Download Video From YouTube

Nothing is worse than having a great video from YouTube identified to start a class discussion and then finding out your network connection is down. You can avoid this unpleasant experience by installing a free product called YouTube Downloader from Biennesoft.

This freeware (no cost to use it) enables the downloading of videos from YouTube (and other sites) and saving them to FLV (Flash video) files. Now FLV files are bloody useless since it is difficult to find players to play them back. But fortunately the program allows you to convert the FLV files to more useful formats for display on devices such as iPods, iPhones, PSPs, Cell Phones, and Windows Media Player. You can even just export the sound to an MP3 file.

The software is dead simple to use. Just paste in the URL of the video and click OK to save it as an FLV file.



To covert to another format, browse to where the FLV file was stored and select it. Then choose the appropriate conversion format and click OK to convert. It couldn't be easier!



By downloading the video and converting it into an appropriate format you won't have to worry about losing your Internet connection. This also makes it handy for distributing the file via e-mail or in a course management system.

Building How-To Videos - For Free!

One of the best ways to learn a subject or to demonstrate mastery of a topic is to teach it to someone else. So why not assign student projects that require making videos that explain the functionality of Microsoft Office, a Web site or another application software package. And then the students can deploy the videos they create on YouTube and share their knowledge with the entire world. Now that is Web 2.0 learning in action! But since many colleges don't have a tool deployed for the students to use, a free tool for recording on-screen activity is needed.

Fortunately, CamStudio is an open source software package that is based on the widely popular (and expensive) Camtasia Studio product from Techsmith. The software is easy to install and learn to use. They even provide a handy video on downloading CamStudio. The help files in the product will get you familiar with how to use it. The recorder has simple basic functionality similar to older versions of Camtasia Studio.



This is not as fully-functional as the current version of Camtasia Studio, but the basic functionality is similar. For pure ease of use, Camtasia Studio 5 does offer significant advantages, but saving the students $299 is a big bonus for CamStudio. So have the students download CamStudio and get them creating their first videos this week!

Carry an Operating System in Your Pocket

With large capacity flash drives, we have almost reached the point where we could carry our Windows environment with us in our pocket and have access to our familiar desktop and settings wherever there is a public computer. But we really aren't there quite yet.

A practical solution available now is taking Linux with you on a flash drive. Linux isn't geeky and scary any longer. The interfaces for many Linux builds, like Ubuntu shown below, look almost exactly like Windows.



The advantages of using your own Linux OS on a public computer are:

1) Reduce the risk of picking up viruses and malware from a public computer - When you boot a public computer from a flash drive you completely eliminate any interaction with the public computer's operating system. This significantly reduces the chances that your flash drive will become infected by any malware running infecting the public computer.
2) Linux isn't as prone to attack - Since Windows has a 91% market share, people who write malware tend to target Windows systems. By running Linux on a public computer, you are much less likely to be the target of an attack or infection.
3) Enhanced privacy - When you run off your own storage medium (flash drive), you avoid reading and writing to the hard disk of the public computer. Therefore, you don't leave traces of your activity behind.
4) Ease of use - Instead of dealing with a different configuration on each public computer you use, you have access to an operating system with which you are familiar.

Sometimes you can't find a public computer that lets you boot from a USB drive. You can also take a CD with you that contains a Linux OS which should help avoid this issue.

You still need some virus protection but fortunately you can get free antivirus programs that run in a Linux environment such as avast! Linux Home Edition. If you buy a flash drive with a switch that allows you to make it a read-only device, this will also increase your level of protection.

There are many distros (different variations of Linux) that you can choose from to load onto your flash drive. An excellent resource is Pendrivelinux which has many distros available for download and step-by-step instructions on how to install them to your flash drive. Personally, I like Ubuntu and Knoppix as they both include OpenOffice (which is just like using MS Office 2003) and the Firefox browser. But download a couple different distros and see which one you prefer.

And if you are a Mac user, there is an option for you too! gOS is a distro that provides a very close approximation of OS X so you too can feel right at home.

Save Your Students $850 Million!

AOL announced today that it was buying social network Bebo for $850 million in cash. A staggering price considering that Bebo has quite a few less users than MySpace or Facebook. However, they do have a lot more users in other countries such as the UK and New Zealand. Given AOLs other woes, it does seem like a bit of an odd direction to take.

Even though your students probably don't have a spare $850 million lying around, that doesn't mean they can't get in on the social networking action. Just send them over to Ning which is a site where they can create their very own personal social network...for free!

A five minute sign up process is all it takes to be off and running with your own network. You can invite members, post content and control the look and feel of your social network's home page. You can choose to have the network viewable by anyone or keep it restricted to members only. You choose the URL for your network which will end in ning.com and therefore would look something like this: mycoolnetwork.ning.com. You can host blogs, threaded message forums and several other features. The learning curve is very low as it has a similar look and feel to established social networks.

So how does Ning make money? The network you set up has rather unobtrusive Google Adsense ads on the side of the page which generate revenue for Ning. But if you want to control the ad content on your site and keep the revenue for yourself, all you need to do is pay Ning $10 per month and you can remove all of their ads and put up your own.

I think that setting up a social network would make a great group project for a computer literacy or business class. Groups could compete to sign up the most members, have the largest number of relevant blog postings, generate the most useful message threads, etc. So send your students out there to play around and see what happens.