YouTube in the Classroom

Educators have and have had a love/hate relationship with YouTube since its beginnings. 

• They love the ability to find videos on any subject from anywhere. 
• They hate the ease that their students find distractions with YouTube videos that have nothing to do with school.  

• They love that YouTube can be the broadcasting voice for anyone anywhere. 
• They hate that some people who really don't know what they are talking about are also allowed to publish nonsense. 

• They love that it is a free to use resource. 
• They hate the proliferation of ads, especially inappropriate ones, that can't be controlled or muted.

The question has been, "How do I keep access to what I need my students to know without all the rest?"  In the past, the answers were varied. Some districts block YouTube entirely. That is a little extreme, but it happens.  Some create access for teachers, but not students. That works fine unless the students have smartphones that can get signal. Another approach was for a teacher to find the video she wanted, then download it from home using some browser extension, add-on, or website that saves YouTube's videos to the teacher's computer. That solves the other problems, but creates a new one.  It is against YouTube's usage policy to download a copy of their videos. A third option was to use some browser extension or add-on to stream the video to the teacher's computer and to hide the unwanted distractions. Cleanr and A Cleaner YouTube both worked in the past, but are no longer available.  ViewPure, http://viewpure.com/, fills the void and gets the job done easily.

ViewPure is a tool that can be added to the bookmarks toolbar of many browsers. Once there, a teacher can go to the YouTube video they want and click the Purify button in the bookmarks toolbar.  The video will open in that window, but with only the video and no ads or related videos. What's more? The Search feature remains on the page. It is clean. It is easy to use. It is free. It just works. See screenshot examples below.

Without ViewPure

With ViewPure

Change the Text - ReWordify Its Words

Modern English/Language Arts standards have increased the focus on understanding and finding evidence in text.  Using text in other subject areas, such as science and social studies, is on the rise as well.  Now more than ever, it is important to not only call out the words, but to understand their meaning and be able to infer additional insight.

The internet brings an avalanche of media sources to our teachers' and students' devices. The sources with the best content are not always on the most appropriate reading level. While there are sites where you can adjust the reading level like TweenTribune or Newsela, not everything is covered on those sites. For the times when you need text and the level is too high for appropriate use, there is ReWordify.

As the screenshot above suggests, text can be copied and pasted into the box and then ReWordified.  Although no account is required to use this site, a free account will allow you save ReWordified text for future use.  This is handy for a lesson with students.  It keeps from them having to find the original source, select it, copy and paste.  It saves class time to focus on content.

More after the JUMP

Choosing the Best Summary of a Speech - 5th Grade ELA in TN

As the majority of the country moves toward Common Core Language standards, the state of Tennessee has woven those standards and some of its previous standards together for the 2014-2015 school year.  One of the previous standards to be chosen for the 5th grade students is SPI 0501.2.3 Choose the best summary of a speech. Finding ample number of speeches written for 5th grade and also written summaries can be challenging.  Below I have included links to both speeches and means to have different summaries to judge.

Here is one source of speeches online. 

Speeches For Kids | Mocomi

These speeches are for kids. There is a filter by age groups and by media. Speeches from famous historic leaders can be selected. The speeched can be viewed freely on the site or downloaded with a free teacher account.

Here are 2 tools for creating automated summaries using built-in and online tools.

Summarize Text Using Mac OSX Summarize Or Microsoft Word AutoSummarize

Use Mac and PC built-in tools to automatically summarize texts for students to use. For the Macs, use a built-in service of the Mac to auto-summarize the text. In every program, the summarize service can be added to the Services listed in the the menu that appears below the program's name in the menu bar. The program menu shows the name of the program being used is is located between the Apple menu and the FILE menu. This service will need to be turned on in the System Preferences. 

Text will need to be highlighted for the service to show. Text can be highlighted in any document even a webpage. It does not need to be in any particular format, just selected. Once used, the summary can be adjusted to show a longer or shorter summary.

Text Compactor: Free Online Automatic Text Summarization Tool

Copy and paste selected text into this site, then select how much of the original is kept in summary. This tool is a simple tool and requires no special configuration. 

I hope this helps with 5th grade TN ELA standard SPI 0501.2.3.