CrashCourse YouTube Channel

Just found an AMAZING YouTube channel called CrashCourse that could be used to support your classroom instruction or if you are experimenting with the flipped classroom approach. 

"Hank and John Green are the narrators and they do an astounding job explaining concepts in U.S. History, World History, Chemistry and Biology! Most of you have probably come across them before, but for those who haven't they are worth checking out."
Click here to go to a list of the Episode Titles they have created. There are even some for English Literature. 

The iBoss Clean Search blocks the channel but will still show the videos. SO just search Crash Course and you will be able to see the videos that are offered

Campaign Jingles

Well with the Presidental Campaign in full swing ads are all over the media. How about having your students use Animoto or another video tool to make their own campain jingle. A great website that might be able to help you is the
 Living Room Candidate it allows you to use video, audio, and images from the site to create your own add.
It has titles, effects and  transitions as well.
It also has lesson plans on how to evaluate politcal adds, what makes an add effective, and other topics.

Literature Recap

The Mission of 60second Recap™ is "to make the great works of literature accessible, relevant, and, frankly, irresistible to today’s teens. Through 60second Recap™ video albums, we seek to help teens engage with the best books out there ... not just to help them get better grades, but to help them build better lives."

This site offers 60 second video recaps on lots of literature such as: Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, Romeo and Juliet, The Scarlett Letter, and many more. These 60 second video recaps will surely get your student's attention. Check it out!

YouTube Tip!

Several ITRT's were emailing back and forth ideas of how teachers can use Good YouTube Videos in the classroom. Several ideas emerged. Here is one worth sharing. It is called called KickYouTube. You don't need to copy and paste the video's URL, install any software, or wait for an email. It is super simple.

Here's how it works:

1. Find the video you want to download from www.YouTube.com.

2. In the address field, type kick in front of youtube.com and press Enter.

3. You are taken to the KickYouTube site, showing the video from YouTube. Across the top of the page are download options: FLV, MP4, HD, AVI, MPG, 3GP, iPhone, PSP, MP3, OGG, and GIF.


4) You will need to decide the file format you want by clicking on the type. Then I click the green Go button. The Go button will turn to a blue button named Down. You will be prompted to open or save the video file. You will want to save the file to a folder on your hard drive.

Now the video on is on the hard drive. It can be put on a flash drive, burned to a DVD, imported into move editing software, put it in a slide show, or whatever you like to do with video files.

**Please note that downloading videos from YouTube may go against YouTube's Terms of Service. Also, the creator's copyright should be respected and acknowledged at all times.**