Chances are, you have YouTube blocked at your school and no amount of pleading or even large bribes of unmarked bills are going to get the Keys to the Kingdom and get it opened up.

We all know there's great stuff along with the rubbish on YouTube, just like there's great stuff along with the rubbish anywhere on the Internet. Future generations will find it amusing and quaint that we thought the banning of a particular tool was the solution to all problems, but in the meantime, you've got a great science video that you want to show to your AP Chemistry class. Sure, you may be able to find a similar video on TeacherTube (which you can probably access at your school), but clearly you have a much larger menu to select from at YouTube. And, as much as I love TeacherTube, let's face it: It doesn't have the stamina that YouTube has. My experience has been slow speeds resulting in pausing video, which is death to the pace of a good lesson. I generally download the video from TeacherTube ahead of my lessons, which is quite simple to do if you're logged in. However, you're downloading a flash file with an ".flv" extension, which still needs some help in order to easily watch it on your computer. You're probably used to playing .mov or .mp4 files on a Mac and .avi files on a PC and will need to convert your .flv files to make them manageable or get an .flv (flash) player.

Let's look at a few options that will let you collect flash video files from YouTube and convert them into your favorite file formats. There are plenty of Web sites out there that allow you to do this, but in all honesty, many of them are "fly-by-night," have you jump through hoops to get the file, or are extremely busy and therefore slow to produce your file. I've had great success with many of these sites, only to watch them disappear or become unusable later when I depended on them. My new favorite method to capture the video is with a software based solution: Get Tube. Videobox will also convert the file into .mp4 and .avi formats, as well as .wmv and mpeg (there's a five-day trial period so you can give it a spin before committing to the $15). With both tools, you just find the YouTube Web site containing the video that you want to capture and feed the url to the application.

On the Windows side, I found a free tool called Xilisoft Download YouTube Video, which works quite well. While the application doesn't convert the file, it does include a free FLV Player to view the downloaded video in. If you want to convert the video to another file type, Xilisoft offers a converter for $29.00.

A final offering is TubeSock for $15 and comes in either Mac or PC (XP/Vista) flavors. There's a trial download (will only convert the first 30 seconds of the video) and converts files to even more formats, including for iPods and mobile phones (Windows version).

Of course, all these methods involve pre-planning for most teachers in most schools. One must download the YouTube files and convert (if needed) at home where bandwith is unencumbered. Since you'll need to plan ahead anyway, why not try the free and easy last option that I learned from high school students who wanted to play YouTube files in schools where it was blocked.

Here's what you do: While at home, play the entire YouTube video on your laptop but don't close the browser window that it's in. Just close your laptop put it in sleep mode. Then, at school just simply press the play button on the video file once again. It should still be in your browser's cache and able to be played. Simple! Note: while this sounds subversive as all get-out, I am relaying this "underground-guerilla-firewall-skirting-tactic" for educational purposes only.

Bob Sprankle has been a multi-age teacher in Wells, ME for 10 years and has served as the school's Technology Integrator for the past two years.

Comments (1)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (Registered users only)

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Add Comment