iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

We’re fast approaching the weird limbo zone between Christmas and New Year’s Day, when nobody knows what day it is, we’re all wearing sweatpants, and meals are replaced by daylong grazing.

Our brains turn to mush as well. The first day back after break is arguably the toughest work day of the entire calendar year.

Let’s make a pinky promise, then, to engage our minds—if ever so slightly—over break. Here’s a handful of easy-to-digest YouTube channels that do a great job of mixing education and entertainment.

Kids Invent Stuff is the YouTube channel where kids' ideas are made into real working inventions! We release a new video every Saturday, with a ne

A while back I shared a post with a list of 20 great YouTube channels for Social Studies that I curated for a teacher inservice I was leading. Recently I had the chance to do the same thing again for a group of elementary math teachers.

Once again I searched for great YouTube channels that these teachers could use with their students to teach new content, provide extra review, or explain math topics in a different and engaging way. Some of these channels and playlists are created by talented teachers sharing their classroom creations with the world, while others are made by companies, TV shows, and more.

Below are 18 of the channels I found that are worth checking out for your classroom if you teach elementary level math. For my training I was shooting for grades 3 through 5, but many of these cover lower elementary grades or extend up into middle school.

If you can get past the distraction of cute animal videos, video game highlights, and other nonsense, you can find excellent educational videos on YouTube. But even then it's not enough to just share the video with your students either in your classroom or online. When sharing videos with students in an online format, add some questions for them to answer or ideas for them to consider as they watch. Here are five tools that are good for doing that.

Last week I shared some tools for displaying YouTube videos in your classroom without showing all of the distracting comments and sidebar materials found on YouTube. Those tools are all predicated on already knowing which videos you want to show in your classroom. If you need some help finding videos that are timely and relevant, try using this search refinement tool. And if you want to find videos to view in VR headsets, try using this search refinement option.

Many iPhone and iPad users like to play YouTube videos in the background, often for listening to music or listening to a podcast or talk show. For example, maybe you found a great song on YouTube that you want to enjoy while playing a game, or while practicing a foreign language, or maybe you simply want to listen to the YouTube video in the background while you’re doing anything else. Playing YouTube videos in the background of an iPhone or iPad is desirable for many reasons, but it’s no longer as simple as just pressing play and then returning to the Home Screen of iOS.

With more than 7 billion videos on YouTube, it can be challenging to curate what's best for your classroom. But amid all of the frivolous, silly, or even obnoxious content, there are gems to be found. On top of this, some truly unique genres and types of videos have sprung from the platform. One of these -- the video essay -- can be a great tool for media-literacy education. Here's why: Video essays model for students how YouTube can be a platform for critical communication.

For those of you teaching math, here is a collection of some of the best YouTube channels we reviewed this year. You can draw on these resources to access and find educational video content to help you in the teaching of math for different grade levels. Some of these channels are set up and run by math teachers and others by popular math websites. You may want to go through the collection and see what works for you. Links to the channels are under the visual.

Math learning and teaching can be so much fun especially when done through the right strategies. One of these strategies is through engaging video content.  To this end, we have compiled 20 of the best and most popular YouTube channels for math teachers. These channels provide a wide variety of  videos, tutorials and animated courses covering different mathematical concepts from algebra to geometry.

Everybody needs a hobby, so it's said. But even if you're busy enough as it is (and what teacher and student isn't), you can still benefit from exploring this list of creative hobbies for building critical thinking skills. Some of them you may already be doing. If not, consider starting out with one that interests you. Learn about it as much as possible before you dive in—creative hobbies can grow to be more than just a hobby if they resonate with you.

There are so many ways to learn with YouTube channels for teachers and students!


When you want to learn something new these days, most of us head over to YouTube.

You can learn just about anything on YouTube: how to fix your dryer, how to create a blog, or how to use Google Docs.

For students, YouTube is often their first stop when learning a new skill.

Did you know you can also get notifications when new videos have been added by your favorite channels?

Or that you can use YouTube as a curation tool to create playlists for your students?

Today, I am going to share with you some of my favorite YouTube Channels, and some that were shared in the Shake Up Learning community.

With iOS 12, there is a new Shortcuts app from Apple. This app may seem a little daunting and confusing at first, but once you play around with it, it can prove to become  very useful. I have discovered a very valuable tool that all teachers (or anybody) can use to download and save videos…

"Learning shouldn't stop after school ends, and the women of YouTube's STEM channels prove that.

These aren't the boring science lessons that you had to sit through in stuffy high school classrooms or massive college lecture halls. There are no tests, no grades, and no assignments. You will, however, need a sense of curiosity and a love for all things science. 

If you're driven by a desire to learn new things, check out these six women who are making STEM more accessible. "

One of the questions that I'm frequently asked at the beginning of the school year goes something like this, "do you know how I can download videos from YouTube?" I do know how to do that, but I won't teach you how to do that because it is a violation of YouTube's terms of service. But I will show you how you can display YouTube videos in your classroom without showing the sidebar related video suggestions and comments. Here are five tools that you can use to display YouTube videos without showing the related video suggestions and comments.

A while back I shared a post with a list of 20 great YouTube channels for Social Studies that I curated for a teacher inservice I was leading. Recently I had the chance to do the same thing again for a group of elementary math teachers.

Once again I searched for great YouTube channels that these teachers could use with their students to teach new content, provide extra review, or explain math topics in a different and engaging way. Some of these channels and playlists are created by talented teachers sharing their classroom creations with the world, while others are made by companies, TV shows, and more.

Below are 18 of the channels I found that are worth checking out for your classroom if you teach elementary level math. For my training I was shooting for grades 3 through 5, but many of these cover lower elementary grades or extend up into middle school.

Here are some good educational YouTube channels curated specifically for social studies teachers. They cover a wide variety of social studies topics  which you can appropriate and integrate in your own class. We have only included what we think are some of the most popular channels out there, if you have other suggestions to add to the list, please share with us in our social media pages.

Educational YouTube channels are built to offer modern educators tons of resources and ideas for spicing up their teaching. So many brilliant minds have given their time and energy to build some superb channels, and now we’re bringing you 8 of our favourites. Which educational YouTube channels do you think our community should know about? Share them below.