I sometimes feel like a little boy in a candy store with all the amazing things I can do on the internet! The resource I’m writing about today is so much fun that I can hardly contain myself.

TimeTube offers a search engine that will find all the YouTube videos about a particular subject for a specified period of time. TimeTube is really a mashup from Dipity, an application that will create illustrated timelines. Dipity is worth a post on its own as an impressive research and presentation tool.

For today, it is enough to highlight TimeTube. In my second last post, I wrote about Webslides from Diigo that creates visual lists of bookmarked websites. TimeTube offers something similar. It creates visual lists of YouTube videos. The lists can be viewed as timelines, in illustrated lists, and in “flipbook” format. There is also a map view available for situations where that is appropriate.

It is the flipbook format of TimeTube that has caught my fancy. As a teacher, looking for a video that might help to engage learners, TimeTube is a great tool for quickly flipping through videos in visual format. If a particular video catches my eye, I can view it instantly. If it’s not really what I’m looking for, I can quickly flip on to the next one and check that out. This tool is equally valuable for any learner who is looking for information in video format. You flip forward by clicking to the right of the video in the center, and you go back by clicking to the left.

Since TimeTubes can be embedded on other webpages, and since an embedded interactive visual is worth at least a million words, I’ve embedded one here about a subject that is dear to my heart. I entered “trains in India” into the search bar. The embedded TimeTube opens in timeline format by default. Please be sure to take a look at the other two options that are available on the bottom right corner of the screen.