Video DownloadHelper helpfully helps you download helpful videos. Helpfully.
The fine folks at Video DownloadHelper have created a plug-in for Firefox that makes video downloading as simple as pressing a button.

60 Second Recap summarizes classic literature
Everyone needs help wrapping their heads around a book from time to time. If you teach literature, that time occurs every day. You can outsource some of the necessary explanation by sending your students to 60 Second Recap, a site that summarizes the plot, characters, and themes of a book in 60-second episodes for each.

Get Library of Congress Videos on iTunes U
You now can access lots of free audio and video from the Library of Congress on iTunes U. There’s a lot of great material suitable for a history class, such as early films made by Edison himself (or his company, at least). There are also fascinating oral histories from actual slaves in the Voices from the Days of Slavery collection.

You now can access lots of free audio and video from the Library of Congress on iTunes U. There’s a lot of great material suitable for a history class, such as early films made by Edison himself (or his company, at least). There are also fascinating oral histories from actual slaves in the Voices from the Days of Slavery collection. For a look at how people entertained themselves before TV, radio and the interweb came to be, you can look at early American animation, and even olde timey Vaudeville performances.

If you teach classes of a more literary persuasion, there are several podcasts and webcasts from the National Book Festival. Or maybe you’re a librarian and would like to bone up on your cataloguing skills. They’ve got that, too. Who better to learn from than the Library of Congress?

Library of Congress on iTunes U

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BY BILL FERRIS

Everyone needs help wrapping their heads around a book from time to time. If you teach literature, that time occurs every day. You can outsource some of the necessary explanation by sending your students to 60 Second Recap, a site that summarizes the plot, characters, and themes of a book in 60-second episodes for each.

Jenny, your perky host, breaks down the elements of what makes each book work. The videos delve into how Animal Farm was an allegory for Stalinist Russia, talk about the use of Dickens’ doubling motif in Great Expectations, and examines the plot of The Great Gatsby as a 200-page party crawl.

Students can post their own recaps in the Club Recap section. 60SR also explains literary terminology like theme, motif, subtext, and so on, so kids can write on those topics with authority. Speaking of writing, they’ll want to check out the videos on “How to write a paper that won’t put your teacher to sleep.” Have them watch it in class. A couple times, if you have to. Finally, if you have students who enjoy reading books that haven’t been assigned for class, check out the Pick of the Week, which features a one-minute review of books geared toward young readers.

So far, 60 Second Recap only has about two dozen books in its library. However, this number is only going to go up. They take requests, too, so if you’re planning on reading Heart of Darkness next semester, maybe drop them a line so it’ll be ready when you start reading it.

60 Second Recap

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How often have you seen a great discussion-provoking video on the web and thought, “If only I could grab this video and try and work it into a topic I want to discuss,” then you hear the internet laugh at you as you try to save it? How do you use this without having to send people to a web page? Or what happens if this page constantly rotates its content like at CNN.com?

Well, for users of Firefox, the task just became very simple.  The fine folks at Video DownloadHelper have created a plug-in for Firefox that makes video downloading as simple as pressing a button. It works like this: whenever you’re at a webpage that contains video content, you press the drop-down arrow on the Video DownloadHelper button (three rotating spheres of red, blue, and yellow just to the left of the URL area) and it asks you which video you want to download (in case there are multiple videos on the page). Then presto, the trusty “Save As” box pops up, you name the file, and it’s saved to your hard drive.  No longer do you have to send people to URLs full of advertisements and pop ups just to share a video, which you can attach to an email like any other file.  Imagine the immeasurable joy of being able to see the Dramatic Chipmunk as many times as you want, even when you don’t have access to the internet.

Now, a warning. VDH might not be the best extension to share with students. If you press the Video DownloadHelper menu button, it will bring up a dialog box that shows the sites where VDH will look for videos. It also includes a check box that says, “Show sites with directly accessible adult content.” While such searches are turned off by default, there’s no sense in inviting temptation here.

This plug-in works with virtually all popular video file types and even has conversion abilities built in to aid when you’re trying to use the content in an application that may only support a few video file types.

Video DownloadHelper

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BY BILL FERRIS

Stuck inside classrooms, a lot of students don’t get to experience the hands-on aspects of history and archaeology. Though driving a mouse isn’t exactly hands-on, by clicking to Interactive Dig: El Carrizal from Archaeology Magazine, students can see photo updates and read first-hand accounts of this in-progress archaeological project.

El Carrizal was a formative settlement (1500 B.C.-A.D. 100) in the south-central part of the Mexican state of Veracruz. Archaeologists at the site post updates as they find artifacts and unearth buildings. Here’s an excerpt:

“During our survey, we detected that all the buildings are quadrangular. We also found a couple of structures that allowed us to compare the construction techniques with the ones found by Cuevas…Generally speaking, we could say that they placed their houses and civic-ceremonial structures in lines oriented West-East…Is the way people arrange their settlements an indicator of social structures and religious conceptions? Or is it a combination of these factors with the regional geographic features?”

