Do you You Tube in the classroom?

Hey there friends!  How often do you use You Tube in your classroom?  Does your school district block You Tube?  Do you hate having to skip those annoying ads?

Well today I am going to share with you a way to download a You Tube video so that you can either save it to your computer or to a usb stick and then play it at school without any worries.
I wish I had known about this before the time I put a You Tube video up about the solar system and one of my darlings pointed out the swear word in the comments.  The walk of shame to the Principals office to inform her of my gaff was enough to turn me off You Tube forever, which would have been a real shame because there are so many great videos that support our teaching.

So let's get to it! This is super easy by the way.

First find the You Tube video that you want to download.  My class loves Storybots and we are looking at days of the week so I chose this vid

Then add an ss just after the www. and before the youtube bit in the address bar, just like in the pic below

 When you click enter it will take you to a screen that looks a bit like this.  Click on the green download button I always save it as an MP4 at 720p because I have been told that is the best quality.  You can save it at a lower quality if you need to save file space.  There will be a pop up box that says you can download a program that makes it easy to save videos but I just do it this way and I haven't had any issues.

That is pretty much it, you will see it downloading in the corner of your screen, then just save it to where you need it :) too easy right!

I hope this was helpful and that you will now never suffer the embarrassment of having to explain to your kids and Principal about swear words in the comments.

Cheap IWB

Hi friends!  Hope your week has started well, I am starting to settle into my new school and I am really enjoying getting to know my kiddos.  They are a lovely bunch and have told me on more than one occasion this week that they like their class and their teacher (awwww!)  Well even though I am really liking my new classroom there is one item that I really miss from my last room......my SmartBoard.  Yes my friends I am the only room in the school WITHOUT an IWB.  As I said I have been put into a room that was used as a room for small groups, release time for the teachers and all manner of other things that does not require an IWB.  So I have researched and googled and downloaded all very calmly (ummmm no ....... there was some swearing involved)  and I came up with using a wiimote,data projector and an Infrared pen to create an IWB.  That's right my friends a wiimote whiteboard.

Here is my daughter using Paint to start drawing with the IR pen

Here you can see she is drawing on our blinds in the dining room as a whiteboard, you can see my laptop on the table and the projector is next to it. (Oooh, there is my boy in the background, cutey!)

Personally I had no idea it could be done until I found out my daughters teacher had done it a couple of years ago.  I had a chat to him through the week and he even gave me 3 Infra Red LED pens to use with it.  Basically the premise is this; the wiimote has an infrared camera in the end of it and when you use an IR pen with it the wiimote reads the IR pen and the software supports it.  (There is more but I would sound like a real nerd)

First you sync your wiimote to your computer via Bluetooth and pair them up, (this took me a whole week to work out how to do)  then you connect your projector to your computer.  Make sure your wiimote is pointing unobstructed to where you want your screen to be projected.  The software I am using is call SmoothBoard (I am currently using the trial version) but there are other free versions out there although I had trouble with downloads and installation on the free versions.  When you have everything set up you open the software and calibrate using the IR pen, you can project onto any surface and voila an IWB!  You use the IR pen just like a SmartBoard pen although you have to hold down the button to turn on the light.  The software comes with a toolbar with similar options to SmartBoard such as screen capture.
Now don't get me wrong I would be super happy to get an IWB but that is justnot going to happen and for the cost of just under $50 US for the software and about $20 for the pens I am a happy lady!  Now all I have to do is convince the school to buy it for me :)