Following our article on educational YouTube channels for older learners (part 1), we’re continuing our list of places to find videos that would be suitable for high school or university-age students. Or the curious-minded adult!
Plus, don’t forget our two original posts listing even more educational YouTube resources:
- Educational YouTube resources for better learning
- More educational YouTube resources for expanded learning
YouTube engineering learning channels
We found a few that are great for the budding engineer or science major and decided to group them together separately here:
Practical Engineering – engineering that affects your life is brought together in a video series on this channel.
Learn Engineering – for the young adult that loves machinery. You know who they are.
Real Engineering – this channel does a great job at explaining in a simple way the ‘why’ of how things are made. For instance, why are plane windows round? But it doesn’t stop there. The creator of this channel also delves into things like the materials and inventions that changed the world. They are illustrated with voiceovers.
The Future Is Now – partially a news channel, except it covers lots of recent inventions and futuristic devices. Great for inspiration, or for the teen who likes the idea of creating gadgets.
YouTube psychology education channels
BrainCraft – explores the neuroscience topics of all brains – even those of animals. And it explains the curiosities of how our brain may trick us in many ways.
Bite Size Psych – also a hard one to know where to place in our categorization of educational YouTube channels. This one covers an array of topics that help to open up the mind for intrepid thought, though it is a smaller channel with slower development thus far.
Crash Course Psychology – this is not a new channel that we’ve talked about. However, since writing our original article on educational YouTube videos, the creators at CrashCourse have come up with a series devoted to psychology. It’s dedicated playlist is linked to here. Production quality is done extremely well, although the presenters do talk quite fast, so you may need to play them more than once to keep up.
Educational, current affairs YouTube channels
Being a well-rounded person with an awareness of a variety of topics is important. A lot of the time learning references other subjects. Plus, knowing current affairs can be argued to make our young adults more knowledgeable as contributing citizens in our world community. For that reason, we’re listing some ‘newsy’ current affairs channels that do a great job of breaking down complicated news topics for those who may not have much background on what the 6 o’clock newscaster is talking about. Or, they simply do a better job reporting to the young masses.
Here they are:
Vox – this current affairs channel challenges what we think to be ‘normal,’ They sometimes do investigative reporting into issues like possible scams (such as the word ‘natural’ being used on food labels, or the hidden cost of having a baby in America). Other times they explore a unique side of an issue, like how political polarization can affect dating. They also do relevant-to-today history pieces. And, if someone is not very aware of the American political process, this would be a great channel to catch up on it. As they describe themselves, Vox “helps you cut through the noise and understand what’s driving events in the headlines and in our lives.”
AJ+ – similar to the style of Vox, this channel also aims to “challenge the status quo” with their news reporting. In some ways you could say this channel gives a voice to the unheard aspects of news. The channel does a lot of international reporting as well. But you’ll see when you watch the pieces that they do things in a ‘cool’ way, which is great for the younger generation to absorb.
Attn: – Not a very active channel, however it’s a source for explaining news stories that may be a bit more in-depth from a certain angle.
NowThis – These are short, shareable videos with typographic captions explaining the news clip. Learning all your news from this channel however, is not advisable, as short clips and headlines rarely give anyone an in-depth view of an important news topic. But for the quick bites, this channel has some eye-grabbing headlines.
The Seeker series – produced by the same people behind DNews (by Discovery), the Seeker series span into three channels with great quality educational content:
Seeker Network – From glass blowing to holy doors, this channel explores the world’s corners and niches with photography and high quality video footage and narration.
Seeker Stories – This channel delves into stories that show us how fascinating of a world we live in. Focused on human interest stories, it delves into topics of inspiration, and the ‘I didn’t expect that’ type of reporting.
Seeker Daily – If you have questions after reading trending news of the day, this channel answers those questions. Or, it will answer the questions you didn’t know you had.
The Economist – Yes, this is YouTube channel of the magazine our older generation already knows about. While not all topics are on current affairs, the channel does provide video-format explanations on political news, cultural news, tech news and so on. For visual or auditory learners, this is a great option to get caught up on feature stories such as the ones on “The Economist explains” playlist.
New York Magazine – this one is not entirely educational, nor mostly on current affairs in the traditional sense. However, they do have a great animated playlist called “The Science of Us”, which delves into answers on questions like how to get better sleep, why kids are vulnerable to advertising, and so on. Some of these topics may be great research references when writing papers or essays.
Don’t you just love these open educational resources (OERs)?
The search doesn’t end there! YouTube is becoming more and more of a resource for Open Educational Content. Read our article on the subject here. And, let us know how you use these resources for educational purposes! We’d love to hear your stories!
