Home Learning Youtube Opportunities Curated By A 12 Year Old Ponte Vedra Boy

By Gwinn Volen

In order to engage my 12-year old son, draw him away from the hours he spends on Minecraft and other video games, and ease some of my bad parenting guilt (the time he spends on his phone shall not be mentioned), I asked that he follow some semblance of a schedule this week during week two of COVID-19 isolation.

Since we are technically still on break in St Johns County, he implored me not to give him “boring” school work like Kahn Academy (which I think is great by the way).  So, I asked him to send me what he thought were educational but entertaining resources. He went straight to Youtube. I have to say, some of these channels are pretty engaging.

I’m sharing in case others are looking for ways to intersperse their kid’s long COVID-19 days with some educational content.

Most of these have a science bend to them, and all have either great energy and humor or animation that is engaging. Apologies if there is some PG-13+ content on here. I only watched a few of the videos. And, they passed my level of tolerance.

Mark Rober

Mark Rober is a 40-year-old Youtuber who does funny and informative science-related videos. He’s doing an online science class right now.  It’s good.

Kurzegesagt

Minimalist animated educational content. Clean and informative with a decent amount of depth in the topics.  Some really pretty graphics.

Life Noggin

Another animated education channel. Short 3 minute or less videos answering questions like “Why do we snore when we sleep?”

TEDed

Another animated channel. This covers a variety of topics, not just science.

Infographics Show

More animation. These are meant to be funny and entertaining and also cover a wide range of subjects.

Doctor Mike

There is some silly on here, but this guy is cute.  Some of the meme reviews are a bit inappropriate, but all in all, there is some good information on medicine. As the one lone Grey’s Anatomy watcher still out there, I enjoyed particularly enjoyed his show analysis.

Asapscience

Now I know where some of my son’s questions like, have you ever pulled an all-nighter? Random information in the science arena. Cute.