Awash in Inspirational Videos

I remember the first inspirational education-related video I ever saw: Did You Know (version one). Chills, I had chills watching it. I thought, and felt in every cell of my body, "Yes! This is TRUTH!" Since that time, I have watched many, many educational videos meant to inspire and inform. There are those that have become iconic, such as the college classroom sign-holders in the "A Vision of Students Today" and the RSA-designed "Changing Education Paradigms" featuring Sir Ken Robinson. Today, I came across another one. A blog post from Jenny Luca mentioned "Obvious To You, Amazing to Others" by Derek Sivers. I didn't get chills, but it may be because I have seen so many of these. It's still pretty awesome:

A Vision of K-12 Students

A former colleague sent this to me today. It reminds me a lot of the Kansas State U and Did You Know videos, but with younger kids. It's a bit derivative of those, actually, but at the same time more relevant for elementary school. And that's who I teach! So, thanks JO!

Downloading YouTube Videos

There have been a lot of videos on You Tube I wanted to download and then include in, say, a slideshow. If did not have Internet access for some of my presentations and wanted to share some of the clips, I'd be outta luck. As many of you may have experienced, downloading them isn't as easy as it should be. They save as FLV files and WHO HAS THAT READER anyway?

I read a great tip in the Oct 2007 Tech Learning magazine from an article entitled "You Can Take It With You." If you use a site called Zamzar, it will allow you to choose the file type for the movie, will encode it and then email you a download link all within a few minutes. I tried it for a grad school presentation this week and it worked well. Try it!