Merriam-Webster on YouTube

This is a real find for advanced English students which I discovered through Random Idea English.

Merriam-Webster has a YouTube channel with very short (two minutes or less) videos on various aspects of English.

Check out Merriam-Webster's YouTube channel or find the list of videos at Merriam-Webster itself.

There you will find videos on controversial topics (who vs whom; fewer vs less), on general problems (a vs an; adverbs without -ly), and on interesting topics (the origin of posh).

Watch this short video that explains the term hat-trick, so commonly used in football and sports in general.

Teacher of teachers

What should teachers be like? Finne Cherian, a teacher in Canada, explains. Take a listen as he talks about the essential things a teacher should do in the classroom. Especially a teacher of teachers.

You may also wish to watch Finney Cherian in action while delivering his award-winning lecture Unbinding Baby Elephants.

Explore your memory

Stretch your memory with fun challenges like Explore your Memory. Your answers will help University of Edinburgh experimental psychologists with their research.

Most people will not be able to get everything right. People with normal memories can have low scores.

Duration: about 20 minutes
Professor Robert Logie of the University of Edinburgh helped design this test. Please note, you will need Flash 7.

Explore your Memory gives you feedback which is for demonstration purposes only and cannot diagnose memory disorders.

Business Innovation Factory

The Business Information Factory has an annual conference where they invite creative thinkers and, like TED Talks, they put the videos online for viewing. They look pretty interesting.

For example, here’s one from Daniel Pink, What Motivates Us?

Dan Pink is author of several bestselling books about the changing world of work. He is also a crazy-cool, insightful provocateur whose latest book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, uses 40 years of behavioral science to overturn the conventional wisdom about human motivation and offer a more effective path to high performance. Dan is also the author of A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future and Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself.

Dan joined the BIF community on March 29, 2010 for a unique opportunity to talk about the his newest book and his many adventures pushing against anecdotal and outdated wisdom about why we humans do what we do.

Sixty-second lectures

Every spring and fall, SAS (University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences) faculty take a minute out on Locust Walk to share their perspectives on topics ranging from human history and the knowable universe, to fractions and fly-fishing. They are the sixty-second lectures.

You can watch and listen to dozens of sixty-second lectureds in the archive, many of which have a transcript at your disposal.