Flu Math Games and Other Video Learning

Imagine having an MIT professor who is an expert in operations research as a guest speaker in your classroom in Jordan. He’s explaining—along with the help of an M.D. from Pakistan—how math can play a role in understanding how an infectious disease spreads and how it can be controlled. The talk is free and immediately available thanks to BLOSSOMS, a repository of online learning videos designed to help attract more young men and women to math and sciences—wherever they live.

In fact, that video titled Flu Math Games features BLOSSOMS head MIT Professor Richard Larson ’65, SM ’67, EE ’67, PhD ’69 and Sahar Hashmi SM ’11, an Engineering Systems Division PhD student, and it can be downloaded or viewed online anytime in English or Arabic.

BLOSSOMS—that’s Blended Learning Open Source Science or Math Studies—began as an effort to develop a large, free repository of video modules created by gifted volunteer teachers from around the world, seeded initially by MIT faculty members and by partnering educators in Jordan and Pakistan. Today the BLOSSOMS Video Library includes dozens of half-hour videos on topics in mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry. They are meant to be used like a guest lecturer that a classroom teacher can present in convenient segments, then engage the class in a related exercise. You can sign up for the enewletter for updates.