Teachers. Technology. Transformation.

Sometimes you might need to show a clip from a YouTube video but don't want to show all of it. If you are presenting in front of a class, fiddling around with the slider to the proper location might be distracting for the students and waste valuable class time. So, how do you get a video to start at just the right place?

Well of course, you could have the video preset so that when the class entered you could just start playing from the desired location. Another solution is to add some custom coding to the video URL. For example, this is the address of a video of Sir Ken Robinson at a TED talk in 2007:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

At the beginning of the video, there are some introductions and a commercial for BMW. I don't really want my audience to watch them so I will skip over them by directing the video to start 26 seconds into the presentation. To do this, just add a wee bit code: #t=00m26s

To break it down

• # = separator [this separates the URL from the code to start the video]
• t = Time [indicates that we are looking for a time]
• m = Minute [the number of minutes into the presentation]
• s = seconds [the number of seconds into the presentation]

So to get the video to start at the exact time I dictate, I just add this to the end of the URL. If yo click the link below, you will be taken to YouTube and the video will start at the 26 second mark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY#t=00m26s

If you would prefer, you can also use youtubetime.com. This web site does the same thing but generates the code for you automatically so that you can just copy and embed the code wherever you like.

While working on another post I came across this video by Sir Ken Robinson. Something to think about...

A colleague asked me if I could suggest a way to communicate with parents about their elementary-age children during the school year. She wanted a record of all correspondence, feedback from parents/guardians, and a simple way to manage it. As I listened to her needs I considered a variety of options including Moodle, WordPress, and Outlook e-mail groups. But ultimately, I recommended a Ning site for this situation.

Ning is free social networking software. Create your account, create your site, and you are up and running. So far we have managed to customize the site to meet her requirements. She has created forums to post comments and solicit feedback. Parents can reply to the posts, and to other parents' posts but cannot delete and cannot create new conversation threads. There is also a direct link to the teacher for private, personal contact via e-mail if needed. Ning also provides an RSS feed if participants want to monitor site activity without visiting the site daily to see what is new.

This site seems to work well for her and I am looking forward to watching its development through the remainder of the school year. I am curious to how the parents will view and use this tool. I will post again later in the year with an update of the site's progress, successes, and challenges.