Hands-on Review: Cosmeo, the YouTube of Homework Help

What if you could really learn something new from watching short video clips? That's the meat and potatoes behind a new homework help site for kids in grades K-12 called Cosmeo. The site was developed by Discovery Education, a division of Discovery Communications. Discovery Channel has certainly proven successful at teaching through TV by mixing education and entertainment, so Cosmeo has an intriguing pedigree.

Cosmeo's roots stem from the fact that Discovery owns thousands and thousands of educational video clips (many acquired from a company called United Streaming).

Educators can currently subscribe to a United Streaming school-based service that brings the videos into the classroom. The new Cosmeo is a consumerized version.

Discovery has put some tremendous effort into creating a simple but elegant user interface. The videos are also aligned to national curriculum standards, which helps parents know that the kids are learning "the right things." Subjects include: science, math, social studies, English, health, art, and music.

Cosmeo is a subscription-based service. You pay $9.99 per month or $99 per year for a family subscription that can be run off any computer, anywhere—school, library, home, Grandma's. A parent can sign up multiple kids in the household and can monitor the activity. You will need broadband and sound, though.

The service is rich and well organized by topic, grade level, media type, and your favorites; there are many ways to get at the material. Most of the videos are quite stunning, though there are plenty of uneven moments. The arts and science clips are magnificently done; some of the social studies clips sound a bit like those filmstrips I endured as a kid. Topics like anglers and global warming are richly covered. The NY Yankees, Joan of Arc, and neurobiology are not. And, of course, the articles from  encyclopedias and other text sources feel like a let down when placed next to the multimedia.

The math sections, powered by company called NutshellMath, are nothing short of miraculous (considering that I'm still mentally scarred from my 6^th grade geometry teacher). Watching sample problems get solved by an invisible hand wielding a pencil, I accessed a set of tools on a math scratchpad and followed the hand's example. I was figuring out the area of polygons in no time and simplifying equations. And younger kids will get a kick out of the video game techniques used to teach some of the math lessons like fractions.

Combine all this with an atlas, an encyclopedia, some brain games, polls, fun, and other homework tools, and you've got a deal that's hard to refuse. Cosmeo is beginning to build in a component to match the textbook your child is using in school to the lessons on the service. It's like having a tutor in a box, just in time for those "I'm stumped" moments.

Video, researchers are finding, has a real effect on retention. And this generation, we know, are more highly tuned to video than any before them. After a night with Cosmeo I can tell you where sulphur lies on the periodic table and why it was called brimstone. My heart's gone out to Peter Tchaikovsky (a sensitive mama's boy in an unhappy marriage), and I know why advance warning tsunami alerts are problematic. Imagine if your kids did this instead of the YouTube thing. There's a free trial offer for 30 days. Let me know what you think.