July 23, 2015

A million minutes of genuine news hits YouTube

July 23, 2015/ Kevin Cummins

Remember the days when TV networks only scheduled an hour of news per day? and a live cross to a breaking story was for a legitimate event worth sticking with...

Well Associated Press does, and fortunately they have made their entire back catalogue of historic news events available to the world through YouTube.

Yes you can relive all one million minutes of the worlds most famous moments, both deadly serious and lighthearted.

The videos date back as far as 1895 and equate to 550, 000 individual uploads to YouTube. The largest to date.

They are available here and could be applied to the classroom in a multitude of ways... One thing is for sure though that those boring history lessons are about to get a little more visual.

You can access it here.

August 19, 2014

Create Animated GIFS in seconds direct from YouTube

August 19, 2014/ Kevin Cummins

Although incredibly popular in the nineties animated GIF's seemed to disappear from the web for a lengthy period of time once YouTube hit the scene. But they are back with a vengeance of late.

For the uninitiated an animated GIF is just an image that plays like a short movie up to 10 seconds long. (See demo on left.)

The process of making an animated GIF used to be time consuming and difficult but now it cannot get much simpler.

gifyoutube.com will convert any YouTube clip in to an animated Gif in seconds with just a few keystrokes. All you need to do is visit your YouTube clip you want and then add GIF to the start of the web address such as this http://gifyoutube.com/yourmovie and you will be transported to the GIF editor.

Alternately you can just visit gifyoutube.com and go from there.

Either way it's plenty of fun and doesn't get much easier than this. Your students may wish to crate some animated GIF's to place in presentations or websites and this is just the tool for it.

April 28, 2014

Over 85,000 amazing news reel videos for teachers and students

April 28, 2014/ Kevin Cummins

Spanning the period of 1896 through 1976 British Pathe was one of the worlds premier sources of quality video journalism for the English speaking world.

During this time it amassed over 85,000 news reel clips covering some of the greatest achievements, tragedies and bizarre events of the twentieth century.

These news reels are an excellent snapshot of the past and are dynamic teaching resources that could be applied to a range of curriculum areas including history, literacy and science.

Last week all of these clips became freely available as high definition clips on YouTube for future generations to call upon. They can be found here.

I hope you find these resources useful and if you have used them with your own students feel free to leave a comment below.

April 16, 2013

5 YouTube Tips for Busy Teachers and Students

April 16, 2013/ Kevin Cummins

YouTube is one of the most underused teaching resources on the web. It offer millions of hours quality viewing made by some of the biggest names in the industry for free.

As a teacher it is your job to sort the good from the bad and define a purpose for this medium; which is in most cases a pretty simple task.

Below I have put together my top five tips for teachers to help them get the most out of YouTube as a powerful teaching learning tool.

Create a YouTube Channel of your own.

Let’s get one thing straight you don’t actually need to create your own videos to create a channel you simply need to add videos to your channel. This is really handy for teachers because it allows you to organize your favorite YouTube clips exactly how you would like them and you can invite visitors, pose questions and share comments without the rest of the world having their say. watch the video below.

Download your videos to watch offline in HD quality

You can download practically any video stream off the web with RealPlayer basic. In HD too. Install the program, and every time you load a YouTube clip it will have the option to download it locally to your PC.

Embed YouTube into PowerPoint Slides and web pages.

This is really easy to do. If you have a web presence or a presentation simply follow these guides below to ensure your video is accessible via your website, blog or presentation.

Add Quizzes to your Videos

“Now kid’s today we are going to watch a documentary. Please ensure that you take notes as there will be 5 questions you need to answer throughout the clip via a quiz.” This really enhances student engagement and gives teachers a greater purpose as to why you are watching a clip. Click here to see how to do it.

Add annotations, links and subtitles to your videos.

So you’ve just uploaded a YouTube video but forgot to add subtitles or annotations. Don’t worry; you can do all of this directly from YouTube by following this guide.

July 25, 2012

Olympic Learning Countdown, Olympic Maths Video Lesson

July 25, 2012/ Kevin Cummins

This video lesson shows how Year 4 children go out into the play ground to try out Olympic Maths They measure and record long jumps, high jumps and target practice using a beanbag. They then turn their data into Venn diagrams and graphs for analysis to find their Olympic Maths Champions. At the same time they use digital cameras to record their efforts both in stills and in video footage. These can then be reviewed on the whiteboard.

You can use this video in three ways. If you like it and it fits your pupils then why not try the actual lesson: there is a lesson plan and other materials below. You could adapt it for your subject and age group or you might find it jogs you into trying something entirely different.

May 23, 2012

Video to Teach about Personal Pronouns

May 23, 2012/ Kevin Cummins

This video does a great job teaching kids how to use personal pronouns by giving them a song that will really get stuck in their heads. It is reallly quite effective with primary / elementary students but will be effective on students of all ages.