You can put these same sorts of questions to your students, challenging them to examine the evidence and form their own interpretations. By seeing professionals in action you can encourage students to think like historians themselves.

Though following the El Carrizal dig online isnt’ the same as performing archaeology first hand, hopefully it will excite your students about history and archeology by at least getting their mouse pointers dirty.

Interactive Dig: El Carrizal

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See the history of United States foreign relations. The State Department has launched the Office of the Historian website, chronicling U.S. foreign policy throughout our nation’s history.

The site is full of historical documents, photographs, and milestones. As you might expect, there’s a lot available. You can sift through all that history by searching according to presidential administration, theme, or by country. For example, you can read about the U-2 Spy Plane Incident. Or see how, despite all our current good will toward jolley olde England, America apparently had a few dust-ups with the Brits in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

You can find lots of primary sources, as well get a better sense of American history in the context of how we deal with the rest of the world.

U.S. State Department Office of the Historian

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All writers need editors. Lots of writers have their own editors inside their heads. Some of these editors enjoy telling writers they’re no good, and that they’re wasting their time. The National Novel Writing Month Young Writers Program lets kids tell that internal editor to shut up so they can get some work done.

First, a little background: National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) occurs every November, challenging authors of all skill levels to pen a novel of 50,000 words in only 30 days. The exercise is designed to get people to start creating for the fun of it without the pressure of trying to craft the next great literary classic. Last year 119,000 writers took the challenge. I did this myself in 2002 and found it to be a fun (and exhausting) exercise.

NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program eases up on the 50,000-word stipulation. Students and teachers are encouraged to set realistic word-count goals appropriate to each student. This gets students writing by letting them — nay, encouraging them — to think in terms of quantity, not quality. Kids can feel free to take risks without fear of ridicule, reprisal, or the red pen. This approach will undoubtedly lead to some terrible prose, regardless of each writer’s skill level — my own novel from 2002 is hidden from human eyes in an undisclosed vault — but it will also free students to let their creativity run wild, which can lead to unexpectedly brilliant passages, and possibly a new-found love for writing.

Check out the How NaNoWriMo Works for Educators page for information on how to set up a profile and set word counts for your students. The site also has other important suggestions, including how to overcome writer’s block, as well as reminders to plan kick-off and “Thank Goodness It’s Over” parties. Whatever their word-count goals, hitting the finish line is a goal worth celebrating.

National Novel Writing Month Young Writers Program

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In our never-ending quest to help teachers get valuable video content in front of their students’ eyeballs, we’ve found this offer: you can download WinX DVD Author and WinX DVD Ripper for free during October. Normally selling for around $30 each, these programs allow you to burn pretty much any video file — MOV, MPEG, AVI, WMV and FLV are supported, among others — directly onto a DVD disc. You can also create your own fancy DVD menu. Eh? Eh?

We’ve often advocated the practice of downloading a video at home, then bringing it to class on a thumb drive. A DVD, on the other hand, ensures you don’t have to worry about locked computers, file compatibility, file size, and the other headaches inherent in video files.

Take advantage of these free downloads by Saturday, October 31.

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Do you like birds? Perhaps more to the point, are you teaching a unit on birds? If so, make All About Birds the next site you visit. Created by the Cornell Lab or Ornithology, All About Birds strives to be “the Web’s best and most comprehensive resource for North American birds, bird watching, and bird conservation — accessible to everyone for free.” It’s a lofty goal, but if this site didn’t achieve it, I can’t imagine anyone else has.

Appropriate for teachers and learners of all grade levels, AAB covers every piece of information you’d want to know about whatever bird you’re looking for — behavior, habitat, migration patterns, appearance, diet, as well as their voices (by the way, if you want to hear what death sounds like, listen to the cry of the black vulture, which would be a great name for a comic book villain). Check out video for each bird, too — a handy feature if you want to see a Golden Eagle but live in North Carolina.

If you’re an aspiring bird watcher (or “birder”), AAB has lots of tools to get you started. Read about how to attract, identify, and properly photograph birds in your own schoolyard. There’s plenty of ideas here for a class birding project or lab assignment.

Speaking of identifying birds, you can search for birds by name, size, or taxonomy. I like the fact you can search by bird shapes — AAB displays lots of common bird shapes. If you’re looking for a particular bird, click on the shape that’s most similar and browse through the images until you find the one you’re looking for.

If you’re teaching a unit that’s about birds, or is even tangentially related to birds, then AAB is an essential resource. If it’s a little too much info for you, you can read bite-sized chunks of information, fittingly, by following them on Twitter.

All About Birds

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Scribblar makes student collaboration really easy. It presents users a large white canvas and arms them with an array of pencils, line and shape tools, and colors. Students can add images easily as well, either by uploading photos or by inserting snapshots of websites. These functions are all very intuitive, even for folks without a lot of graphics experience.

