How to find and download YouTube videos for use in the classroom
Our school network, like most in the UK, blocks the video-sharing site YouTube. Whilst this is understandable from an Internet safety point of view, there are many wonderful resources that educators could be missing out on.
There are many ways to download videos from YouTube, one of the easiest being to use a website such as Zamzar. The following screencast demonstrates how to do this. It is hosted at Edublogs.tv, so should remain unblocked by most school networks! 🙂
var so = new SWFObject(“http://www.edublogs.tv/flvplayer.swf”,”mpl”,”450″,”355″,”8″);so.addParam(“allowscriptaccess”,”always”);so.addParam(“allowfullscreen”,”true”);so.addVariable(“height”,”355″);so.addVariable(“width”,”450″);so.addVariable(“file”,”http://www.edublogs.tv/uploads/c0xqezbBMbZqGckHshmh.flv”);so.addVariable(“searchbar”,”false”);so.write(“player”);
If, for some reason, Zamzar fails to work, the following websites do the job in a similar way:
Most of these converters support more than just YouTube – so try them with other video-sharing websites! 😀
***UPDATE*** A colleague suggested that a handout might make things easier than trying to follow an online video. I’ve put one together that you can download below:
How to find and download YouTube videos for use in the classroom (4.9MB)
Real Player does this job automatically
Thanks for the comment, Doug. There's several reasons why I decided against recommending Realplayer:
– It requires installation, unlike web-based solutions such as Zamzar
– Zamzar has more options for target formats
– Teachers can use the school network to download via Zamzar rather than their home connections (which may be metered)
– In the past, Realplayer has known to be spyware, bloatware, and have an annoying tendency to take over your computer!
Doug,
Thanks. this solves lots of problems.
Thanks. I use VideoGet. It downloads from YouTube, GoogleVideo, MetaCafe, MySpase, Photobucket and other 600+ video websites.
Full List of supported videos websites:
http://nuclear-coffee.com/php/supported_services.php?id=VideoGet
VideoGet also providing you with ability to convert each video in most popular formats for more comfortable video playback. VideoGet supports AVI, MPEG1, MPEG2, WMV, FLV, MP4, 3GP, MP3 file formats, so you will be able not only to view it, but also put it into your iPod, mobile phone or any other portable device. One-click-download-convert. Plugins for Internet Explorer and Mozilla FireFox browser
http://nuclear-coffee.com/VideoGet