Loading...With the creation of the Internet a couple decades ago, we were all launched into an age where information is plentiful and the distribution of said information is incredibly easy. If you’re a student studying for a test, or just curious about a topic, with a quick search you can learn all you need to know by reading a few articles or watching a few videos. Free resources such as Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, and many articles on reliable sources like The Guardian, WIRED and the New York Times make learning easier than it’s ever been. But still, in all those cases you’re still just reading what sometimes can be boring material. Started by John and Hank Green back in 2006, this week’s Channel Showcase, Crash Course, is a channel dedicated to teaching millions of kids and adults all over the world a wide variety of topics in a fun and engaging way.
Crash Course does exactly what its title suggests: creates “crash courses” in a bunch of topics. These courses usually consist of 30-40 videos released over a pretty long period of time, but in the end give a good, fairly in-depth overview of the topic it’s covering. So far Crash Course have run and finished 10 courses: World History, World History 2, Literature, Chemistry, Ecology, US History, Biology, Psychology, and Big History. These courses take up most of Crash Course’s impressive arsenal of 424 videos, and are super interesting, fun, and great for supplementary material for schools and private learning. As of right now, Crash Course are running, 4 courses: Astronomy, Economics, Anatomy And Physiology, U.S. Government And Politics, and a mini-series on Intellectual Property. These videos come out many times a week, although a particular course usually doesn’t post more than once a week.
The structure of the video is pretty consistent throughout the whole channel. First off, each video is narrated by one individual, (excluding Economics, which is run by two individuals) who can range from Hank and John themselves to Wheezy Waiter and even to Phil Plait of Bad Astronomer, a popular astronomy blog. Of course, these videos are meant to be entertaining just as much as they are informative, so the monologues often include humor and fun animations other than the main sequence of animations they call the Thought Bubble. The Thought Bubble is a little segment of their videos that uses animation, and very good, clean, and understandable animations, to tell the story of whatever is being discussed. The Thought Bubble is made by Thought Café, an animation company that works with Crash Course on every one of their videos. Although their animations are dispersed through the whole video, the Thought Bubble is a time for only the aesthetically pleasing and informative animations.
Altogether, Crash Course is a wonderful source of interesting and fun information that may not necessarily be taught in schools, or at least certainly not this well. All of their courses are great, and are filled with interesting and helpful information. My personal favorite of the past and present series that Crash Course have made is the World History series, hosted by John Green himself. The videos of a phenomenal way of teaching a subject often thought to be boring and drab, and John does a great job of keeping all the videos funny and light-hearted even when talking about what can be depressing subjects. I can’t tell you enough how useful these videos are when trying to learn a subject; they helped me significantly when I decided to learn some astronomy. Although Crash Course can’t replace school (yet…), it is certainly an amazing resource, and is no doubt teaching people of all ages about topic which they would never know they liked in a fun and interesting way.