If you thought that Kanopy was one of the sites to avoid because it’s got streaming movies, I’ve got a secret:
You can also use Kanopy to help you learn things!
Kanopy’s tagline is “Thoughtful Entertainment.” With that in mind, they provide a few different tracks of streaming content for you to take advantage of—and you get 5 credits to watch whatever you want every month!
Great Courses
The one that hits this whole learning thing on the nose is the Great Courses, which can teach you anything from nuclear physics to yoga. These videos cover all of the basics on any topic, and might lead you to the next level of a subject, or down the rabbit hole of other connected topics. Kanopy has a huge collection of Great Courses, and regularly adds more. Your watch credit also gets you through the whole series, which could be one episode or twenty.
Instructional Films
Dive into the “K-12 Lessons” category to find videos about math, literature, history, science, and much, much more! These videos range from short to feature-length, and include everything from step-by-step guides to filmed version of Shakespeare’s plays. (Bonus note, if you click on the “Literature” heading you’ll get so many kinds of things—film adaptations, writing instruction videos, documentaries, etc.)
Movies and Documentaries
You can find a combination of classic and modern films that will teach you something about the world--or just offer some fun. Watch a modern love story in French, or a documentary about the Stonewall Uprising. Search for something you’ve been interested in watching or have a scroll through; you’ll definitely find something worth trying.
And if you want to see what's available just for kids—whether storytime or language learning—you can go directly to Kanopy Kids!
Whether you just need to get back in the zone, or have something specific you want to learn or discover, Kanopy is a place to work without working. Try it out with your library card!
Remember: You get 5 credits per library card, per month.
