehero’s explains on their about page: “Course Hero is an online learning platform where you can access over 25 million course-specific study resources contributed by a community of students and educators. Students can find practice problems, study guides, videos, class notes, and step-by-step explanations for every subject they’re studying — from economics to literature, biology to history, accounting to psychology, and everything in between”. I have enjoyed their literature videos ever since starting university. They give a great overview of novels by analyzing their symbols, characters and themes. They have been an absolute lifesaver for my literature studies as I have to read a novel weekly, and by the time the exam comes… Well, I have forgotten most of it’s plot and symbols. This is why I always go over these videos right before my exams to recap the novel instead of having to read it all over again. It’s a great refresher, and helped to make study so much more enjoyable.
- InfographicShow describes their platform as “Facts are fun, but most are presented in boring and badly edited videos. The Infographics Show focuses on making animated motion infographic videos, made in a fun and entertaining way.” The Infographic Show posts new videos daily or sometimes even twice a day. The topics are from “The Worst Ways To Die” to answering “Intersting Questions”, “Space” and “Deathrow Stories”. Their videos are based on historic and scientific facts, presented in bite-size videos from usually around 10 mintues. My boyfriend always watches a video right before he goes to bed so of course, I got hooked too. Don’t take these videos too seriously, but they give a nice basis for expanding your basic knowledge and you can always choose to dive deeper if something catches your interest.
Bonus: LoFi and Binaural Beats
These videos are not any type of educational videos, but they really do help me get into study mode when I have to read or write a lot. I thought as a bonus, I would give you some of my favorite LoFi beats and Binaural Beats to study to. Check out one of my go-to LoFi videos. And also one of my go-to Binaural Beats videos.
Great post. They should offer these tools to first year students as well during introduction weeks. If it weren’t for CrashCourse I probably never would have made it through my statistics course. This post also made me think back on how during the presentations somehow mentioned how YouTube was becoming obsolete and I was too stunned to reply that simply because of the amount of tutorials and courses on YouTube it definitely is not.
Interesting! I was not familiar with the examples you discussed, but I am definitely goint to check them out. I totally agree with you that the internet offers great opportunities for learning. Some sources can be very informative, others are rather focussed on entertainment, and sometimes it is hard to see where the line is, so it is good to stay critical though.