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.

Of all the social bookmarking services I’ve looked at, I think I like Diigo best. I particularly like the ability to highlight and annotate shared web pages. I’m not yet using Diigo to full advantage, and this post is not really about Diigo.

I want to point out the visual way you can share lists of websites. In special education, we’ve long known that many people with “special needs” require visual supports in order to learn effectively. I believe, however, that most of us learn better when visual supports are available. So, I’m discussing a tool here that may be of value to almost anyone. It’s definitely worth a look.

Webslides is Diigo’s very slick option for creating and sharing sets of bookmarked websites as interactive slideshows. With Diigo, I can organize my bookmarks into lists. Any list can then be shown as a “webslide” presentation.

Each website on a list is represented by the actual page that has been bookmarked. Seeing the page provides far more information than just seeing the website’s address in a list! The slideshow is interactive in that it can be paused and you can go directly to the website via a live link in the bottom left corner of each “slide”. The slideshow can advance automatically, and you choose how long each slide is viewed. Or, you can move through the slideshow manually, and you can also choose to go back to any previous slide.

Clicking the button below will take you to the slideshow of my list of 55 websites that that I think support science curricula. I would appreciate your comments on this format if you check it out. (If you are reading this post in a Reader, you may not see the button . Please click here instead.)

Slideshows of listed websites can be shared in several convenient ways. Each slideshow has its own URL, and that can be shared. A widget, such as the button I’ve used here, can be embedded on a website, wiki, or blog. Or, the slideshow itself can even be embedded, but I found the slideshow too large to embed effectively on this blog. Embedding the full slideshow worked much better on a wider wiki page.

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