Miro Free Video Player in the Classroom

Miro is a free, open source video player. It allows you to download and view videos from the web as well as any videos you may have from other sources, like your camera. This is the perfect way to show educational video clips in the classroom in the age of the impervious firewall (of course I'd settle for just having internet at school).

First you must go to the Miro website and download and install the software. It is Windows, Mac and Linux (Ubuntu and other OS) compatible.










Then you get to explore some of the basic and advanced features of Miro. To start with choose "Browse" from the blue tool bar and then categories. The go through "kids" or "educational" and find channels that may be interesting for your class.














Then select the video podcast you wish to download by clicking on the green plus sign. Dragonfly TV is one I have used in my classroom.














Another feature is to use the search bar to look for particular online videos to download. You can choose from several different video search engines.













I searched for "Singing Time" and found a number of DVD previews from the series to download. By clicking on the down arrow I begin the download. Once they are downloaded I can use the "Playlist" feature on the black tool bar to make a playlist which can be easily navigated using JoytoKey and a gamepad, switch or joystick set to the keyboard shortcut. Imagine how much more fun it will be for students to switch through a playlist of video clips than it is to switch through a playlist of songs while looking at the visualizer. You can download clips of sporting events, car races, concerts, whatever floats your student's boat and make their day during leisure or free choice time.

Free Online Videos for Education

I believe my students have the right to be exposed to the same curriculum as others their age, maybe not at the same level of complexity but the same topics. Therefore, I frequently teach using video clips. Video gives my students access to complex ideas and concepts. My year long history curriculum is "a decade a month", so I have shown clips of silent films from the twenties, 1930s cartoons, the Hindenberg Disaster, Apollo landing on the moon and peace protests in the seventies. I usually bring my 17" laptop right up to my horseshoe table to do this.

Last week, however, I discovered my primary source for video clips, You Tube, was blocked by the school firewall (as "tasteless"). Google Video is still working, but it is probably only a matter of time until that is blocked as well.

Therefore, to prepare myself and help out my fellow teachers I thought I'd better line up our video options.

The first option is to download the video clips, then you can play them when ever, where ever. You can put them on a flash drive and pop them in any computer. This can be done easily on Google Video by choosing "download" for mac/windows or even for iPod (and then show it in iTunes). For You Tube on Firefox you can install the VideoDownloader extension, on Opera you can install the VideoDownloader widget. If you use Internet Explorer, or something else, or if You Tube has changed their preferences recently you will need to use the VideoDownloader Website.

If you don't want to download videos or if you just want some new places to explore for educational videos, then here are some sites to try:

• National Geographic Education
• The Internet Archive of Moving Images
• Learning Curve On Film (UK)
  
• History Channel Video Gallery
• BBC Video Nation (UK)
• NOVA Watch Online
• Exploratorium Webcasts
• NASA TV
• Steve Spangler's Science (great site)
  
• Frontline
• BBC One Minutes Movies
  

Enjoy your video teaching!

P.S. A free video player you may want to explore (an alternative to Real Player, Windows Media Player, etc.), which plays all types of videos and is high definition is the Democracy Player.