Broadband Consortia, Networks and YouTube

It is apparent that many (most) broadband connections in educational institutions, for reasons of 'safety' block certain web site which can (or could) have positive educational use. FaceBook and YouTube to name but two of the likely suspects.YouTube has many videos that can help and support teachers by making connections with quality materials that are difficult to find elsewhere.

I have spent some time over the last six months or so explaining to teachers and educationalist how to extract the useful videos so that they can be used in a stand alone format.

This post is to explain a number of these because the job is getting easier and easier.

Firstly there is 'Unplug', a Firefox Add-0n that does just what it says ... unplugs videos.

Then, recently, I upgraded my version of 'Real Player 11' to discover that it was most efficient in allowing me to download any video that I came across in my browsing. There is a very good guide on how to do this written by Mike Trodd of Cecil Road Primary school which can be found here.
... just as I thought I had learned lots I looked at Joe Dale's Blog and noticed that he had others.

No excuses then about good material being blocked from use by the school's firewall etc . All you need to do is go home, extract the video you want from its blocked source and play it in its original form ... Oh ... you will need to download an FLV player to do this.

Watch out for an article on some of the useful things to be found in YouTube in the ictopus Sharing Good Practice number 23.