Teachers. Technology. Transformation.

From the February 2010 issue of eSchool News:

A new booklet released by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other government agencies helps parents and teachers steer kids safely through the online and mobile-phone worlds. The booklet, titled “Net Cetera: Chatting with Kids About Being Online,” was unveiled last month at Jefferson Middle School in Washington, D.C., by FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski. It tells parents and teachers what they need to know to talk to kids about issues such as cyber bullying, sexting, mobile phone safety, and protecting the family computer. According to the FTC and U.S. Department of Education, talking to kids about these topics can help them avoid rude online behavior; steer clear of inappropriate content such as pornography, violence, or hate speech; and protect themselves from contact with bullies, predators, hackers, and scammers.

Download the Cyber Safety Booklet

For those of you, like me, who love to use Firefox, here are some cheat sheets that you might find helpful. Enjoy!

Firefox Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts
Source: AccessFirefox.org

Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts Tri-fold
Source: CHRISdotTODD

Mozilla Firefox Cheat Sheet
Source: Leslie Franke

In a previous post, I shared how to set the starting point of a YouTube video by appending the link URL with some extra code. I thought this would be helpful for many.

But no, that wasn't good enough for some, and I was asked how to do the same but with an embedded YouTube video. Thanks, Tim!

Well, you asked, and I will answer!

Below is the embed code for the same video by Sir Ken Robinson in the previous post:

To set the start point for the embedded video, we must append the video source twice. Look in the code above for the URL - "http://www.youtube.com/v/iG9CE55wbtY&hl=en_US&fs=1&border=1"

Now, just add this little bit of code " &start=26" [without the quotes] to the end of the string so it looks like this: "http://www.youtube.com/v/iG9CE55wbtY&hl=en_US&fs=1&border=1&start=26"

The ampersand connects the previous parameters (language, border size, etc.) with the starting point of 26 seconds. This is just a little different than when we appended just the URL link. In this case, you must translate minutes and seconds only to seconds. So if we wanted to start the video 5 minutes and 26 seconds into the presentation, our appending code would look like this: "&start=326"

That's 5 x 60 seconds [300] plus 26, to equal 326. The embedded video below will start at that point.