Community reviews for Ken Burns in the Classroom

In my opinion, what I like most - as a teacher - is how specific these videos are, providing 500 clips from the founding of our nation up until modern day. In addition, I also enjoy how short the videos are, providing extremely specific and topical material in under 5 minutes in some cases.

Ken Burns has always been known for engaging documentaries and this website organizes those longer films into short, more digestible sections. Overall, a very useful resource for those who needs a bit of visual aid beyond the text readings to make things more understandable.

For my classroom this product is a more than just a reliable source of information. I use it to introduce new topics, practice vocabulary, start discussions, and of course show videos. Using videos in my classroom before this website was difficult for the simple fact that finding historically accurate videos that are highlighting one topic is next to impossible. With this site I know that the information is accurate and highlighting only the information that is needed for the lesson. The website also breaks the videos up into smaller digestible pieces. Time is always an issue and being able to show an accurate 1-9 minute video allows teachers to have more flexibility within a class period. I also appreciate that the videos have captions. This allows ELL students to learn not only about important topics but new words in the English language. Another plus about this site is the fact that not just teachers can access the site. We all know that students love watching videos on their phones, tablets, and laptops. Using this site to assign homework is one of my favorite ways of implementing technology outside the classroom, because it means that students can do their homework not just at the kitchen table with a textbook but anywhere. Finally, this site serves my students by giving them visual aids and reenactments to topics that they are learning about as well as analysis questions to better understand the reasoning behind the goal of the lesson.