short web videos and the lecture

We showed this video in our sociology class this morning.  The video was part of a quick lecture on social structure.

The video worked great for a number of reasons:

• The video demonstrates one example of a sociological argument, namely the connection between large historical structural forces (population size, disease) and individual life chances.

• We are having our students (in groups) produce teaching 5 minute voice over presentations (which they will present in class and post to YouTube).  The video demonstrates a great example of this format, as the presenter makes an argument and uses good visuals, pacing and passion (all supported by evidence).

• The video is short (3:50) so it holds the students attention, can be put at the moment where their attention is starting to wonder in the lecture (about 10 minutes) and re-sets their brains for the next point.

The growth of web video such as TED talks, Google Talks, and materials on YouTube is a wonderful opportunity to introduce high quality learning materials into the lecture environment.  Incorporating brief videos makes delivering the lecture both more enjoyable and effective. 

The biggest challenge, as I see it, is figuring out how to match the available high quality Web videos with the curriculum being taught in our classes.

As far as I know there is no easy way to search for good video against the standard teaching terms, concepts etc.  Actually, we can search, but we get back far too many hits and the results are not usable.

I knew about this TED talk because I had seen it.....but I can only see so much.  We need a system to match this new Web 2.0 media curriculum to courses and instructors.

Ideas?  A curricular content management system?  A blog that tracks relevant videos by discipline?  A wiki that does the same?  A vertical search engine with good tagging?