Teaching ScienceIdeas and help for trainee Science teachers

One of the benefits of using videos on an IWB in Science lessons is for those moments when you want to demonstrate something that is just too dangerous to do in the classroom.

This is particularly true when demostrating the reaction of Alkali Metals with water. You can demonstrate small pieces, but it’s a little dull. And when the kids ask “go on Sir, throw in a bigger bit” you still can’t use too big a bit for obvious safety reasons.

Which is why it’s good to then turn to a good video to demonstrate the reaction.

An old favourite of mine was from the TV show “Brainiac”:

But sadly this is actually a fake experiment. If you look carefully you can even see a wire going into one of the bathtubs which sets off the regular explosive.

So in steps the Mythbusters with their special way of carrying out proper scientific method.

They set out to debunk the the scenario in the Brainiac video and prove that it didn’t happen the way it was show. It’s a nice way of demonstrating how to actually test something you see on screen to see if it is actually real.

Their take on Alkali metals in water is in two parts. Here’s part one:

and here’s part 2:

Awesome stuff. I think I now have a new favourite Alkali Metal explosion video to show.

An alternative is to check out the Sodium Party videos from Theodore Gray. Big lumps of sodium in a lake.

And remember – don’t try this at home….

Had a question at the weekend from a ex-scitt student for some help on how she could get the audio from a YouTube video and put it onto CD. I thought it might be useful to share the procedure I tried. It seemed to be pretty straightforward (ish)

Here is the original file on YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=EWrmTQPuCdI

The first thing I did was to alter the URL of the YouTube Page.

I removed the www. from the URL and entered kick in front of the youtube.com to give this address:

http://kickyoutube.com/watch/?v=EWrmTQPuCdI

This site allows you to download YouTube files in different formats. For this one I am going to just choose MP3.

Click on the MP3 button, and then click on the green Go button.

The Go button will change to a blue Down button.

Right click on the Down button and select Save Target As (or Save Link As)

You can then save this MP3 file to wherever you want to on your computer.

You should be able to then put this file into iTunes and burn to CD if you want.

As an additional step – I had a problem playing the MP3 file on my computer. So what I did was to convert the MP3 file using Switch Sound Converter – a free piece of software that I thoroughly recommend.

I just used it to convert the mp3 file into an mp3 file – which sounds silly, but the file it produced worked on my PC OK not sure why….

Hope this helps!

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.