Downloading YouTube Videos

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by mattbrent, Oct 3, 2009.

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  1. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    Hi everyone!

    I'm hoping someone out there might have enough knowledge of YouTube that they might be able to help me out. I teach political science at my high school, and I would love to be able to show some campaign videos during my unit on campaigns later on in the semester. There are TONS of videos on YouTube. Unfortunately, our school's web filter blocks YouTube, and the administrators refuse to unblock it, despite the variety of free videos which could be relevant to education. I've been told that there are ways to download videos from YouTube, and I was wondering if anyone here knew how. I've googled it, and several things suggest downloading this program or that program which will download the videos. However, I tried one, and it didn't work. If anyone knows of a way to do it, I'd greatly appreciate it.

    Thanks!
    Matt
     
  2. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member

    Probably a pre-historic method but if you can hook up your computer to a TV set then you could hook it up to a VCR then record the you tube video. Then convert your VCR to a DVD.
     
  3. -kevin-

    -kevin- Resident Redneck

    Matt,

    In some instance you can right click on the video (while it is playing) and save it to RealPlayer (or other platform).

    If you go to youtube and type in "download video" in the Help field you will find that youtube has limits on how many you can download and that some require purchasing.

    You could also find the original source of the video by checking the properties and perhaps that site is accessible from your school. I have found that often the videos are available at news sites and other more legitimate sources.

    As a last resort download the video at home and ask you IT staff to allow you to use it in your course. Or better yet, ask the IT staff to get the video for you, provide them the weblink to the video by pasting its URL in a Word document and providing the document to the staff.
     
  4. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    Thanks for the suggestion, but our IT "people" aren't really concerned with this kind of thing. They don't get the education part of working in a school. They don't care about how computer issues affect teachers or classrooms. For example, they just disabled the use of flash drives in the computer labs and have told us we have to get our kids to save their work to the "H" drive. Well, that's fine and dandy, but the kids can't access the "H" drive from home. Furthermore, everyone else can access the "H" drive so it seriously opens up a can of worms for cheaters and such. Not to mention if Kid A does't like Kid B, Kid A can just go into the "H" drive and delete Kid B's work. It's a mess. That's why I'm trying to find a solution which I have control over.

    Thank you though,
    Matt
     
  5. -kevin-

    -kevin- Resident Redneck

    Matt,

    assuming you don't want to use a method that would be frowned upon (i.e. firing offense) then save the video as a file to your personal computer and then email it to your work address. When you access your email at work the file will be available, assuming you have the appropriate software to play the particular file on the computer you are using.
     
  6. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    That's the issue... I'm not sure how to save the video files.

    -Matt
     
  7. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    It's SOO easy!

    Hi

    Just go to one of the sites that is designed to save these files! www.youtubecatcher.com is one - Google "download Youtube videos" and you'll see dozens more.

    Keep two browser windows open. One for the Youtube video, the other for the "saving" site. Cut-and paste the Youtube URL into the box provided on the saving site and hit the "download" button.

    Full instructions on all the "saving" sites. This is DEAD simple beginner-stuff!

    The file you've saved is a .flv. If you don't have a Flash Video player then there are freeware converters to get it into any other form you want, like .avi which will play through Wndows Media Player.

    Johann
     
  8. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    Thanks Johann. I tried that site and did not get anything. I would get to the point where I'd download a file, and that'd be it. Even if I saved the file as a .flv file, my programs wouldn't play it.

    -Matt
     
  9. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    This seems to work

    I have tried a few and I've found one that seems to work.

    www.mediaconverter.org

    I tried two files. The first one worked. I tried to "set advanced options" with the second one, and although it should've worked, it didn't. Oh well. That's better than nothing!

    -Matt
     
  10. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Hi

    Matt - you said you "did not get anything" yet you DOWNLOADED the file. The DOWNLOAD was ALL that was supposed to happen! That's all the site does!

    If you want to convert the . flv files AFTER YOU HAVE DOWNLOADED THEM, go here and download this FREE program, install and run it on your computer. I have used it many times with 100% success.

    http://download.cnet.com/Pazera-Free-FLV-to-AVI-Converter/3000-2194_4-10786669.html

    Johann
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 3, 2009
  11. Randell1234

    Randell1234 Moderator

    You can download this software for free and it will record what ever is on your screen. I use it for teaching and "show" students how to perform certain tasks in Word and Excel.
     
