TeacherTube.com

In the school district where I work, YouTube.com is blocked by our Web filter. I'm not complaining about this (although many do). We do have some other good resources for video available to us, such as DiscoveryEducationStreaming (http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/), formerly United Streaming, and now TeacherTube. http://www.teachertube.com/ is a trememdous resource for educators and students. As you might expect, it has anything from lengthy educational slideshows to student-produced skits. What I like is that it is highly organized, just like YouTube. There are links at the top of the site for "Most Viewed," "Most Discussed," "Most Recent," "Top Favorites," "Top Rated," and (my favorite), "Random." This is a great way to bring up a video-of-the-day entry with one click. Of course some clips are better than others, and that's where the ratings come in. Each video can be rated from 1 to 5 apples. 5 apples being the best (and the teacher apple being the theme here), you can choose "Top Rated" and get nothing but 5-apple videos. You can search the site for topics which pertain to the unit you're studying in class, for instance. Posting your own videos to, and downloading videos from the site is also quite simple once you create your free user account.

One advantage TeacherTube has over YouTube (beside NOT being blocked by school Internet filters) is that video clips are easy to download directly to your desktop. I say easily. Hmm. Yes, it is easy to share your video clips (as it is in YouTube and Google Video) via an e-mail Web link. You can even embed the link within a Web site, but if you want to play the downloaded .flv (Flash) video clips as stand-alone movies, once downloaded you can go to ZamZar.com to convert the .flv file to any file extension of your choice, or, a better option, is to download the Free FLVplayer and easily drag and drop the file into the FLV Player. It's one of those free utilities I talk about all the time. So far I have posted one student-and-teacher-produced video to TeacherTube. Here is a link to it. Hopefully it will be the first of many.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Keyboard Shortcuts: It All Depends on Context (A Deeper Dive)

Image
  Keyboard Shortcuts: It All Depends on Context (A Deeper Dive) It's true. I can write a full in-depth article on just about anything technology-related. Even something as seemingly straightforward as keyboard shortcuts. Who knew how complex this topic could be. You might have wondered why a shortcut like Ctrl+D does one thing in one app or extension, while the same shortcut does something completely different in another. Hopefully, I can shed some light on a bit of the keyboard shortcuts confusion. Here are some things to consider: 1. The keyboard shortcut Ctrl+D in Google Slides or PowerPoint, for example. If you're in Google Slides and you select a graphic object, you can press  Ctrl+D  and it will duplicate the object. This should work the same way for everyone. However, if you are not selecting an object in a slide, but are just in Filmstrip mode instead, pressing  Ctrl+D  will duplicate the slide. And, if you are not in Google Slides but on a random website, pressing Ct
Read more

Using Doctopus and Goobric to Manage Assessment in Google Classroom: A Step-by-Step Guide

Published in March 2016, this is one of my favorite posts from our Port Huron Schools EdTech Weebly blog .  What is a Doctopus, you ask? And for that matter, what is a Goobric? I'm so glad you asked. I took a lengthy look at both tools and put together this step-by-step guide/article that I hope will help teachers tie together three great Google student assessment and management tools: Google Classroom, Goobric (a Google online rubric) and student assignment submissions (linked through Doctopus) all in one place.  Here is the article:   ift.tt/1QVW54z   http:// fb.me/7DQ2ITOYU
Read more

Tech Tools to Organize Your Life

Image
On February 6th, I presented " Tech Tools to Organize Your Life " for the Computer Operators of Marysville (C.O.M.P.) in downtown Port Huron.  It had been a while since I'd seen this group.  The last time I presented for them, I was doing Tips & Tricks for Windows 7 .   Their web site is www.bwcomp.org if you want to check out this computer user group, now celebrating its 30th year in existence. This is an embedded Microsoft Office presentation, powered by Office Web Apps .
Read more