I am lucky:
- I have a supportive department head and administrator when it comes to class wikis and blogs.
- I have a supportive site administrator who unblocks YouTube when I need it for a lesson and who made sure I had a working LAN port in the classroom.
- I’ve had a projector booked from the tech department for the bulk of the semester for use in the classroom.
Unfortunately:
- the computer lab and library have been booked solid and I haven’t had any of my classes on the blogs or wikis in far too long.
- there is no available laptop (or LAN cable) for use in my classroom — while I bring my laptop from home to use with the projector for slide shows and more, we are barred from plugging in personal computers to our school server; therefore, no internet in the classroom.
- according to site admin, wireless in the school will not happen any time soon.
My dream is:
- enough available computer lab time to get each of my classes online at least twice a week.
- a laptop available for each instructor (or permission to use our own online).
- wireless, high speed internet access.
- far less restriction on internet use (the students manage to find tunnels to circumvent the blocks in order to check their Facebook and YouTube accounts while instructors find their lessons hampered by ‘access denied’ messages).
- and of course, everything powered by Macintosh.
To download youtube videos use this link. This is what I use to show then in my classroom.
http://keepvid.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVSbUsvcRuWk
Trent