  12. -kevin-

    -kevin- Resident Redneck

  13. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    Yes, I downloaded a file. However, of the two I tried, one file was 10kb and the other was a little over 100kb. I doubt that's enough for a video clip with sound. I have a program that plays .flv files and nothing played. So yes, while I downloaded the files from that website, they didn't work. Thank you for the suggestion though.

    -Matt
     
  14. scaredrain

    scaredrain Member

    Being an IT director of a school district, I get this complaint all the time from teachers an I always tell them that due to CIPA we have to block certain things or we can lose federal funding.

    Anyways have you tried this website:
    http://keepvid.com/

    Once you get the video, try either a flv player or use this cool video player that plays almost any video:

    http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

    I also use this FLV converter:
    http://www.koyotesoft.com/

    Another thing you could try to do is find the video on TeacherTube. One thing that I am looking at in my district is purchasing software that isolates the direct link to youtube videos and plays them in special website that is an extra package for our firewall and filter.
     
  15. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    I use TeacherTube and SchoolTube all the time. Those sites actually allow you to download the video, whereas YouTube does not. (At least not directly).

    You mention Federal Funding, which I understand. However, my understanding of the law was that it required schools which recieved funding to have a filter, but it did not necessary dictate what has to be filtered. Our ITRT, who is in charge of the filter, is a bit of a filter nazi. Our process is that we submit a request to our principal, who either approves or denies it, and then it is sent to the ITRT. However, he can say no, even if an administrator says yes, which I think is a bit backwards.

    For example, PBS does something called TeacherLine, which is basically professional development courses. However, we can't access the PBS station which hosts these, WHRO, because www.whro.com is blocked because it has streaming radio on it. We also had an issue where a teacher wanted his kids to do an activity with nationalgeographic.com, but the ITRT refused to unblock it because there "may" have been pictures of naked people (like tribal people in the Amazon or something). Mind you, all of our schools have a subscription to the paper version of National Geographic.

    I understand the need for the filter because it keeps kids from looking up porn and such. However, as a professional, I think it's demeaning to us not to be trusted enough to choose which websites are appropriate for class and what not. There's no reason we shouldn't have access to determine what works in our own classrooms. I know, I'm just griping... but it's really frustrating. I teach a college level government class and I couldn't show campaign videos on the candidates' websites because they were blocked. It's just stupid.

    -Matt
     
  16. scaredrain

    scaredrain Member

    I agree with you 100 percent and I have wanted to unblock many things for educational purposes in my district, but our attorney and our school board says no, they are afraid of lawsuits from parents. In fact we had an incident where parents actually sued, because their son accessed something on the internet, it was a very nasty saga, is all I can say. We have high school students who take online college courses and the blocking issue has been a nightmare, since many universities use ITUNES or youtube for content, but they have since moved things over to other safe websites, when they realized that the entire state here was pretty much blocking the same things.

    One thing that I have done is to let our tech reps have the right to unblock things. We have a tech rep in each school, and a list is provided of webistes they can unblock for teachers, this has really helped out this year. I am also looking at software that will build a digital library of youtube vids that are educational, plus youtube has an entire education website now:
    http://www.youtube.com/education?b=1

    One last thing, I have also talked to many vendors and publishers about moving some content to teachertube and to provide dvd copies of things and so far its been successful, many are not aware of the laws that governor whats going on.


    CIPA lists the things that the filter has to block children from and unfortunately most social networking sites does contain the items that CIPA lists. We were notified that the CIPA law will be changing and districts will now have to provide internet safety training to all students and all employees at least once a year.
     
  17. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member

    I hear some K-12 students in my area access the internet using iphones (sometimes during classes).
     
  18. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    Yes, that can happen. However, our district just passed a very strict "No Cell Phone" policy. Students may possess cell phones but they must be turned off and out of sight during regular school hours. If they are seen, we have to confiscate them and submit them to the administration. At that point the student's parent must come to get the phone.

    -Matt
     
  19. scaredrain

    scaredrain Member

    Interesting, we just became part of a program that allows 9th grade algebra students to take algebra 1 on mobile phones. Trust me I feel your pain, I was once in the classroom and it drove me nuts, especially since I taught computer applications and could not show students the latest and greatest stuff that was out there--since it was blocked! I hope your district eases restrictions so you can show the students things.
     
  20. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    The problem is that our ITRT has no background in instructional technology. They just stuck him there to get him out of the classroom because apparently his state assessment scores were horrible, and because he was tenured, it was the only way to get him out of the classroom.

    -Matt
     

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