Sharing the Addiction

In many schools, YouTube is blocked by filters due to concerns with inappropriate content being on the site that kids could access. However, there are a lot of fabulous video resources that could be used in an educational context that are also being blocked. Still, if you have access to YouTube at home, there are ways to download the videos to your laptop to be played in class. This also solves problems with slow streaming speed (videos stopping and starting as they load).

Step One - Downloading
Downloading the video using a Firefox Extension
If you have Firefox (or Flock) as your web browser, there is a very handy Add-on that you can install for free into Firefox that will allow you to download videos from YouTube and other similar sites. It is called Download Helper. When it is installed and you are on a page with a specific video, you will see a group of coloured balls rotating next to the URL address. Click on the down arrow next to the balls and you will see the flv file for that video that you can then click on to download.

Downloading the Video Using Online Services
This site asks you to paste in the web address of your video and then it will download it. It also offers a free FLV player to download to view videos.

Zamzar is another site for getting videos but it has the added advantage of letting you choose what format you would like the video. It converts the video and then sends you an email with a link to download it.

Downloading the video using Mac software Tube TV
If you have a Mac, you have another option if you download a free application called TubeTV. You open up the application and then use the search within the program to locate a video that you want. Then you can click on the black download arrow. This program also has additional features such as automatically converting the video to other formats from flv which makes it easy to play back.

Step Two - Playing Back Movie
If you don’t use TubeTV to convert the file, you will have an flv file which won’t play in either Quicktime or Windows Media Player. I will quickly cover options for fixing this for both Mac and PC users.

Perian Plugin for Quicktime on a Mac
First, go to the Perian website and download this plugin and follow installation instructions. Perian will now be added to the bottom section of your System Preferences window. Open your downloaded video in Quicktime and the flv file will now play. VLC player can also be downloaded for Macs but Perian means that you can still stay within Quicktime rather than have to use a different player.

VLC Player on a PC
This is freeware software that you can download and install. If you open up your downloaded video file in VLC, it will play without any problems. If you still want to play your video within a popular player such as Windows Media Player, there are other applications and plugins that you can install. Check out this website to get instructions.

From the same design company that created Samorost 1 and 2 (with 2 being more appropriate educationally) comes another Flash based game designed specifically as an educational game for children. This game has been commissioned by the BBC and is available on their Bitesize Revision website. Thanks to Allanah King for bringing this to my attention through her blog.

You move through eight levels with each level having a set theme for the questions and graphics such as genres and writing, numeracy, and the sciences. You have to first click items or characters within the level to cause a chain of events that will get one of the characters within the level to start asking you questions. This is often a big puzzle in itself - one level that seemed particularly difficult to get started with was one that had a cat in it and my clue to you is that the cat is the key. With each correct answer, you get more hot air in your balloon which, when full, takes you up to the next level. With each incorrect answer, you loose some of the hot air. This would be really motivating for kids (my husband played it right through all eight levels after he saw it sitting open on the screen and he is a big kid!)

Through chatting to a new Twitter friend, she gave me some links to some of her wiki pages. One of the most useful things I found looking through them was a set of ICT skill level descriptors that are used in her school. While I believe that skills need to be taught in context and that descriptors shouldn’t limit teachers, I also believe that a base line of what MUST be covered by the end of a stage can be helpful to aid the development of an ICT programme across a school. Someone else has done the thinking for you on this wiki and these descriptors could easily be tailored to suit the context of your individual school. This link will lead you to the kindergarton descriptors with other levels linked to on the left.

Yes - this is a kid friendly site despite the name sounding as if it might not be!

It is great fun and would be a great way to encourage writing for children. You can make pictures and cards by choosing a background and dragging on characters which you can resize, rotate and add speech bubbles to.

You can also put backgrounds with scenes on them together in a sequence and make a storybook in this way. When making a movie, each character you add has a number of actions that you can programme them to do. You take one of the available actions and drag it up into the timeline. You can continue building up a sequence of these actions with a range of characters. You can also add special effects. This is great fun and takes perseverance as well. It could be considered a kids way to program (it reminds me of Alice but at a lower level). Like the storybook option, you can add more scenes to your movie to create a longer story.

To get the content off the site, you can print but you can only view the video online.

This is a great tool. You could use it to create the beginning of a story and print it and then children write the middle and ending. This is just one idea - I’m sure you could think of many other uses.

Well, I’ve been rather quiet recently as the Year Group meetings take quite a long time to put together. Stil, I have been finding some very interesting bits and pieces as I prepare for them and I have also been making some handouts for workshops that others might be interested in.

OK - here is a list of things that may or may not be useful to you.

List of links for different year groups.
http://zerototwo.wikispaces.com/Great+links+for+Juniors
http://threetofour.wikispaces.com/Yr+3and4+Links
http://fivetosix.wikispaces.com/Yr+5and6+Links (still being worked on)
http://seventoeight.wikispaces.com/Yr+7and8+Links

When you on each year group space, you will notice in the left hand navigation menu that there are also pages for great use of ICT under different currciulum headings. I have started to add to these but this will be an ongoing project.

Here are the links to some of my latest software wiki resources

• A huge bank of sites to find film resources and short films that you could use in the classroom.
• A restructuring of my large wikis page into smaller pages with two new downloadable tutorials added to the Wikispaces page.
• Two new downloadable tutorials on my Powerpoint page about adding audio and about customising backgrounds of slides.
• Much prettier and easier to use index pages such as this one for online tools.

I have also found a really great resource on the Google Educators page with this unit on using Google Docs for revision of writing. There are a number of downloadable worksheets to support the unit. There are a number of other resources on the Google Educators page so it is worth checking out.

Hi all,

I am putting together lists of great websites for teachers to use in workshops and wanted some input from the blogosphere on what are your favourite primary school level links. Add a comment to this post with some of your top picks.

I am putting together pages for each year group band in the cluster. The Yr 0 to two age group teachers have already met and this is the list of links I prepared for them.

http://zerototwo.wikispaces.com/Great+links+for+Juniors

I’d love more throughout the age groups. Let me know your picks!

Thanks a lot