Have you seen our YouTube Channel?

It has taken a while to get some new content up there but good things come to those who wait or so I am told.  Our You tube Channel now houses over 60 useful videos for teachers and students on literacy, maths and software tutorials on loads of great and free educational apps you can download and use instantly.  I hope you enjoy it and if you do be sure to subscribe to it.  Access it here.

The History of English in Ten Minutes

This is a great series that students will love which breaks history down into nice little bitse sized chunks you can flesh out in the classroom.  I really hope you enjoy going through this with your students.  A word of warning is that some of the language and content may not be totally appropriate to younger students.

A great video to share with your students

Next time you kids ask you why do we need to learn this?  Give them a look at this video and start a class discussion about their education, their future and your responsibility as a teacher to give them the best opportunity they can get.

Amazing Video from RSA Animate - Sir Ken Robinson's Changing Education Paradigms

Last year Sir Ken Robinson was honoured to be awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal by the Royal Society of Arts in London. Accepting the Award he gave a talk on Changing Paradigms in Education.  The RSA has produced a wonderful animated version of highlights of the talk.

There is some really great stuff in here that gets you thinking about whether our current education model is a couple of centuries out of date.  I'd love to hear you thoughts on it in the comments section.

Genuine 'Old School' Entertainment Video that will Amaze your Students

My mum actually sent me link to this the other day and it really caught my attention as to how everyone has an amazing skill or talent.  Larry Griswold was just such a man. Appearing on the Frank Sinatra show in 1951 Larry and would put any number of our entertainers to shame today without the need for Computer Generated effects or stunt doubles. He is a REAL SHOWMAN - You'll see why.

Anyhow... I'll let the video do the talking for me but if you get the chance to share this with your colleagues or students to do nothing else but remember before we had the 'X Games', 'American Idol' and 'So you think you can Dance' there were guys out there pushing the envelope generations ago too and some of them like Larry are still drawing a crowd nearly 60 years later. 

I wonder if anyone will be watching our entertainers in 2070 and who might they be and why? - I am sure there is an essay in that.

The easiest way to download lossless YouTube to your computer

I get asked this question quite a bit as YouTube is increasingly blocked at more and more schools and teachers want to get content from home and bring it to school to share in their classrooms.

There are literally hundreds of ways to do this which I go into great detail in The ultimate guide to YouTube for educators but the simplest way by far is through Realplayer Basic.  

RealPlayer Basic can be freely downloaded here and takes a couple of minutes to install.  Once installed the next time a YouTube or any other form of web based loads on your desktop a little icon will ask you if you wish to download this file.  This will be instantly saved to your designated video folder and it will then offer you to convert it into a variety of formats once complete.

I have included an instructional video below for visual learners.  This was obviously put together by a teenage boy as you will find out.  Good luck

Top Alternatives to Youtube

Unfortunately after a couple of years of Youtube access at school it appears it has finally left us.  It is clearly the best video sharing site on the web but if you can't access it it here is not a great deal you can do about it.  So I have trawled the web to try and find the best video content on the web that most schools should be able to access.

Vimeo - Is really the only contender to Youtube's crown.  Good quality, fast  and loads of content.  Unfortunately it doesn't have the news and entertainment content of the major networks that youtube offers.

TVGalaxy - TV Galaxy is not so much a tube but it is probably the best connected sitefor all major television networks from the US, Canada, UK and Australia.  It is packed with great documentaries news and regular television shows.

TeacherTube - It used to be great but now suffers from a sad amount of over advertising and neglect of it's content.  It needs some TLC but still has some worthwhile videos.

Archive.org - Massive amounts of documentaries, old TV shows and useful content.  Unfortuanately you have to physically download it at this stage - no streaming.

Other than that a TV tuner card for a classroom PC will cost about $30 and is dead simple to use and of course you can aways beg and plead

See a video story from 6 perspectives on YOUCUBE

YouCube is one of these extremely useless tools you come across on the web until of course you find a use for it. And today I did.  We were looking at music videos over time and how they have changed from the 60's through to 2010 and YouCube was the perfect tool for kids to see how video clips have changed with a 6 faced comparison.  I am sure you can find a use for it too but it is just a bit of fun nonetheless.  Check it out here.