13 April 2021

Where did the 2020 AP Live videos go? (Don't worry, here's how to access)

Hi, I'm Greg.  You may remember me from such films as the 2020 AP Live video series.  My friend Josh Beck and I were live on the College Board youtube channel every weekday from 12:00-1:00,* from late March to early May.

*P.M.

The College Board is doing AP Live again!  Josh and Kristin Gonzalez-Vega will be running similar live sessions this year, starting April 19.  They are outstanding physics teachers; I recommend their shows highly.

That said, I've been asked a number of times, are the videos from 2020 still available?  A number of teachers (including me!) have been using pieces of these in their classes as content introduction or review.  They've been been up on the College Board youtube channel all year, until last week.

The College Board took the 2020 videos down for very good reason.  Josh and I were laser-focused on preparing students for the 2020 digital at-home exams.  Those were completely different in structure from any exam given before, and from almost any exam that will ever be given again.  The last thing the College Board wants is for well-meaning students to have these videos come up in a search, miss the whole "2020" thing, and panic about digital testing.

Thing is, physics content is physics content, pandemic or no!  That's why teachers will want to access these videos.  Josh and I did uncountable quantitative demonstrations.  We set up released AP Physics 1 problems as experiments in the laboratory.  We explained how the readers evaluated released free response questions, with special attention to common misconceptions.  These videos have been a valuable resource to a lot of us.

If you do end up watching, please remember that we did these shows live.  There will be small mistakes.  There will be experiments that fail the first time, and we didn't, couldn't, edit.  It was live.  I love live performance, and I know that a huge audience of students and teachers loved it, too!  Just know you're not going to be getting anything polished.  Go see Pivot Interactives if you want that.  :-)
  
(My own recent use of these videos: I've been assigning some old released AP questions for homework, then giving a quiz about the problems the next day in class.  If a student does poorly, I don't have them come in to redo the question - I just have them watch the video of Josh or me discussing that very same problem!  I encourage them to watch on double-speed, but I make them watch.)

How do we access the videos, then?  The videos are still in existence on youtube, but are not searchable.  You have to know the link.

I went in my creepy youtube search history and dug out as many old links as I could find.  I'm not comfortable posting those links here; but if you'll email me, I'll send you a file with those links, which we should all feel free to share teacher-to-teacher.  Or even with our students.  

My understanding of the College Board's position is that they're happy for people to watch Josh's and my time capsule from spring 2020, as long as the watchers know exactly what they're seeing, and as long as the watchers seek us out explicitly.  The information in our 2020 shows is NOT CURRENT.  But it's still interesting and fun.


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