Khan Academy’s YouTube math tutorials may not be Academy Award quality, but their academic merit is clear from their popularity with students and teachers. Now, add the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and TED to the K-12 STEM video playlist.

MIT+K12, a recently announced new initiative with Khan Academy, encourages MIT students to create short, interesting videos about science and engineering for K-12 students, Education Week reports. The videos–about three dozen so far–are available directly from MIT or through the initiative’s YouTube Channel. Some videos will also appear on the Khan Academy’s website. Topics include how airplanes fly, buoyancy, indoor flying robots, and genetic engineering.

Salman Khan, an MIT graduate, made a trip to his alma mater back in November to talk with the students about how to make engaging educational videos for K-12 students, and MIT kicked off the initiative by giving $1,000 to 38 teams of students to create the first videos.

Almost three quarters of 300 K-12 students surveyed after viewing the initial videos said they “showed me that science and engineering could be cool” and 62 percent thought the videos could add value to classroom lessons.

Meanwhile, TED, the New York City-based nonprofit that produces video talks by innovative thinkers and entrepreneurs, has announced the second phase of its TED-Ed initiative—a new website dedicated to TED’s education channel. (The YouTube channel launched back in mid-March.) The website currently contains a few dozen videos, which are tagged by subject for easy searching, as well as supplemental materials such as multiple-choice quizzes, questions about the videos, and links to additional information. Teachers also can “flip” the materials, meaning that supplementary resources will be opened on a new page for easy editing and incorporation into the curriculum.

Watch the MIT+K12 highlights video [2:21]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZXWURahV4k[/youtube]

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Tags: Khan Academy, MIT, online STEM learning, Resources for Teachers, STEM education, STEM videos, Teacher Resources, Technology for Learning, TED, Ted-Ed, video, Web Resources, YouTube