Weekly Tech Resources

We all know it, some of us use it, and some of us wish we could do more with it or make it easier.  Here are a couple of YouTube tricks.

Editing a YouTube video:  I often want to show a clip of something in class but the clip is surrounded by additional, extra stuff.  Sometimes I want to cut a lot, other times I just wish I could cut the first minute of introduction to get to what I really want my students to see.  Tubechop.com is the place for you.  TubeChop allows you to cut the beginning and the ending of a YouTube video off so you only show what you want.  This is a great time saving resource for anyone who has ever started a video and wasted time trying to find exactly where the important part starts.

Showing multiple videos:  In math there are always many videos that show examples for a skill I am teaching.  I would love to be able to put all of these videos together in one video to show my class or to set up for my students to view at home if they are struggling.  I am sure that other disciplines could have similar reasons for combining videos.  Dragontape.com allows you to take as many videos as you want and combine them together in a single video.  You can also crop each video just like you do with TubeChop so you only get the relevant section of each video.  Dragontape does require a username and password but it is a free service.

Showing a video without all of the other content and suggested videos that you see on YouTube:  Have you ever shown a video and one of the videos on the side or one of the videos that shows up when the video is finished has an image that is a little risqué?  I wanted to highlight a website called View Pure which removes all of that content but it is blocked in our schools so I can’t.  Instead I am going to suggest using TubeChop for this as well.  When you open a video in TubeChop you can easily play the video without editing it and it plays without any of the additional youtube content added in.

There are many other things that can be done using YouTube videos which I may discuss at a later time but if you want to know if you can do something specific with a YouTube video, just ask and I will find out for you.