Wednesday

Thing #20: YouTube, TeacherTube and Zamzar

You have viewed several YouTube videos and other online videos throughout the earlier activities of this project. Streaming videos, especially through video hosting websites such as YouTube have proven to be very useful web 2.0 resources because they can be created for personal learning/teaching needs and uploaded at point of need. Both Yahoo and Google also include video hosting components.

Another important video hosting source for educationally-based videos is TeacherTube. All of the videos included there are resources for classroom settings or educator-based training. (this site is NOT blocked in SBISD.)

Sample videos to view:
1. Evaluating Websites Tutorial ...an idea for something you could tailor to meet your situation.
2. Three Steps ...food for thought? how many of the tools do you now recognize?
3. Portal to Texas History...Tease (advertisement) for a useful website?

You have been provided with the URLs to these sample videos. Several embedded videos can be found in other "Things"...you can tell an embedded video because you see a small screen in the blog.

To embed, follow the directions given at the particular site.
It usually consists of copying some code for the particular site you are taking the video TO.

Then you paste it into your blog post on the code or HTML tab, not the usual Compose tab. It's easy to switch back and forth. You will want to position the cursor where you want the video to embed.

It is hoped that your institution has allowed these video resources to be open and available to use with students. However, in the event that sites like YouTube are blocked by the firewall, you may have to download the video at another location and use a .flv player to be able to view the video. This PowerPoint slide show gives you some directions in doing that. [UPDATE: this is a more involved cumbersome way to bring in youTube videos because it requires you add a player.]

Another way of getting videos that may be "blocked" is to use a file conversion program such as Zamzar which takes the URL of the wanted video and converts it to a format that available. This blog posting will explain the process of URL conversion. You choose to the file as a .avi or other formats that will play on your computer without adding a player. Zamzar will also convert text, music, or graphic files. [UPDATE: this is the conversion method of choice! simple! quick!]

If you would like to search the web in general for useful videos, current events or news stories, or even historical items, you can use the search engine Blinkx to search for sources of videos. Whether the video will be available, downloadable, or able to be embedded will depend on the actual source of the material. Blinx acts like a one stop shop for locating video streaming!

Another overview of these resources

Discovery activities:
1. Go to YouTube and find a video using the search box. Search for something such as libraries, librarians, learning and teaching, Web 2.0, Library 2.0, educational technology.

2. Go to TeacherTube and locate a video for a subject of your choice...math, science, social studies that might be useful for students or teachers in your sphere of influence.

3. Write a post for Thing #20 about your video finds and the value of having access to so many video resources. Embed at least one of the videos you selected into your post.

Have fun learning from the "movies"...anyone got popcorn?

7 comments:

Kandel's fan said...

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, as well as trying to copy it directly from TeacherTube to my blog. My daughter the pro even can't get this to work, and we followed Eblogger's suggestions for typing in some code, adding the video URL and more code. It didn't work.

Unknown said...

I got the video embedded without any problem, but ti overlaps just a bit onto the blog archives. Does anyone know how to adjust that?

Unknown said...

The overlap happened to me also. Did I mention before how much I am loving these 23 Things? :)

woomaj said...

Blogger gives me an error message that the video html is not 'closed', but it has this
(< >) at beginning and end of the embed code. This happens to every code I copy from TeacherTube...any ideas?

Scott E. said...

I read the comments and thus was worried I wouldn't be able to embed, so i explored a bit. In my edit post option, I clicked on the Edit HTML (as instructions said to do) and then just observed what it looked like in my other paragraphs. I had typed two paragraphs of text, with a blank line in between, and then was putting my chosen video in also after a blank line. Anyway, so i noticed a difference in the HTML code after my last paragraph compared to the first paragraph. So basically, i just changed the code to look the same, and then pasted the embed text in there and it worked.

Ok, i'll try to help without confusing you even more...what I found was that after my first paragraph of text in the html code window, it had added the html tag (div) where I had hit the enter/return key to go to next line .

(IMPORTANT NOTE: instead of parentheses, HTML code actually uses the < type of signs, but when posting comments it won't let me use this tag, as it interprets it as part of code, so i'm using parentheses instead. just be sure to use the other).

Then, it had the tag (/div)(div) before the next paragraph started.

So I compared that to the end of second paragraph and noticed it had put an extra (/div) in there, so i got rid of it, and just made it look like the first paragraph, and then copied the embed code from teacher tube.

Bottom line, just play around with it. yes i teach computer class, but I'm not a programmer and don't know much about HTML code programming; i was just comparing and copying as it seemed to make sense to do it that way. good luck!

Unknown said...

I had trouble with embedding - "not closed" error kept repeating. I searched for an answer on Blog help and got to this page. The solution worked for my video!
http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help-howdoi/browse_thread/thread/b8e74122df176c61/8474e3610ba7dae0?q=Tag+is+not+closed&rnum=1

Ms. Musters said...

Help! I put the wrong year (2010) into my YOUTUBE account and now it says I am not elgible. Does anyone know how to change this mistake?