Crash Course is Officially Heading to Classrooms!

Crash Course on YouTube is, in a word, awesome. It's a series of educational videos, well-researched and beautifully presented for free by brothers John and Hank Green (both of whom are former writers for mental_floss). Big news: Crash Course is coming to classrooms!

Crash Course is partnering with PBS Digital Studios to create new series about U.S. government, astronomy, physiology, and economics. The four new courses join a library of videos on history, literature (my favorite!), biology, ecology, chemistry, psychology, and more. The biggest part of this partnership, aside from funding new videos, is that the videos will be available on PBS LearningMedia, a free resource for K-12 teachers.

Now, in some ways, this is just acknowledging the obvious—students are already watching Crash Course in classrooms. I've seen this firsthand lately; in the two classrooms I've spoken in this year, one had a Crash Course show running when I walked in, and the other was full of students who had seen the videos in previous weeks. Putting the PBS stamp on already well-researched and well-produced media is a great step towards exposing more kids to the good stuff.

Here's Hank Green explaining the news—and telling us that Craig Benzine (aka WheezyWaiter, who hosts Big Questions on the mental_floss YouTube channel) and Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait are joining the crew. Check it out:

If you haven't seen Crash Course, here's a playlist of 24 Literature videos (or jump right to The Odyssey):

DFTBA, guys.