You CAN take it with you! by Bob Sprankle

Day 2 Guest Blogger @ Wes’ by Bob Sprankle

YouTube woes got you down? You’ve a little nugget that would work perfectly in your lesson, or you want to show your staff Karl Fisch’s “Did You Know (2.0)” on the first day back to school? Well if you work in 99.9% of the schools in the U.S. you can’t, can you? (Ok… I totally made up that statistic, but you get the idea). YouTube is blocked in your district, isn’t it? Even the good stuff.

You may already be aware that there are several software solutions for saving the files to view offline, so you can download them to your hard dive when you’re at home and then show them from your own machine later when you’re in the safety/restriction/firewall of your school. The ones I’ve played with to date have been a bit cumbersome, and not always so friendly, often involving some “hoop jumping.”

Well, those days are over. I just found a great web-based converter that is quick, easy and works as simply as you think it should.

It’s called vConvert and can be found at http://vconvert.net/. This online app will convert your FLV files found online (such as YouTube files) to wmv, mov, mp4, mp3, 3gp etc. all at the click of a button.

So here we go:

I take the address from YouTube for Karl Fisch’s movie:

Paste it into the vConvert form:

select the “Mac (.mov)” format so I can play it on my Macbook (you select what flavor you want):

and hit the button “Convert and Download”:

“Did You Know?” is an 8 min 19 sec. movie. It took vConvert 2 min 17 sec. to convert and 44 seconds to download on my cable connection. Not bad, huh?

So, yes, it takes a bit of planning ahead, but now you have Karl Fisch’s movie on your hard drive and are free from the constraints of firewall protection.

If you enjoyed this post and found it useful, subscribe to Wes’ free newsletter. Check out Wes’ video tutorial library, “Playing with Media.” Information about more ways to learn with Dr. Wesley Fryer are available on wesfryer.com/after.

On this day..

• Jonah Lehrer, Integrity and Quotation Fabrication: A Case Study in Writing Ethics – 2012
• A New DNA of Pedagogy and Learning (YouTube video – Greg Whitby by Marco Torres) – 2010
• Great Lineup of Keynote Speakers for the 2010 K-12 Online Conference #k12online10 – 2010
• Questioning the potential value of Skype and videoconferencing in the classroom? – 2009
• Another digital divide: Understanding Learning Community Power – 2009
• Webcasts tonight: Teachers are Talking and Storychasers – 2008
• Comments about Oklahoma education from Kirk Humphreys – 2008
• Comments about Oklahoma education by V. Burns Hargis, President of Oklahoma State Univ – 2008
• Notes from Dr. Pedro Noguera’s Keynote at BLC08: “Changing the Culture of Schools: Creating Conditions that Promote Student Achievement” – 2008
• A good case for classroom blogging and podcasting – 2006