YouTube, GoogleVideo, and TeacherTube

I had never really played around much with YouTube, except for links from others that I had received in emails. I ended up searching YouTube and came across some excellent short clips to demonstrate how to do/make things. One was for making a simple Origami “box” that kids could keep in their desks. There were also some other good instructional ones make by kids. Also, there are some great ones to show various knitting techniques, so I used those as needed for a couple of projects I’m currently working on…problems solved without trying to figure it out on my own through trial and error.

I’d seen one of the Did You Know videos before, from a link from a friend’s email. I like the remixing and the improvements with more visuals. I guess I do see value in remixing/remaking to make content more personal.

Of course there are concerns with sites like YouTube in an educational setting. At school as well as home, content for children needs to be monitored. It’s our job as educators to monitor that at school and I’d tell parents that there can be value from their children using YouTube with supervision.

I loved TeacherTube! I found some great videos. One showed how to make a poster using Excel, so I tried that out and made a new poster for my classroom. Another used time elapsed photography to show plant growth, which would be great for my science unit on plants. There were also some very funny ones, one of which I embedded in a previous post. At this point, I don’t think I would actually post on TeacherTube, but rather use some of the great videos that are already there. The same concern holds true with Teacher Tube as YouTube, but parents probably would be more open minded about their children using that site.

My best find on TeacherTube was “Free Tech Tool for Struggling Readers.”
I went to the Word Talk site and downloaded/installed the application. It was very easy to use and would be WONDERFUL to have that installed in our computer labs. Since it’s used with Word documents, it would be great to have that capability for struggling readers and English language users to assist them on various assignments.

Hmmm…I wonder if there is anyone reading this who could authorize getting that into our computer labs?!?!

Voice Thread

This was fun and I think students would enjoy using it to present information that they are learning about. It would be easy to have them create a summary of any concept with appropriate images, where others could go in and add additional information. Once they were finished with that, it would make a great review for a test, or simply a fun final project. I really don’t see any concerns at this time, especially with the way the free accounts are set up that limits use…with the age group that I teach, it would be something that I would need to monitor with my account.

Social Bookmarks

I registered for Delicious. I've used it for the sites I added on, but really still like my Favorites, where I have files organized by topics. If there were a way to organize like that on Delicious, I'd use it more often, or almost exclusively, since I like the toolbar that was added on to "Links." (Or, I just don't know how to do that on Delicious?!?) I'd recommend this to friends who I know use a variety of computers in their daily lives...they could then find their favorite places where ever they are. Nothing really "shocked, elated, or amazed" me. I could see this used with students as they research topics and share their findings.

Teacher Tube

I just started searching on Teacher Tube and thought I'd share this gem! Enjoy!

Bubble Guru

So, I really really like the idea of Bubble Guru, especially for the lower grades. I think that something like this would be worth having on my website, but not for the price, as well as the investment of the web cam. If there was a less expensive way to do this…YES! (But then I’d want to hire someone else to video and NOT myself!) I believe that the video would have more impact for younger students, so that’s something to think about.

Bubble Share

BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing


This was easy and fun. I do admit that I didn't use the images from my Flickr account, though, since they are really rather boring for most people. I think that the kids would really have fun with this. It might be something to do with preselected photos and have them document as they go on a unit, which could be easy for 3rd graders.

Flickr Tools

I could easily have wasted away the entire day playing around with all of the Flickr toys (tools), which were new to me. In order to waste time at a later date(s), I’m including the links for these three sites. After seeing some of these tools, I really am thinking to upload more (a lot!) photos in Flickr. The ones that I tried were all very easy.

Tools for Flickr Cool! Fun! I tried the captioner, colorpickr, and flickrsudoku.

fd’s Flickr Toys I played around with Jigsaw, Flickr Uploader, Trading Cards, and Mat.

The Great Flickr Tools Collection A couple of the first links that I tried were bad. Then, I REALLY wanted to see how Gickr worked, which said that it created animated Gif’s from your Flickr photos…a page opened saying it was “forbidden.” There was a really fun one for preschoolers and kindergarteners called AlphaLearnr, which let you choose from different photos for each letter of the alphabet.

With these being so easy to use, it would fun to quickly put together some simple things with student and classroom photos to use in newsletters and other parent communication. I’m sure this will turn into a list of classroom uses that are more beneficial to student achievement once I play more.