Videos for Classroom Use

A teacher at my school asked the Technology Department to purchase software to download video so she could show video clips at school. Our school district blocked access to a common video sharing site so the video could not be accessed on campus. Knowing the priorities of our budget for this year I set out to find FREE resources.

First I found TeacherTube, which boasts lesson plan friendly videos on a site organized similarly to the common video sharing site (let's abbreviate c.v.s.s. for typing's sake). So far so good right? I looked up content related to the teacher's curriculum and found not so many quality offerings...yet. So we continued the search.

Having caught my students watching videos instead of doing math, I learned about Google Video, so I searched for the teacher's content and received a sizable number of hits due to Google's web dominance, but was reduced when I selected the "videos hosted by Google" option. Success! Videos played past the district's filter, even from c.v.s.s. Note: Google acquired the c.v.s.s. on 10/9/06.

But we can go further and apply NETS*T standards to employ real learning so we move along:

A handy Google search (key words convert dvd to web video) turned up a cNet video on how to convert home DVDs to web video, which I chose to implement after a harrowing experience in our auditorium playing a student-produced video from a DVD (it stopped inexplicably during the viewing!). Now you can take a DVD, upload the video to a "safe" website to show in your classroom, or write the converted video to CD to show anywhere (now that the file size is smaller).

Be sure to test whichever option you use to ensure it will work when you need it in the classroom!

Update! In my online travels I saw an ad for a Firefox add-on that downloads video! There are others but this one was not ad supported. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3590