Thing 10: Downloading YouTube videos

Wow. This is a great feature. Yes, youtube is blocked in our district. I downloaded from Zamzar a book trailer, entitled "American Born Chinese" based on the graphic novel that won the Printz Award (and part of my collection). I am interested in using Photo Story 3 to create book trailers and this is a simple example of one with background music and excerpts from the book, without narration. You may view it below. The process was easy. I saved it as a .wmv format for viewing in Media Player. I'm excited that I may view this at school! In contrast, the youtube video that I embedded in the last post (entry 9) cannot be viewed at school because of the embedded feature.

I tried Zamzar last year when a student saved in Moodle Personal Folder a document file from Wordperfect and we converted it to Word. The problem was I did not know at the time that it would take 45 minutes to an hour. I think I received it the next day, actually. By that time, the student had converted the file at home. I realize now that Zamzar might serve other purposes, such as the youtube video opportunities.

As a bonus, I discovered that I could also link to the Destiny online card catalog detail page of American Born Chinese. Note above link of American Born Chinese. This is a very useful feature, such as when I send emails notifying staff about new books.