Free videos and lessons for high school math and science focus on enhancing students’ engagement
BLOSSOMS video lessons are enriching students’ learning experiences in high school classrooms from Brooklyn to Beirut to Bangalore. The Video Library contains roughly 100 math and science lessons, all freely available to teachers as streaming video and internet downloads and as DVDs and videotapes.
The lessons intersperse video instruction with planned exercises that engage students in problem solving and critical thinking, helping students build the kind of gut knowledge that comes from hands-on experience.
While MIT faculty members and partnering educators in Jordan and Pakistan created the first BLOSSOMS lessons, today educators from around the world create and submit BLOSSOMS modules, a large number available in Arabic.
During a visit to a rural school in China, BLOSSOMS founders Richard Larson and Elizabeth Murray watched as a videotaped lecture enlivened an otherwise cold, bleak classroom. The teacher paused the lecture from time to time to engage with the class. The interruptions worked, but awkwardly, prompting Larson and Murray to wonder what would happen if they created video lessons that were designed to be interactive. They envisioned video lessons dovetailed with engaging activities for teachers to do with their students.
So inspired, Murray and Larson set out to create BLOSSOMS (Blended Learning Open Source Science or Math Studies), a series of freely available interactive lessons presented in a widely accessible video format. BLOSSOMS video modules supplement the standard curriculum with virtual lessons led by educators from around the world and activities led by local classroom teachers.
The BLOSSOMS project is sponsored at MIT by LINC (Learning International Networks Consortium), a global consortium of educators interested in using distance and e-learning technologies to increase access to quality education worldwide. BLOSSOMS is an “Open Educational Resource,” a web-based collection of materials offered freely and openly for re-use in teaching, learning and research. OERs such as BLOSSOMS help make education a right rather than a privilege by providing schools around the world with access to quality educational tools.
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