Teaching ScienceIdeas and help for trainee Science teachers

Just wanted to point you in the direction of a very nice video that’s available on the Teacher’s TV Website

It’s aimed at Primary Science teachers, and gives 7 different lesson starters to use on your Interactive Whiteboard.

You can view the video here: http://www.teachers.tv/video/28260

There are also some associated documents to go with the video in the Downloads page.

Tom Barrett has set up an excellent presentation in Google Docs giving ideas for using interactive whiteboards in the classroom. What’s really fun is that is uses the collaborative nature of Google Docs so that the finished product has been worked on by many different teachers. (read more)

And I say finished product tentatively, because its still being added to. 34 tips so far and counting.

If you want to use YouTube videos and your school blocks access to them, then you need to be able to save them at home, and bring them into school. There are many different ways available now to save a youtube file locally.

This Script can be added to the toolbar of the Firefox web browser. When you see a video you want to save, click the button and then the page changes to allow you to save the file as an .mp4 video file.

All the instructions are on the page and it seems relatively straightforward. The thing to remember is to change the filename from .htm to .mp4 when you save it.

Another good guide to saving videos can be found on the Teachers Love Smartboards blog.

Also try

Converttube: http://www.converttube.com/

YouConvertIt: http://www.youconvertit.com/OnlineVideo.aspx

Zamzar http://www.zamzar.com/

Miro: http://www.getmiro.com/

Video Downloader: Fast Video Downloader

Obviously it goes without saying that you need to be aware that you may be infringing copyright by storing these clips – but this does provide a good workaround for those teachers who want to show a YouTube clip in a lesson where the school have blocked YouTube access.