Great source of videos for the classroom

The website FORA-TV (conference and event video) has hundreds of videos for every type of interest. The videos are categorized into the areas of business, environment, politics, science, technology and culture. And within each of these areas, there is a further breakdown of topics. For example, in "technology" there is: internet, new media, start-ups, personal technology, wireless, computing, engineering and CEOs.

http://fora.tv

The times of the videos range from about 10 minutes to over 30 minutes. A few are an hour, but not too many. The narrators, of course, have various accents and speaking styles.

One I chose for my students (from June 2013) was a topic from the section "engineering" called Robots Among Us, presented by Chad Jenkins. He talks about the types of robots that are now a part of our lives. The time is 14:12.

http://fora.tv/2013/06/13/Chad_Jenkins_Robots_Among_Us

The types of robots he refers to include those used in space, the laboratory, the military, in the home, for disaster relief, as well as self-driving cars, humanoid robots and personal (service) robots.

Students can focus on the particular robots that interest them, or are related to their field of engineering. Discussion can focus on the state-of-the-art, or on implications for the future.

I think teachers (and students) will be able to find videos in any topic area that interests them.