I was at home researching how to teach about the “Blue Dog” by George Rodrigue and found the PERFECT YouTube video to introduce his work (an excerpt from CBS Sunday Morning). Excited and ready to share with my students, I typed in the YouTube address at school and got the dreaded school filter message: “Access Denied”.   My great introduction to “Blue Dog” was blocked and my lesson plan quickly changed.

Not too long ago, I came across a blog post from Free Technology for Teachers that solved my problem. I experimented with a few YouTube converter sites (ConvertMyTube, Media Converter, and Vixy) that take the video you need and download it to your computer.  Since I was blocked at school, I started by accessing the YouTube video I wanted to download from home.  I copied the URL address (ex. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp_UhYOhulA) and pasted it into a converter site.  I like ConvertMyTube best of the three for its simplicity. Once my George Rodrigue video converted and downloaded to my computer, I just emailed it to myself at school.  Problem solved.

Here is the George Rodigue YouTube video I used with my students. Go to YouTube and try converting one yourself using one of the converter sites listed above!
Know of a YouTube video that would be great for teaching students? Add it in a comment below!