Convoluted context alert! I found out about this site thanks to a comment posted by someone named Harley on this article about Virtual Nerd, which appeared on the website physorg.com. Harley had this to say:
Excellent site – really like the “drill-down” to handle questions within a question, while not losing the “thread” of the overall lesson. Any teachers familiar with this site? http://www.labtvonline.org – it’s a great source of lessons on science and math, mainly for middle school kids, all done in a fun video format.
-Harley, for LabTV
Well, being the curious cat I am, I had to find out what LabTV was, so I checked it out, and let me tell you, it’s cool.
Now, despite the URL Harley plugged in his comment, the “real” site is at http://www.ndep.us/LabTV. NDEP is the National Defense Education Program. I have to admit I had never heard of the NDEP before. According to the About Us page:
The National Defense Education Program is building a foundation for the future workforce needs of the Department of Defense by supporting science and math programs at three educational levels: pre-college, college and university, and post-doctoral.
I didn’t have time to look through the entire site, but the LabTV page has dozens of short videos, many (but not all) featuring members of our armed forces talking about cool applications of math, science and technology. Check out this video about the use of fuel cells in UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles):
Double-click the rectangle to play. Click it again to pause.
Thanks to Harley both for the positive comment he posted about Virtual Nerd and for letting us know about LabTV. I only wish they would support embedding of their videos in addition to downloading.
Subscribe to the Virtual Nerd blog via RSS or via e-mail.