It's rather amusing because the Bill Nye videos were the highlight of the week for me in my freshman and sophomore years. Everyone in my class always loved them, and we'd always have the songs stuck in our heads afterwards.
We used to watch those videos in my elementary school science classes. I always loved them. :)
What matters in this life is much more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win, too. - F. Rogers.
Man, I wish they were used when I went to school...Your students are lucky!
Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.
They were used when I went to school... but only on special days (like half-days) where the teacher had nothing else to do and wanted to kill some time. The episodes shown were usually completely unrelated to what we were studying.
Bill Nye came to speak at the University of Florida and he attracted way more people than the University expected. They had to set up projectors outside the building that he was speaking in because so people showed up that hundreds of students were still in line when they ran out of seats inside. I was one of the hundreds of COLLEGE students who didn't get inside and instead sat on the lawn, watched the projector and bonded with everyone over how much we really loved Bill Nye.
As a new teacher, straight out of HS, I can't wait to show these to my students. In fact, I plan on showing them it today! And as a recent student, I would've loved that my school had acknowledged TV enough for them to let us watch this. :D
Possibly my favorite Doctor Who line at this point: Tick-Tock goes the clock, even for the DOCTOR
When I was a senior in highschool, about a decade ago (ugh, I feel older than I should), our Physics teacher would break out the Bill Nye videos whenever they covered a topic we were learning in class.
I especially loved the show when I was a kid though, because it was produced in Seattle and would occasionally feature some of the local news and weather personalities that I recognized.
In my high school, even the students who thought studying was for nerds and that being stupid was cool, loved Bill Nye and always tried to convince the teacher to show it to us in class. XD
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Speaking as an educator...
This is a very useful show. I have used episodes of this in several lower age group lessons and the kids love it. And why not? The episodes even follow the Three Stage lesson plan, a short introduction demonstration (the starter) a repeated and slowly developed set of central themes and ideas (the main session) followed by a recap (those awesome songs, the plenary).
I have even used the odd episode with older kids, up to about 16 years old (the episode on the earth's structure as it happens)! Oh sure they are a bit hesitant to admit it, but they loved the episode and learned a lot.
This is some of the most useful TV I have come across.