Did you know that you can use Google Docs to upload a video and generate an embed code? I didn’t until today.
This is a nice workaround for a way to embed videos to a web site without having to put it up on YouTube, TeacherTube, or some other sharing site.
The advantages of embedded content are streaming (faster loading), greater compatibility, and preserving context (not sending your user/student off somewhere else).
Looking for great free video content for your mobile devices?
Sal Kahn has built a tremendous collection of over 1800 open-licensed videos offering instruction in math and science. They cover topics in arithmetic, algebra, geometry, statistics calculus, and more. These videos are licensed under CC BY SA which means you can use them free of charge and even host them on your own web site, as long as you agree to share (use a CC BY SA license) on any derivative products you build.
Up until now, the videos have only been available on YouTube, which has posed problems for educators. Now, however, the Khan videos are available elsewhere! Curriki has them available as both embeddable and downloadable files. They have also created a group to “organize, extended and build a community of practice around this content.” This is a great opportunity to collaboratively remix this content and add to it. (I have some ideas myself to to remix some of this into a series of middle school math courses in Moodle.)
Another site has collected the Khan videos for download onto a USB drive or server. (Thanks to Steve O. for this link.)
There are sure to be more creative uses of this great collection of content to come.
Here are two series of social studies vocabulary videos that are available for free download. These are good for use with ELL students or others who need extra vocabulary support. The videos can be downloaded onto mobile video players for individual use.
In addition, I’ve been working on some shareable media sets — collections of open-licensed photos, diagrams, maps, audio, video, etc. that can be used by teachers or students in word-processed documents or presentations or used to create web sites or other multimedia presentations.
The following shareable media sets are now available:
Social studies
Science
For each media element in the set, just right-click the file to find the credit, license, and source link.
I hope to do more of these over time. Let me know if you have ideas or requests.
The new Flip Ultra camera (120 min. version), as well as the HD models, use an MP4 format. This doesn’t import directly into WIndows Movie Maker like the AVIs do, but the conversion process to WMV files is very easy using the built in Flip software.
To do this, you’ll first need to install the FlipShare software, which you can do directly from the camera. Then:
Other notes of interest….
- This process reduces the resolution of HD movies. Depending on your application, this may or may not be important.
- Make sure you do this BEFORE you take movies off your camera. Also, don’t rename the movies on your camera, or FlipShare won’t recognize them. (You can rename them after you do the conversion.)
- For Mac users, the MP4 files will import directly into iMovie.
(cross-posted form Karen’s Mashups)
Below is one of my favorite mashups of all time — a compilation of different clips from TeacherTube. If you aren’t familiar with TeacherTube, it’s a video sharing service for educators that has all kinds of great content for a variety of subjects and grades and even professional development topics, produced by teachers, students, and professional organizations. I think this is a terrific resource for differentiating instruction (especially with mobile devices).
Full credits and links for this show here.
Please feel free to use this in any way you find useful. I plan to use it at professional development workshops to give folks a quick look at all the great free video resources available to them.
The price on the Kindle has just dropped to $359. I continue to love this device. Getting the New York Times whenever and wherever I want it is such a luxury. And the wireless has worked everywhere I’ve tried it, including rather remote areas of several states. I also like being able to email various types of docs to my Kindle to read when I have time.
Also, the Flip camera folks have a new model out the Mino. It is quite a bit smaller than the Ultra.
Creative has come out with their own pocket video camera, the Vado, which looks a lot like the popular Flip. I’m so happy with my Flip that I can’t imagine switching, though the Vado is a bit cheaper.
We’ve gotten a few questions for people who have the Flip video camera (which we love!) but have had problems getting the codec to make the video run properly on the desktop. To get this, connect the camera to your desktop and run the Flip video program that is on the camera once, which will load the load 3ivx codec that you need.
Also, if you have the new Flip Ultra, we highly recommend installing the firmware upgrade if you haven’t already.
It’s time for the 2nd Annual 21st Century Explorer Podcast Competition for students.
The challenge is to make an audio or video podcast answering the question “What do you think is NASA’s greatest exploration achievement in the past 50 years and why?”
The competition starts on Oct. 1 and ends after they’ve received 1,000 entries in each category (or on Jan. 4, 2008 if that comes first). This is open to U.S. students age 11-18.
See all the details on the 2nd Annual 21st Century Explorer Podcast Competition web site.
Here’s another good site for “copyleft” video: The Open Video Project.
Some of the video is from NASA and other government sources, but the site is much better organized and easier to search than most government sites.
TCPMP is a great free mobile audio and video player for Palms that we’ve recommended in the past. You may have noticed that the old web page for the TCPMP hasn’t been up lately.
Apparently, like other projects, TCPMP’s CoreCodec group has branched off to create a commercial product. We haven’t evaluated the commerical product yet, but we suspect it has some useful features. (Money coming in tends to help product development.)
If you’d still like to use and download the old free Open Source version though, we now have a link to it on our site that you can use.
If anyone knows more “scoop” on what’s going on with the Open Source version TCPMP (is anyone still maintaining it?), please post your comments.
