TeacherTube Mashup

(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.

News on a couple of my favorite tech tools

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.

Flip help

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.

Learn and benefit from my pain

Many of you have heard me singing the praises of the Flip video camera. I had one of the original ones and really loved it...never had a problem. So, for the holidays, I got a new Flip Ultra. This is the one with the tripod mount.

Now...problems have surfaced: I/O errors and various other problems when trying to copy video off the camera. And, of course, this is happening the one time that I have some really important video that I need to get off the device. :(

Upon a quick look on the web, I see that there are some known problems with this new model. If you have one, do yourself a favor and install the firmware update before you do anything else.

I'm doing that myself, and I'm sure I'll love my Flip again soon (after I finish crying, that is).

Postscript: I ran the update. It took a long time, because I had a lot of video saved on my device. They promised me that "videos stored on the camcorder will not be lost." And they were not. Even better, I can now get the video off the device. Yay! I am drying my tears and ready to shoot more video. (I also just plugged the camera into a projector and watched them on the big screen. Awesome!)

Great inexpensive video cam for classrooms

Many of you have heard me rave about the inexpensive Flip camera. I love it because it is very easy to use, has surprisingly good quality, and has incredible battery life, in addition to costing as low as $100.

Now the new Flip Ultra is out, and it addresses one of my few dislikes about the original Flip, which was its lack of a tripod mount. Very cool (and a great idea for a holiday gift).

Student podcast contest

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.

Open video

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.