Magnetism

Janet Musil, Sandburg High School, Orland Park, IL
School Library Journal
July 2000

[Review of Electricity and Magnetism Series] Have you ever observed a master teacher explain a difficult scientific principle so well that you wish you could copy their technique? This series comes close to duplicating that experience. An innate sense of logical organization permeates the four videos. Each concept is clearly illustrated via well-paced narration and through a variety of crisp graphics, demonstration, and animation. During the titles and transition, the music of an electric guitar is both appealing to the teen audience and cleverly supported of the electrical content. Throughout each video, at regular intervals, the narration pauses and asks viewers to anticipate the outcome of the next topic's problem in a segment called, "You decide." Each video ends with a summary of the content and then an occasionally difficult fill-in the blank video quiz which provides visual clues to the answers to encourage success. The series is attractively packaged in a binder which holds all four videos as well as some very thorough support materials including identification of applicable National Standards and Objectives, multiple versions of student preliminary and post-viewing assessments, the video script, some experiments, and Internet-related activities. While the series is intended primarily for students in grades five to nine, high school students in the upper grades having difficulty understanding the topic of magnetism and electricity would benefit by viewing this as well.