NBC Learn
NBC (National Broadcasting Corporation) is a commercial broadcaster in the US which operates an educational online site known as NBC Learn. Here’s more from their About page,
For more than 80 years, NBC News has been documenting the people, places, and events that shape our world. NBC Learn, the educational arm of NBC News, is dedicated to making these historic stories, images and primary source documents available on-demand to teachers, students, and parents.
NBC Learn has already digitized more than 12,000 stories from the NBC News archives — one of the largest news archives in the world, dating back to the 1920s. In addition, collections are updated with current events every day, Monday through Friday, with stories from such celebrated programs as NBC Nightly News, the TODAY show, Meet the Press, Dateline NBC, as well as the networks of MSNBC, CNBC, and Telemundo.
NBC Learn is staffed by veteran NBC News producers, who have created scores of original stories and Town Hall events around the country, in partnership with the National Science Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, and others. These include such award-winning collections as Chemistry Now, Changing Planet, Science of NFL Football, Science of the Winter Olympic Games, and Finishing the Dream.
Our original videos and archival news stories are correlated to state standards and the Common Core, and aligned to more than 25 K-12 and 30 Higher Ed collections. Videos are generally short — less than six minutes in length — enabling instructors to engage and enlighten their students without wasting precious class time. Yet these brief videos are full stories, with a beginning, middle and end, reported by some of the most famous journalists in broadcast history, including John Chancellor, Tom Brokaw, Tim Russert, Brian Williams [?] [emphasis mine], and many others.
To deliver these stories in a safe, collaborative online learning environment, NBC Learn has developed the most advanced media player in existence [emphasis mine]. Called a Cue Card™, the player supports videos, photographs, newspaper articles, primary source documents, and other media. It is “flippable,” providing bibliographic information, clickable keywords and a citation generator on the back, a full transcript along the side, and additional tabs along the bottom that let users annotate each resource with their own research notes, and to save it to personal play lists. The Cue Card offers a closed captioning option and can easily be shared on the Internet or by email.
The collections of NBC Learn are available through Internet streaming or for via download. They are also accessible as a stand-alone resource or as a Blackboard building block, which allows users to embed videos directly into Blackboard learning management systems.
Our Help Desk is staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and is unmatched in quality of customer service. Subscribers are offered free and unlimited training via Webinar. On-location training is also available.
For a school, a district, or a state, NBC Learn has the tools, technology and innovative content to meet all your 21st century educational needs.
In light of Mr. Williams’ tribulations (see Bryan Burrough’s April 30, 2015 article for Vanity Fair highlighting the Williams scandal and other scandals plaguing NBC News), it seems odd to see his name listed in this paean to NBC’s news reporting prowess. As well, the claim to have “the most advanced media player in existence” seems an act of hubris. Where technology is concerned, the ‘most advanced’ of anything becomes a laughable claim surprisingly quickly.
Moving on, I gather NBC Learn has embarked on a new project with the US National Science Foundation (NSF), ‘Nanotechnology: Super Small Science‘ to which they have devoted a webpage where they now (Jan. 21, 2016) posted six videos,
Nanotechnology at the Surface
Nanoelectronics
Nanoarchitecture
Nano-Enabled Sensors and Nanoparticles
A Powerful Solution
Harnessing the Nanoscale
I watched ‘Nanotechnology at the Surface’ which is about coatings and it is pretty good. I do have a couple of provisos. Some of the terminology seemed a bit odd; they used the term “nature inspired” where the term used more commonly by scientists and engineers is “bioinspired” or “bioinspiration.” As well, they focused on one researcher’s work and strategies in what is a very competitive area of research. Hopefully, the curriculum expands on the ideas and research cited in the videos. Finally, for someone who’s very new to nanotechnology, it might be a good idea to first watch the video embedded in the following section.
Community Idea Stations and an introductory nano video
Community Idea Stations are found in the US state of Virginia according to the organization’s About page,
We are the largest locally owned and operated media company in the region, each week reaching more than 300,000 people throughout central Virginia of every age, demographic and economic circumstance. WCVE PBS, WCVW PBS, lifestyle channel WCVE Create and international program channel MHz Worldview serve the Richmond community with television programming.
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IdeaStations.org provides all of central Virginia with additional content for lifelong learners of all ages.
A recent nano video initiative is being profiled by Dr. Quinn Spadola on the organization’s Science Matters: What Can Nanotechnology Do For You? webpage (Note: Links have been removed),
Western Carolina University Professor Mary Anna LaFratta recently challenged her motion graphics students to create short animations about something so small you can’t see it – even with a conventional microscope. They needed to illustrate nanotechnology: science, engineering, and technology at the nanoscale—from one to one hundred nanometers. Nano means “billionth” and a nanometer is a billionth of a meter. How small is a billionth of a meter? A baseball bat is about a meter; a nanometer is about the length your fingernail grew while you were reading the last four words of this sentence.
This project spans science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM). The animation scripts came from nanotechnology experts who helped the animation students to understand what they were depicting. Professors and students from the School of Art and Design and the School of Music collaborated to compose music, record narration, and build animations. STEAM isn’t just a personal passion for LaFratta who has worked on “STEAM projects before STEAM was STEAM,” but because “visualizing STEM concepts is an area in which students could direct their graphic design careers.”
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Here’s the first animation in this three-part series, What Can Nanotechnology Do For You? by Justin Warren,
Two more videos will be forthcoming in the series, one focusing on nano and health and the other on nano and energy.