Critical thinking is a skill that can be learned and applied to almost any situation. This video tells the story of a team who uses critical thinking in a robot building competition. It teaches:
The difference between an active and passive thinker
Why critical thinking matters and how to apply it
Why success depends on high quality information
How to use critical thinking to identify the best information
We now have 115 explainer videos in our library. Each video is designed to explain a subject clearly in a few minutes. Common Craft videos can help save time in your classroom, course, training session or presentation. Here are the most recent additions:
All Common Craft videos can now be watched in full, with a watermark. To use the videos in your teaching, consider membership or purchasing video packs.
This video, 113th title, is now available for embedding, downloading, or displaying via the Common Craft video library. It's a part of our series on study skills and meant to help educators teach the concept of team work.
Using an example of a robot building competition, this video follows the story of two teams with different approaches to teamwork. Using their example, we can see what works, or not, for winning the competition. It teaches:
What all successful teams have in common
Why clear communication is more important than skills or experience
How to develop a sense of team strengths and weaknesses
The Breakthrough Junior Challenge, which is a science explainer video competition for people 13-17, recently declared a winner for 2020.
The Breakthrough Junior Challenge is a global science video competition, aiming to develop and demonstrate young people’s knowledge of science and scientific principles; generate excitement in these fields; support STEM career choices; and engage the imagination and interest of the public in key concepts of fundamental science.
Students age 13 to 18 from countries across the globe are invited to create and submit original videos (3:00 minutes maximum) that bring to life a concept or theory in the life sciences, physics or mathematics. The submissions are judged on the student’s ability to communicate complex scientific ideas in engaging, illuminating, and imaginative ways.
The Challenge was founded in 2015 by Yuri and Julia Milner.
Needless to say, we're big fans of the competition. One of the biggest problems we face is making science more understandable for the general public. By asking young people to create these videos, the Breakthrough Junior Challenge is not only educating the public, but teaching essential media creation skills. Explainer videos, when focused on education, can play a transformational role in helping people become engaged in science and feel confident about their knowledge.
The winner of the challenge was Maryam Tsegaye of Canada, who explained Quantum Tunneling.
This video, 115th title, is now available for embedding, downloading, or displaying in the Common Craft video library. It's part of our Internet Safety Series and meant to help build aware awareness of the issue of harassment.
This video follows the story of a person being harassed online. The trouble starts with mild language in a discussion forum and then escalates to more serious behavior over time. It teaches:
How to recognize online harassment
Common tactics of harassers
What to do if you’re being harassed
Why it’s important to save messages from harassers
Documents play the same role they always have, but how we create and share them has evolved significantly. This video explains online documents and how they differ from local documents that are saved on a computer. If you know students or anyone who needs a clearer understanding of online documents, this video will help.
This video, our 110th title, is now available in the Common Craft video library. You can watch it in full for a limited time.
What it Teaches:
For many years, documents lived on our computers. When online documents came along, they started to live on the internet and that changed how we created and shared them. This video explains how online documents differ from local documents saved on a computer. It teaches:
What makes a document local versus online
Why local documents represent a risk and make collaboration difficult
How to create and share an online document
Why collaboration is easier with an online document
Because data is becoming a pervasive part of everyday life, spreadsheets are a key skill for the 21st century. Unfortunately, spreadsheets can feel a bit overwhelming and can be difficult to understand for the novice. This video explains the basics and why spreadsheets are useful in organizing and calculating data.
This video uses an example of a snack bar to show how a spreadsheet can help the snack bar owner organize his sales numbers and plan for the future. It teaches:
Why spreadsheets are organized into rows, columns, cells, and locations
How to tell the difference between data, cell, and location
How spreadsheets are used to organize and calculate data
How spreadsheets automatically recalculate data when numbers changes
How spreadsheets can be used in large organizations with large data sets
We now have 109 explainer videos in our library. Each video is designed to explain a subject so you don't have to. Common Craft videos can help save time in your classroom, course, training session or presentation. Here are the most recent additions: