Freezin' in Forestview: Thing 18

I went a little nuts with this Thing. I'm pretty familiar with Youtube and some other video sites. I decided to take on the challenge and upload a video I created. I would like to use TeacherTube because YouTube is blocked in our district.

Unfortunately, I fought with Teacher Tube for hours. I could not get the video to upload, no matter what I tried. I started with a large .avi file. It would load all the way until the finalization point, and then it stuck there for an hour. I canceled and tried an .mov, a .wmv, and various smaller file sizes. Same thing. It would get to the finalization point and hang. I also tried using Google Video, but I kept getting an internal server error. I had read that Google was having issues today, so it was probably tied to that. I'm really frustrated at this point, so I just uploaded it to this blog. I'll keep trying to get it on Teacher Tube, because I'd like to use it next year.

I created a short video on how to use the library at my school. Of course it took me hours and hours to edit (I use Premiere Elements), and it's just a short little video. I'm pretty excited to use it next year to intro the library to new 5th graders, and for new students to the school. I wish I had done this earlier, but I had sufficient inspiration to create it now because of the Thing project. The audio is really tinny here, but it's fine on my original. I'll fight with it later.

My friends and I had a weird Youtube-flurry earlier this year and dug through so many 1980s music videos and 1970s Saturday morning cartoon shows that I considered ratting my hair in solidarity. At one point, as we were trading memories (any of you "old folks" remember Underdog? My favorite) someone messaged, "What did we do before the Internet?" Well, actually she said Intertubes, but you get what she meant.

I love the link from the 23 Things site to the book dominoes video. It's interesting to note how many people viewed that one compared to most of the other library videos. What do you suppose that means about people looking for information about libraries? Heh heh...

I posted a Youtube video about library training "back in the day" in Thing 2. There is a treasure trove of mid-century training/educational videos online - and I think I saw some of them in elementary school! Not too long ago, our media folks were talking about subscribing to a service that would serve videos on demand. Those talks have stalled because, for the most part, the online video sites have what teachers want. This video has been used by our admins in several sessions when we talk about what our students need to survive and thrive when they graduate. Sobering and inspiring stuff:

I also discovered this one recently. It's also really thought-provoking, and worth showing to teachers (and the public!)

Online videos are an amazing resource. Youtube is blocked in our district, but TeacherTube isn't. We've had fairly good luck finding videos there. Most of the teachers who use online videos are savvy enough to pull them offline so they aren't sucking bandwidth. Unfortunately, sites such as History.com don't let you pull the videos, so we have to chance our bandwidth availability sometimes. I can only see that online videos will become more and more vital to school curriculum.

This Youtube video of Jack Johnson singing Where Did All the Good People Go? is one I would love to show to a group of older students. It's probably more appropriate for high school, but what a great conversation starter: