Download Videos from Youtube onto Your Computer

Youtube is blocked in my school dirstrct, but there us some good content that has educational relevance on Youtube.  So as long as you make sure you watch the whole video before you show it, you can use a web tools called Zamzar to download the video so it is found locally on your computer.  Then you can easily show it on a flipchart, smart notebook, power point or through any video player.  I made a video a few years back,  so that is emebeded below and I also took a screen shot and annotated it.  Please post a comment if you have questions!

 

Zamzar can also be used to convert file formats, of many different files...

ZAMZAR

http://www.zamzar.com/

 

Whats the purpose of this blog?

I had a teacher ask me today, what exactly am I sending out on facebook.  So I thought I would give a little background and rationale for my staring up this blog.

Background: 

I am an Instructional Technology Integration Speacilaist in the School District of Philadelphia.  Bottom line I work with administrators, teachers and students to inetgrate technology into their schools and classrooms.  I also present at various conferences and would like to keep in touch with those participants.   So, I need a platform to share out great tools, ideas, and converging technologies with everyone and this Posterous blog will allow me to that forum.

Purpose:

My goal is to post something almost everyday that is informative, short and to the point.  Posterous allows me to post directly to the blog, but then share the posting via many different avenues like Tiwtter, Facebook, and my older blog.  By posting to Posterous I can share with my administrators, teachers, students, presentation participants and anyone else who is interested. Other times I have tried to blog, I was always worried that I would make gramatical mistakes and the post had to be perfect, my new take is that there are going to be mistakes, but as long as you get the point and see what I have to share, I am not going to worry about the little things.  So, I am sure there are mistakes in this quickly written post, but the bottom line is did you get the point?...Good!

So, I thank you for checking out my blog and hope what I have to offer might intrigue you, and get you coming back for more!

Brandon

P.S. - Site to check out today!

Have you ever seen Glogster?  Create a visual blog, a project, a report or a cool page to embed in a wiki!  So check it out! 

Teacher & Students:  http://edu.glogster.com/

Everyone Else:  http://www.glogster.com/

 

POSTEROUS BLOG

This is it...Finally going to blog using Posterous, which will connect to Facebook, Twitter, my blogger account.  These posts will be quick, simple and to the point!  I will be sharing ideas, web tools, and a possible retry of my 365.  Stay tuned! 

Check out this site for easy web site organization and sharing!

http://www.pearltrees.com

 

Here are my pearltress....http://www.pearltrees.com/blutz01/15744211/

 

Brandon

PETE&C Experience

I just got home a little over 24 hours ago from the PETE&C conference (Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo & Conference). It was a great experience as usual, I got to see a lot of good friends and a lot of new ones! I was lucky enough to present 3 times and also helped out with some others and I spent some time volunteering in the Social Networking Lounge.

My presentations went well, I know I still need some work, but all in all it was great! I presented my own proposal this year with the 60in60 and they had to turn people away from the session 20 minutes before it was supposed to start. I asked for an interactive white board and the rooms they were in were pretty small. I felt bad there were a lot of people who wanted to see it and had to just look at the wiki. I guess you live and learn, but I was happy with the presentation and have ideas to make it better for next year! I found out later on that I was featured in the DEN blog, (http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/pennsylvania/2010/02/22/60-in-60-with-brandon-lutz-den-star-at-petec-2010/). I have to say thank you to Tracey McGrath for her support as co-presenter and all my friends that created videos for the presentation. I used Prezi to present with and I can say I will use this to present from now on!

Next, I co-presented the follow me project with Civil War Sallie and it was great to showcase the project and promote the creation of other projects. We had a lot of he projects with us and we also had a new project launch, Patriot Pete who will travel to places that follow the theme of patriotism. It is truly amazing to see projects that are owned by single students who have a passion! Many other ideas were formulated due to this presentation, I am exited to see the birth of Kindness Kangaroo and Math Monkey...stay tuned!

There is much more to talk about, and I definitely want to share all the great resources I was turned onto, but that is for another day! For now, I am happy to be home and with the family I really missed!

My Goals for 2010: Goal 1 & 2

Every New Years, I end up setting goals for myself. May it be personal or professional I am a goal setter, sometimes I meet my goals and other times they fall to the way side. This year starting a new decade I find it more important to truly look at where I am coming from and where I would like to go. I think sometimes I set too many goals and I get overwhelmed, so here are two goals I really want to keep.

Goal 1: Enjoy my family & friends
I want to make sure that I don't let life get in the way of truly enjoying my family and friends! I cannot believe Will is already 9 months and Jori is in Kindergarten. Finding the balance between family, work, projects, conferences, my PLN, and other passions can be tedious. The key for me is going to be to prioritize and not do so much that I can't enjoy anything. I am actually presenting at Educon 2.2 with @thespian70, @tcmgrath, and @lorisheldon on this very topic. It has been something I have been interested in talking about for a very long time. So here is family & friends and enjoying the time I have with them!



Goal 2: Blog, Blog, Blog
First and fore most blogging is something I have always wanted to do, but I end up failing at it. My excuses always seem to be I don't feel like I am a very good writer, but what is the best way to become a better writer...WRITE! I also have some other motivation in that my wife, Michelle Lutz @mrsblutz01 on twitter has started her own blog and is writing her second entry next to me. I also, have started doing the 365 pictures in a year challenge, in a way that is a blog within in itself. My other focus of this blog will be to share technology integration tips with the teachers I coach and others who would like to read my blog.

So here on January 3rd 2010, I am starting Goal 1 and 2 by posting a blog. Hopefully it will continue!

WolframAlpha

I heard about this site on NPR, a search engine based on Computational Data. Ask questions about all kinds of things and get the data on them. I put in my name and it told me its rank (33rd), how many people are given my name in a year (11,342), Average age (18), and other info.

You can calculate all kind any mathematical equation and even figure out your Body Mass Index by putting in your age, height and weight. You can put in any date and get a lot of information about that date and it also tells you how long ago it was and the importance of that date. There are a ton of things you can check out on Wolfram Alapha. I think it could be used as a valuable classroom tool, check it out and see what you and your students think!

http://www.wolframalpha.com

Centralizing My Digital Footprint

I feel like sometimes my digital footprint get away from me, I have user names and passwords for close to 100 different web 2.0 sites and I am involved in 25 different wikis and groups. Balancing real life and life in the cyber world can be tedious and hard to balance. When I get onto my computer I check professional and personal e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, all my different wikis and I could lose hours and not be sure what I just did. I try to streamline my time, but something always sucks me in. In order to keep myself and others who follow me focused, I just created a new wiki. Where I can centralize what I do professionally and personally into one place when it comes to the integration of technology into teaching and every day life.

As for my blog I thought about getting rid of it totally and sharing through the portal. But then I decided that all the post I have before this one remind me of how far I have come and where I have the potential to go. This blog might not be updated every day and be the most well written or grammatically correct, but it comes from the heart and hopefully people will read because they care about my journey and the journey of teacher who integrate technology and push the envelope when it comes to engaging and educating students of all ages and creeds!

Here is my new Blutz01 Portal and all the projects I am involved in!

http://blutz01.wikispaces.com/

Thanks for reading, I hope to have more posts soon!

Brandon