For the past two years, digital video has quickly taken hold of science educators' attention as a valuable tool that can be incorporated into the classroom. While it may be true that a picture is worth a thousand words, a short video or animation may be worth a thousand pictures. It makes sense then that educators are looking for access to libraries of easily searchable, FREE, and quality video. Enter YouTube and Google Video.

Google Video is the world's first open online video marketplace, where you can search for, watch and even buy an ever-growing collection of video. Just type in your search term (try chemistry demonstration or science experiment). The content works best by viewing through high-speed Internet, which most school districts have installed or are currently installing. But if you don't have high speed at your school, you can download much of this content at your local library or other location that does have high speed connection and view it using the downloadable Google video player.


While YouTube is currently owned by Google, I've found that many videos are easier found by searching directly on YouTube's website. Here is a great video I found for physical changes and the principles of pressure (and the potential danger of pressure!). My students were engaged by the fact that a small 2 L plastic bottle can create such a large bang. The concepts of pressure and phase changes are things they will likely remember, since this video has the elements of relating to students' experience and interests (remember what is was like to be young and pull stupid stunts?).

The most powerful feature I see of these streaming video websites are not the download features, but the sharing and collaboration features. Students can instantly share video of science experiments or video taken with a cellphone at home. Through upload features on both sites, students can upload video for free, allowing others throughout the world to view what they learned.