To keep everybody on the same page, Scribblar has a chat window so collaborators can communicate. If students have microphone and speakers, Scribblar also lets them use their voices to chat the old fashioned way.

While students could create projects with Scribblar, it’s most ideal for planning projects through brainstorming or mind-mapping. To encourage this sort of forethought, you can also embed Scribblar rooms into your class website to make collaboration even more convenient.

Scribblar

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As teachers, we’re tasked with molding students into intelligent, productive citizens. That includes more than just homework. Volunteering is a wonderful trait to instill in students, and at the very least, looks great on a college application, too. You can help your students get involved in their community by directing them to Serve.gov.

At Serve.gov, students can find hundreds of volunteer service opportunities within a few miles of home. They can search by their service interest area, enter their zip code, and they’ll get a Google-Maps-Enabled list of results with details, dates, and driving directions.

Also at the site, students can read about other service experiences, register ideas for projects in order to recruit other volunteers, as well as share their service experiences. Some of the stories you’ll see come in the form of YouTube videos in which people stare at the camera and take turns saying, “I serve,” which is a pretty played-out formula, but I’ll let it slide since it’s for a good cause.

Serve.gov is part of President Obama’s United We Serve initiative, designed to get Americans to pitch in and make a difference locally in the midst of this lousy economy we’ve heard so much about. Teaching students to help people in need is a trait any teacher can get behind. At the very least, it may help your kids get an extra scholarship or two (yeah, that’s appealing to naked self-interest, but maybe they’ll take a shine to helping their fellow man). Serve.gov does the legwork in finding service opportunities. Now it’s up to us to go and do it.

Serve.gov

Photo credit: gazzat on Flickr.

What are parents afraid to tell you?
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas parent-teacher conference season. A lot of parents will be meeting you for the first time, leading to all the hazards of first-time interactions — awkwardness, shyness, and occasionally, tension. TheApple.com’s list of 10 Things Parents Won’t Tell Teachers provides several unspoken irritations of parents.

See the sun up close at The Sun in Motion
One of the first lessons I learned as a kid was not to look at the sun. Extreme astronomer Gary Palmer wants you to disregard that advice and take a good long look into that burning ball of hellfire via the safety of your computer monitor at his site, The Sun in Motion.

Share questions, notes and ideas with Wallwisher
Wallwisher gives your students a set of interactive sticky notes they can use to post questions or ideas. Once you set up your Wallwisher account, you’ll get a shareable URL. Students can post their comments and questions simply by double-clicking the wall and typing their notes. They can also add pictures, links and images.

Really, you ought to catch the other sessions, too — there’s stuff on project-based learning, putting together a professional development plan, blended learning, and lots more. All videos include a replay of the conference’s ongoing live chat, with all the supplemental links, ideas, and witty banter therin.

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Wallwisher gives your students a set of interactive sticky notes they can use to post questions or ideas. Once you set up your Wallwisher account, you’ll get a shareable URL. Students can post their comments and questions simply by double-clicking the wall and typing their notes. They can also add pictures, links and images.

If you have a digital projector, you could display Wallwisher at the beginning of class so students can post questions about their homework. It’s also a handy tool for brainstorming or sharing notes, especially if kids are working on a group project from two different locations.

Wallwisher’s best feature is its simplicity — with no learning curve, the technology facilitates communication without getting in the way. Mostly. I do find it frustrating that, when you post a link, Wallwisher opens it in this little window that really isn’t big enough to do anything with, and there’s no intuitive way to open a link in a new, full-sized browser tab or window. You’re better off typing the link in as text than using the link function.

Another feature is also sort of a drawback — you don’t need to set up an account to read or post to a wall. On one hand, your students have one less password to remember. On the other, you may want to keep an eye on your wall to make sure nobody anonymously posts something inappropriate. With a 160-character limit for all wall posts, they can’t go off on any diatribes. Of course, kids can do a lot of damage with four measly characters, so just keep an eye on things.

You can try out Wallwisher yourself, or build your own wall in about two minutes. Despite some minor flaws, it’s an easy and useful tool that can help you make your class a bit more interactive.

Wallwisher

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One of the first lessons I learned as a kid was not to look at the sun. As lessons go, it was a pretty easy one to learn, since ignoring it kinda hurts. Extreme astronomer Gary Palmer wants you to disregard that advice and take a good long look into that burning ball of hellfire via the safety of your computer monitor at his site, The Sun in Motion.

Palmer has worked as a cinematographer for decades, and photographed the visual effects for the film Mission to Mars. At The Sun in Motion, Palmer gives the sun its close up, giving earth-bound learners detailed, large-scale videos of solar flares, spicules, prominences, and other solar phenomena. Palmer’s images are impressive, and a little bit scary when you think that our world literally revolves around a firestorm of heat and explosions.

The Sun in Motion should serve you well if you’re teaching a unit on astronomy in general or the solar system in particular. If you’ve got a digital projector, this site is a great way to put it to use. The sun has never looked so good, and nobody has to go blind to see it.

The Sun in Motion

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