Have you TeacherTube-d?

You’ve heard of YouTube, right? But have you heard of TeacherTube?

What if there were a YouTube full of videos suitable for (and authorized for) use in the classroom….? What if there were a website where teachers could share videos that they’ve made for their lesson plans?

There is! A couple of former teachers who recognized both the promise and pitfalls of YouTube launched TeacherTube this past spring. It is the YouTube of teacher-created video content for classroom use.

Check out Dr. Altman’s “Physics At Fenway Park”, for example. Or the much discussed Did You Know? 2.0, for another example of TeacherTube’s potential.

If you find something on TeacherTube that might help your students understand a particular concept, let us here at the CVHS Library teach you how to burn the video to DVD or incorporate the video in your own PowerPoint presentation.

“United Streaming” becomes “Discovering Education Streaming”

Please note that the popular multimedia database UnitedStreaming has undergone a name change – it is now Discovery Education Streaming. Can you still find the database at http://www.unitedstreaming.com ? Yes. However, the database is also mirrored at http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com , and – assuming that http://www.unitedstreaming.com will be “retired” at some point in the future – it’s probably a good idea to get in the habit of using the newer web address.

Are you using Discovery Education Streaming, YouTube, TeacherTube, or other video resources in your lesson plans?

If so, please let us know! The more we know about technology use within CVHS, the better we can help teachers connect with peers to talk about how to use technology effectively.

-- Your CVHS Library Staff

The New and Improved CVHS Library Website

Need to find examples of plagiarism for guidance about proper citation of sources? Need to search the online catalogs of local college libraries? These are just a few of the new features on the newly revised CVHS Library website. As always, the CVHS Library website can be found by...

• Visiting http://www.conval.edu
• Clicking on "ConVal High" under the "Schools" menu
• Clicking on "Library" on the main menu on the left of the ConVal High home page.

Our entire catalog of online databases remains accessible to CVHS staff and students on the new "Resources" link on our website.

Come visit the CVHS Library online for all your information needs!

(P.S. -- Many thanks to the CVHS Webmaster for all of his help with the CVHS Library website!)

CVHS Library helps you keep "posted" on new resources

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"The Internet Archive" -- A Wealth of Resources for Teachers

You can tell your students what western science surmised about the weather in the 1800's... or you could actually show your students what western science surmised about the weather back then. Thanks to the work of a non-profit entity called The Internet Archive , hundreds of thousands of books, audio files, videos, still images, and software packages that are in the public domain are now indexed and accessible via the Web. Your students can literally page through Elias Loomis' 1894 Treatise on Meteorology. Could your students studying World War II better understand U.S. government propaganda efforts from that time if they viewed Frank Capra's "Why We Fight" films? You can find them at The Internet Archive. Are you looking for sources of authentic foreign language films -- other than cinematic films -- to broaden your students' vocabulary exposure? You can find them at The Internet Archive.

You might have heard that Google has embarked on an ambitious project to digitize thousands of books, such that their contents could be searched via the Web. That projects faces a major legal challenge for alleged copyright infringement, as a group of authors and publishers alleges that Google's decision to digitize books without their permission violates their copyrights. (Google responds that its project is protected by the fair use provisions of U.S. copyright law.)

At the same time, The Internet Archive, funded in part by the Open Content Alliance, has also embarked on an effort to digitize and index books and other materials (including ephemeral content such as websites). The Internet Archive, however, only includes materials that are in the public domain -- that is, materials for which the author or publisher has explicitly granted permission for public use. Teachers, therefore, are free to incorporate the holdings of the Internet Archive in instructional materials and lesson plans; and many of the archive's holdings are available in both streaming formats and files that can be downloaded.