NBC Learn
NBC Learn, the educational arm of NBC News, is dedicated to making historic stories, images and primary source documents available on-demand to faculty and students. NBC Learn has 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. Some of the videos even come with suggested activities and thought-provoking questions. The videos are short, less than 6 minutes, and are a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end. Closed captioning is available in English and Spanish and transcripts are available.
NBC Learn works seamlessly with Google Classroom, allowing you to share a group of videos and post an assignment, question, or make an announcement with just a couple of clicks. NBC Learn resources can also be embedded in Canvas.
How can I use NBC Learn with my students?
- Supplement a topic in social studies with real footage
- Provide students with historical evidence when studying literature
- Relate content areas to real-life (ex: Pythagorean Theorem in the NFL, interviews with authors, Science of Golf, etc.)
- Allow students to use news footage as a research resource
- Introduce new material (relevance)
- Perfect to summarize at the end of class
- Excellent starter to classroom discussion and debates.
- As a bell-ringer activity
- For current events activities
- Watch prior to a related writing prompt.
- RELEVANCE: “A picture can only reveal so much. But for my students to see people weep or journalists terrified, it shows them the world is more alive than you think it is. By seeing action they are able to retain the information longer. Kids will come back to me and say they were able to talk to their mom while she watching the news because we had discussed a certain topic. It engages kids to have discussions with their parents because they aren’t intimidated by a subject.”
- OWNERSHIP: “I gave the students a category on a worksheet, essentially a blank canvas, and had each student go off and get lost in the topic on NBC Learn. After 30-45 minutes they explained what they’d found on the topic and how it related to what we had discussed. This ‘flips the script’ and makes them the presenters on the topic instead of me. Instead of me saying, ‘OK, we’re done. Now why does this matter?’ they discovered the real life significance for themselves."
Is it free?
Yes and no. NBCLearn provides many free video resources, but there is a subscription fee of $4 per student if you want the standards correlations, the ability to save playlists, etc. NBC Learn offers a free 30 day trial if you are interested in the paid version.
Jennifer Butler
Instructional Partner
Florence High School
Email: jcbutler@florencek12.org
Twitter: @jcbutler22