Website: BBC

The BBC YouTube channels contain endless informational and educational video programming.

BBC supports dozens of YouTube channels. Best known is the BBC News channel, however there are many other channels useful for educational activities.

BBC Ideas is a channel contains short videos to “feed your curiosity.” CBBC is popular with youth. Check out their videos dealing with the issue of bullying. Students will find their “Horrible Histories” hilarious. CBeebie is a channel designed for young children. Finally Children in Need is focused on changing the lives of disadvantaged youth.

Librarians will want to mine the many BBC channels for short videos that can be woven into the curriculum. Use the news channel to provide a more global perspective on social issues.

To visit the channels, go to https://www.youtube.com/user/BBC/channels.

Website Review: iWONDER

iWONDER from BBC is an exciting “question and answer” website librarians can use to promote inquiry-based learning.

The entry page of the BBC project shows questions like “What was the Earth’s first predator?” and “How does a breeze turn into a terrifying tornado?”. Each question links to an interesting article featuring text, images, and sometimes animation and video. The article concludes with links to related stories.

Although not designed specifically for students, these short, illustrated articles would be useful for informational text activities related to the Common Core Curriculum. Articles can be found across content areas including arts, food, science, consumer, earth, history, religion and ethics, and webwise. Readers can also link directly to the major BBC content sections.

Ask students to select a question from the main page and write about what they already know about the topic. Then, involve them in reading the article and discussing what what they learned. Finally, ask youth to develop new questions based on their reading. Use other Internet resources to address these new questions.

To explore the latest iWONDER topics, LIKE the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/bbciwonder.

To visit the website, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iwonder.