11 Tools Tool #3: Online Video

Of all the online video sites available to teachers I love most Discovery Education, which has provided video and video segments for my students in so many academic areas. I have also used YouTube and some of the traditional news services to show current events, the Japan tsunami being one in particular that significantly affected student understanding of geography, natural disasters and their impact of human life. For this lesson I explored TeacherTube, but I will have to visit the site another day because I could not get much to work there. I did, however, find several interesting videos for students and teachers on SchoolTube. Here is an example of a video benefiting students on what to consider before leaving a digital footprint.

The presentation of video categories and uploading procedures in SchoolTube is user friendly. Attaching a video to the blog was easy enough. The only problem with linking the video to ActivInspire is one that is common with other sites with links to flipcharts, that is the uncertainly of which web browser the video will open up in. No new surprises in copyright and fair use. There is no exaggeration in saying that it can be time consuming to note the source of the photograph or video being borrowed. It is time well spent, I agree. I love Flickr Creative Commons! I would like to have this quote here for future reference. From 21st Century Learning, 11Toolssbisd blogspot, "To download YouTube videos to your computer, use KeepVid or saveyoutube. Then, use Tube Chop or snip.snip.it...." I created a Dropbox account on my laptop and installed the app on my smartphone. Assuming one can easily add netbooks, ipads, etc. to the account, it makes teacher work more convenient. What comes to mind is how it is different or better from a wikispace in a teacher's point of view when considering getting pictures or files into student hands.

Thing #20

At this point in my continuing study of Web 2.0 I am learning more about YouTube and TeacherTube, with hopes of being able to post a video onto Thing #20. I have seen teachers showing web videos to their students and it is VERY cool! So far it hasn't gone exactly as I would have liked. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm not learning. Au contraire. This is actually quite fun, which probably is of no surprise. The battle's not over yet. Tomorrow I WILL have a video here, hopefully the rap Continents and Oceans (songsofhigherlearnin)that I found on TeacherTube. I haven't been able to open the downloaded video, but it appears to be loading to the blog. It failed after several minutes of trying through Html (at editing of blog)and uploading from a file saved ("All files") on my desktop. My daughter even can't get this to work, and we followed Eblogger's suggestions for typing in code, adding the video URL and more code. It didn't work. I can't believe I'm actually showing on the blog the incomplete video...it's so...so...incomplete! As my daughter would to say to a fellow blogger "Awkward".