Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

NBC Learn launches ‘Writers Speak to Kids’ video series

NBC Learn, the education arm of NBC News, has launched an original video series called “Writers Speak to Kids,” featuring interviews with popular and award-winning children’s book authors. Answering questions from NBC News correspondent Jenna Bush Hager, the authors share their writing process and experiences, helping students learn more about the craft and techniques of creative writing.

The 17-part video series kicked off in September with interviews of five authors: Peter Brown, Doreen Cronin, Jeff Kinney, Daniel Kirk, and Mo Willems. Featuring the writers of New York Times bestselling and Newbery Award-winning titles, the “Writers Speak to Kids,” series will feature a wide variety of additional authors throughout the fall, including Nick Bruel, Michael Buckley, Douglas Florian, Amy Ignatow, Gordon Korman, Ridley Pearson, Judy Schachner, Laura Vaccaro Seeger, Philip C. Stead, Rebecca Stead, Clare Vanderpool, and Jacqueline Woodson.

“Writers Speak to Kids” is a free resource that can be found at www.nbclearn.com/writersspeak. NBC Learn also makes a much larger collection of “Writers Speak” interviews available to its subscribers at http://archives.nbclearn.com.…Read More

NBC launches new educational video series about the Summer Olympics

With the 2012 Summer Olympic games just days away, NBC Learn—the educational arm of NBC News—has launched a new video series called “Science of the Summer Olympics: Engineering in Sports.” This 10-part series explores the engineering and technology behind individual summer Olympic events.

The videos include a look at how engineers are designing faster pools and building safer helmets; the analysis of every motion involved in a weightlifter’s lift and a sprinter’s sprint; and analysis of how the principles of engineering are helping disabled athletes excel in such diverse sports as wheelchair rugby, basketball, and racing.

In many of the videos, the engineering is explained by capturing the athletes’ movements with a state-of-the-art, high-speed Phantom camera, which has the ability to capture movement at rates of up to 10,000 frames per second. These dynamic visuals allow for frame-by-frame illustrations of specific principles such as mobility and speed. Athletes who participated in the videos include swimmer Missy Franklin, boxer Queen Underwood, weightlifter Sarah Robles, runners Jenny Simpson and Usain Bolt, and decathlete Bryan Clay.…Read More