To further cater to the limited attention span of my D-Gen (digital generation) students, I've begun to incorporate short, content-relevant video clips into my lessons. Being that YouTube is unequivically blocked by our district, TeacherTube has become my go-to site for videos. As a side note, I often use a site called Zamzar to convert web videos into .mov files and play them for my class, rather than stream them -- because streaming during the schoolday is a big NO-NO.
A video that my class particularly enjoyed was that of a high school teacher demonstrating the sublimation of dry ice. I used this video during the chemistry unit of my Integrated Science class when we were discussing the transitions of states of matter.
Another video that I found on TeacherTube was one that was designed to heighten awareness of cyber-safety, targeted especially for teenagers, called "Think Before You Post" (this one is the second in a series of two PSA's). I considered posting this video on my blog, but, in spite of the fact that it is less than one minute long, I refrained, as I didnt want to considerably slow down the loading time of my blog page.
One more cool side note, spurred from the above sentence. If you have a blog, and are at all concerened/curious about the time it takes your page to load, check out Stopwatch site, by Numion. All you need to do is enter the URL of your blog (or any URL, for that matter), and it calculates how long it takes for the page to load. This is a good way to tell if you've got too many accoutrements on your page.
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Big YIPPEE for ZamZar.... I love it, especially when people send docx files...what was microsoft thinking????
ReplyDeleteI also use TeacherTube a lot since they have most of the things I have been looking for. Have you used any of the Discovery Streaming Videos? just wondering if they have content that is useful to me. Since we are paying a chunk of change for the service, I am interested in whether people are finding it useful.
Ann
Yes, the "Think Before You Post" clip was also shown during the ASTE Conference session on internet safety. It makes the point very well. Students need to hear more about how to be smart and safe when using the internet.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the Stopwatch link! I checked how long it took for my blog to upload and it took 9.75 seconds. Sounds like that might be a bit too long! I'll have to see what I should cut out to streamline it. Thank you for the link!
ReplyDeleteLorrie