I know the focus of this blog is primarily on writing, but envisioned a place where we, teachers, can go to learn tips on a variety of curriculum-boosting ideas. I hope this is useful even though the content is quite different from our typical articles. (The origin* of this jewel of information comes from the Google Operating System blog.)

Tonight I wanted to find a video from youtube by Raidohead to show my students as a journal prompt. I went to youtube and found the video of All I Need** and watched it. At the end of the video, the MTV shared some very powerful words with the viewer, which were a little blurry because of youtube’s resolution.

I remembered a post on LIFEHACKER.COM about how to make youtube videos into higher resolution by adding some code (”&fmt=18″) to the end of the web address will make it slightly higher resolution, taking the video from 320X240 to 480X360. So, the next time you want your students to see a video***, but find it a little difficult to see/read, “&fmt=18″ is your answer.

*The original article for this tip can be read HERE.

**If you do a unit in Social Studies or English on human rights, this video is perfect for front-loading. It is not a tear jerker, but it might be more powerful because not all human rights issues are atrocities. Most slip through the shadows of special interest groups because the victims depend on the violations. If that will not make you want to watch the video, nothing will.

***If youtube is blocked from your school, you might want to read this other handy article.

Stumble it!

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 9:57 pm and is filed under By Ben, hacks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.